5 Supersets to Add to Your Program
When you think of supersets, you likely envision a gym bro with a tank top on doing 12 sets of curls while sipping his gallon water jug in between. While supersets do seem synonymous with bodybuilders, they have use in any training program.
Why Use Supersets?
The first answer is easy – efficiency. If you’re short on time, by stacking exercises you can almost double your work in the standard time you’d spend in the gym.
But won’t it impact what you’re doing? It depends.
Let’s say you’re bench pressing, well, in between you could be performing abs, or biceps, or even the antagonist muscles like back as those muscle groups won’t detract much from the prime movers in your bench press. So you’re giving your pressing muscles the rest to recover but utilizing your rest time with some “active” recovery.
There’s a few ways to pair your super-sets
1.) Agonist – Antagonist (A-A) – Dumbbell press with a dumbbell row in between
2.) Alternate-Peripheral (A-P) – Trap bar deadlift with Pull-up in between
3.) Similar Biomechanical (SB) – Incline Bench press with a dumbbell bench press
There’s not a ton of high quality studies on this sort of training but after combing through a couple here’s some of what I found
- Tri-sets and Supersets showed greater perceived rate of exertion (no surprise) AND showed increased elevations of testosterone post-workout. (Weakley et al. 2017)
- Super-sets reduce training time and thus increase efficiency.
- A-A and A-P don’t seem to increase RPE (rate of perceived exertion) too much, therefore, you can use these to bump training volume without negatively impacting recovery. (Weakley et al. 2020)
- If training for force/power output or maintaining high velocity (VBT), traditional training is still superior (obviously). (Weakley et al. 2020)
- However, you can stack a lifting exercise with a more explosive movement to take advantage of something called PAP (post activation potentiation). I will post an example at the end.
Putting Supersets to Use
If I’ve ever trained you or written you a program, you’ve likely used supersets. The two most frequent times I use these are during GPP (general physical preparation) for active rest, during a hypertrophy phase (bodybuilding or early in off-season), to utilize PAP, or during some lactate threshold training to prepare for specific sports.
There is certainly some flexibility here in choosing the exercises, just remember to make sure it aligns with your current training goals. If you’re trying to maximize the weight on your bench press, you won’t want to do push-ups in between it. Common sense.
When building mine, I’m often looking for pairings that will increase the pump (local blood flow) as this has been shown increase cellular swelling and lead to increased hypertrophy. (Shoenfeld et al. 2014) We also know that training near failure can have a strong impact on building muscle, so supersets can play a nice role here.
Enough with the blabber. Here are some of my favorites.
A1. Banded Pullthrough x 10-12
A2. Back Ext x 8-10
The hamstring pump here is legendary. Enjoy.
B1. Barbell Squat x 8 reps
B2. Walking lunges with 2 pulses at the bottom x 6-10/e
Your legs will be screaming after this.
C1. Seated L-Lateral Raise x 8
C2. Seated DB Front Raise x 8
C3. Seated Cuban press x 8
I prefer to train shoulders with lower intensity and higher volume as their fiber makeup dictates. This tri-set is no joke.
D1. Rope facepull to the neck x 8
D2. Rope facepull to the mouth x 8
D3. Rope facepull to the eyes x 8
This is one of my favorite ways to hit the upper back and rear delts.
E1. DB Chest Press (3 count eccentric, 3 count concentric)
E2. Cable Fly’s x 10-12
Who doesn’t love a good chest pump?
Here are some extra one’s from my YouTube channel
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