Your workout is likely more complicated than it needs to be. Trainers reveal how to keep it simple, reduce injury risk, and still see results.

• Complex, trendy exercises may promise fast results, but trainers say they aren't necessary for gains.
• Modifying exercise can be helpful if it works better for your body, or keeps you motivated.

Step away from the resistance bands — social media is full of flashy workouts loaded with jumps, bands, or other complicated add-ons, but they're not always the best way to get fit, according to personal trainers.

You can modify an exercise to make it work better for your body and goals, or even make it more effective. But adding a string of adjectives to crank up the intensity can also waste your energy, increase the risk of injury, and make it harder to see progress, two coaches told Insider.

Here's how to know when to change up a movement for better results, and when to stick to the basics.

You can, and should, modify exercise to work better for your body

Making small adjustments to help you complete an exercise with good form can make it more effective, Miriam Fried, NYC-based personal trainer and founder of MF Strong, told Insider.

Sometimes called "scaling," certain changes help to tailor exercise to your unique physiology, capacity and even how you're feeling that day. While scaling is a great option for beginners, it isn't solely based on fitness experience and is a helpful tool for everyone, according to Fried.

"Modifications are great and shouldn't be looked at as something negative," she said.

Some examples include:

• Eccentric reps (or negatives): Isolating the lengthening or lowering part of a movement, eccentrics can help build muscle and strength, and work up to completing more reps of tough exercises like pull-ups.
• Incline/Decline: Changing the angle of a movement to increase or decrease the difficulty — one example is putting your hands on a box or bench for an incline push-up.
• Partial Elevation: Used to change the angle of a joint (and your body's range of motion), like putting a bumper plate under your heels during a squat can help you get deeper into the movement.

Modifications can also be a great way to keep making progress if you're dealing with any limitations such as mobility problems or injury, according to Ben Foster, founder and head coach of the People's Athletic Club.

"Exercise is so individualized I encourage people to play around with different variations to see what works best for their body," he told Insider.

More intense versions of exercise can boosts gains, but sometimes backfire

Some types of exercise modifiers are designed to make movements more challenging, which can help experienced athletes keep making progress once they've mastered the basics, according to Foster.

"The more modifiers I see someone performing, the more advanced I would expect someone to be," he said.

Examples include:

• Deficit: Elevating your body or workout equipment to create a greater range of motion, such as putting your hands on dumbbells for a push-up so your chest has to go farther before reaching the floor.
• Banded: Adding a resistance band to increase tension on a movement (or cue muscle engagement).
• Plyo: Adding an explosive component such as a jump to an exercise.
• Instability (or "chaos"): Adding a balance component to a movement, such as squatting on a Bosu ball.
• Combinations: Linking together exercises into an unbroken sequence, like a lunge with a bicep curl.

However, challenging variations can sometimes be a distraction from slow, steady progress, which typically involves gradually increasing intensity, such as weight or reps, over time, a principle known as progressive overload.

"If you're constantly changing how you perform an exercise, you're not able to measure how you're improving," Foster said.

Making a movement more complex may also increase the risk of injury if you aren't careful as you put your body through unfamiliar stress, he added.

You don't need complicated exercises to build muscle and strength

Despite what influencers may tell you, an exercise doesn't need to be a full sentence to be effective. Simple exercises can help you build strength and muscle, and beginners can make fast progress in the gym with only basic movements like squats, deadlifts, pushes, and pulls, the trainers said.

"Someone who's new is going to get so much out of a regular exercise," Foster said.

Fried compared exercise add-ons to nutrition supplements — helpful in some cases but not necessary, and no replacement for a solid foundation of healthy habits.

"We want to speed up progress and people are looking for the secret to do that but there isn't a secret. It's just consistency and repetition," she said. "You could stick to the basic exercises for the rest of your life and you'll still make progress."

Mixing it up in the gym can keep you motivated, but don't sacrifice good form

One advantage of adding new exercise variations is that it can be fun to try new things, making you more likely to want to work out. For best results, ease into a new movement gradually to allow your body to adjust, and don't lose sight of the basics, according to Foster.

"We want people to master the basics, but that's easy to say as people who care about fitness," he said. "If ultimately these exercises get people into the gym, it's pretty low risk. I won't lose any sleep over it."