Superset Training

As training methodology has progressed, the shift towards training efficiency has been placed as great importance. Gone are the days of marathon training sessions (well they should be) and in are time efficient yet, adequately muscle stimulating, workouts.

Insert supersets.

Supersets can come in many different forms as we’ll discuss.

Traditional Supersets

Traditional supersets are when you do one exercise immediately followed by another:

Bench Press, no rest, Bent Row, 1 minute rest x 4 cycles.

The advantages of this method is training efficiency as you’re only taking 1 rest period per pair so they are great for a fat loss phase.

The disadvantages is if you always go in the order of bench press then bent rows, the second exercise will always be performed under fatigue and thus might not get as much stimulation intensity (load) wise as it should. The easy way around this is to alternate the exercise you perfrom first each session so one session you start with bench press then switch and start with bent rows the next session.

Another disadvantage is that your conditioning needs to be quite good to get through all the sets with only half the rest as you normally would have but that can easily be solved with the next option.

Alternate Supersets

This is my preferred way of training and uses the same basic exercise set up, except you take a rest between each exercise:

Bench Press, 30 – 60 seconds rest, Bent Row, 30 – 60 secondsrest x 4 cycles.

The advantage here is that you can train with the same time efficiency wise, if you take a total of 60 seconds (30 seconds each) between each exercise, yet you get extra rest so the second exercise won’t be as effected from fatigue as with option 1.

Pre Fatigue Supersets

There are great when you have stronger muscles that take away stimulation from the focus area. An example of this is your triceps taking over the from your chest during bench presses. What you would do here is perform an isolation triceps exercise to fatigue them prior to doing your main chest movement:

Tricep Pushdown x 12 – 15, 0 – 10 seconds rest, Bench Press,1 – 2 minutes rest.

The disadvantage here is that the weight you would use on your bench press is not the maximal weight that you could use without the residual fatigue from the first exercise. What I suggest here is to perform regular bench press sets first in your workout followed by some pre fatigue triceps /bench press sets after it:

Bench Press 3 x 3 strength work

Triceps Pushdown 2 x 12 – 15, 0 – 10 seconds rest, BenchPress 2 x 6 – 8

You could also do 1 session during the week of pure strength work with regular bench sets then another session of pre fatigue supersets depending on your training schedule.

Post Fatigue Supersets

This works the opposite of pre fatigue supersets. If during chest exercises you feel less stimulation in your triceps then you would do:

Bench Press x 6 – 8, 0 – 10 seconds rest, Tricep Pushdown x6 – 8

I am not really a fan of this option as it means you’re not really focused on the right thing which should be pushing up your bench press numbers, not focusing on how your arms are doing. It will also fatigue the triceps so that during your subsequent bench press sets, you may have to decrease the weight from what what you would normally use.

Lower / Upper Supersets

My preferred method for fat loss. This works on the peripheral heart action principle made famous in the 60’s as it requires oxygen and blood to be circulated from separate parts of the body making the metabolic demands much greater.

You can use this with traditional or alternate supersets although if you’re doing them heavy and hard enough, you should definitely need some rest between each exercise such as the alternate supersets.

Compound Supersets

These can be quite draining so are best used in a muscle building phase with ample calories and is where you pair 2 compound exercises for the same muscle in either a traditional or alternate superset system. Using chest as an example:

Flat Bench Press x 6 – 8, 0 – 30 seconds rest, Incline BB Press x 6 – 8, 2 minutes rest

As you're doing double the work with each pairing for the one muscle, you don’t need as many sets so where we might do 4 sets of the earlier variations, we’ll only need 2 for these.

For arms you would simply do 2 of the heavier variations for biceps (bb curls and reverse curls) and triceps (close grip bench press and tricep extensions).

If you’re not using supersets then I strongly suggest you do so. As time efficiency increases, and you’re doing the same amount of work in less time or more work in the same amount time, then so will your results.

Any questions on this article can be sent here and I’ll answer it on the site.