By Ryan Cairns
Remember when you first started to workout and it took you two hours to do a workout that involved two muscle groups? Those days are over. Not only is that extremely boring, but there is some exercise scientists that would argue that working out for more than an hour with heavy weights can be detrimental to progression and get into the realm of over training.
The answer? Supersets! I love them.
A Superset is doing two or more exercises that work the same or opposing muscles, back to back, before taking a rest period. This allows someone to work out twice as much in the same amount of time. An example of doing the same muscle group would be doing a set of heavy barbell curls and then following them with concentration curls. This is a lot of stress on the muscle and thus you would need to workout for less time. My favorite is to work opposing muscle groups. An example of this is doing a chest/back day. An example would be to do a flat barbell bench press followed immediately by lat pull-downs then taking a rest. The rest would depend on the rep number and goal you want to achieve.
The benefit of doing opposing muscles is that you can still lift fairly heavy to try and achieve hypertrophy (muscle growth) in both muscle groups and do it in a shorter period of time. Supersets also get some of the benefits of doing a circuit which is increased heart rate. Obviously doing two activities back to back isn’t the same as doing 10 activities in a row, but the amount of the weight being used is usually greater in supersets, which is using lots of energy and promotes more lean muscle.
Here is an example week of hypertrophy (muscle growth) supersets:
Monday:
- Chest- flat db chest press
- Back- lat pulldown
- Chest- incline db chest press
- Back- one arm db row
- Chest- decline barbell chest press or db pullover
- Back- inverted row
Tuesday:
- Biceps – Barbell curls
- Triceps – close grip bench press
- Biceps – incline db curls
- Triceps – cable pushdowns
- Biceps – db hammer curls
- Triceps – dips
Wednesday:
- Legs – Squats
- Abs – power crunches
- Legs – deadlifts
- Abs – woodchoppers
- Legs – standing calve raises
- Abs – plank and side planks
- Lower Back – good morning exercise or superman extensions
Repeat Chest/ back on Thursday, biceps/triceps on Friday, and Leg/abs/lower back on Saturday. Rest fully on Sunday.
Do 8-12 reps, 3-4 sets, rest 60-90 secs after the superset. Try this for 4-6 weeks and watch the muscles grow!!!!
Filed under: Fitness 
