Having different programs and changing exercises frequently is a common practice. But for someone skinny-fat, program hopping and rotating exercises frequently is suicide. Rotating exercises regularly makes progress harder to track, and progress is a primary skinny-fat pursuit. Making the sole goal more
complicated is nonsense.
Physique is proportion. The goal is set. An "X" physique. The only thing left is to practice the lifts that preferentially build the muscles develop the "X." Get better at these skills over time. It doesn’t happen in one day.
Common myths float around about having to confuse muscles in order to spur gains, and that this is a good (if not the best) way to go about making progress.
(This is the premise behind P90X, I think. I don’t know much about it though, which should tell you how I feel about it.) There are a few things wrong with this logic.
First, muscles don’t get confused. They respond to stress, not calculus problems.
You’re either adapated to stress, or unadapted to stress. If you’re unadapted, things probably break down from being used in an unfamiliar way. Do things
right, and these broken down things build back up just fine.
And even beyond the level they used to function. (This is constantly setting a new level of homeostasis, which we will get to soon.)
Second, more often than not, training to confuse muscles is stupid. Think callous. It’s slow and steady progress over time.
Doing something that confuses this process (something that causes a bunch of soreness for the sake of soreness), is similar to shooting way beyond your adapted capacity and blistering.
Blistering seems good because it hurts—we associate pain with gain. But soreness isn’t an indicator of an effective
training session. You don’t need soreness to get gains. That’s not to say you will never be sore. It does happen from time to time, and especially when you’re brand new to training or doing an exercise for the first time.
You shouldn’t chase soreness. Anytime you probe uncharted territories, be it ranges of motion or new levels of muscle contraction, you might feel a little soreness. But the body gains muscle just fine without accompanying soreness. Don’t feel bad if you aren’t sore.
The exact cause of muscle soreness isn’t exactly narrowed down yet, but it’s generally accepted that it has to do with damage to the muscle itself. The technical term for soreness is delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and it tends to be at its worst two days after training.
There are lots of theories as to what causes DOMS. Some say it’s the eccentric (lowering) portion of a lift, but even concentric-only (overcoming or lifting portion) work can cause soreness. Take someone that’s never lifted in their life, apply a heavy dosage of concentric work, and you’ll get soreness.
Once you get settled into a solid training program, soreness won’t be as
prominent. A stupid rookie mistake is "changing things up" in order to continue
feeling sore. This is like being in the initial callous stage and suddenly destroying your hands on purpose to create blisters.
If you know the good exercises, the one’s that hit (and work for) skinny-fat areas of need, the only thing left is “callousing” over time. It’s not a short-term
program. short-term programs are poison. So you have an eight week stint planned. Good. But what do you do after those eight weeks? Jump to another program? And then what? Another one? And another? How do you callous?
Program hopping is the worst behavior anyone can adopt. If a program isn’t
sustainable and adaptable for long-term use, don’t bother with it unless you have a narrowed short-term goal (stubborn fat loss, for instance).
That’s not to say you’re doomed into doing the same thing day in and day out—a program should be adaptable to some degree--but progress is the ultimate
motivator, and progress comes from practicing a handful of lifts consistently
enough to get good at them. Doing barbell row for two weeks and then switching to dumbbell rows and then switching back to barbell rows before trying arc rows after moving to inverted rows after doing chest-supported machine rows makes progress impossible to gauge. Your body doesn’t get familiar enough with a stressor to adapt accordingly.
I’d rather you do chin-ups or push-ups or certain squats more frequently than rotating exercises every training session to hit different muscles.
You’re going to be so happy with yourself when you can do twenty full range of motion chin-ups and deadlift twice your body weight. If these are your two goals, how would you get there? What if you just put your head down and went for them instead of getting mixed up in the fluff?
It’s a tough mindset to take, but for a while, all you’re going to be doing is practicing. You don’t really think of yourself as playing the tuba when you can’t orchestrate good sounds. You’re practicing.