I’ve just finished the first Fat Loss I program in the "New Rules of Lifting" and I need to start a new supersetting program. The Fat Loss I involves full body supersets: squats/pulls, deadlifts/presses, lunges/crunches. I remember when I first expressed my skepticism about the supersets, Mel said she wouldn’t dream of doing full body splits like that, and I’m wondering what I should do instead. My schedule at the moment allows for 2 days of weights at the gym (I run and cycle on other days and I need to do the running to exercise my dog before work; I’d like to find 3 days for weights, but I haven’t yet been able to do so), so a FBWO is probably the best option for me, at least for the moment. My exercises in general include squats, deadlifts, lunges, db rows/lat pull downs, military presses/bench presses and I prefer to stick with these efficient compounds. I need to mix up the variations a bit, but for time and efficiency, I do want to keep with the compounds.
How would you suggest organizing the splits, given these constraints and preferences?
There are various reasons for supersetting, so we need to know exactly why you are supersetting before we can get to specific.
For example:
Some superset or circuit merely to keep the heartrate up.
Some superset to pre-exhaust a muscle, so they will do two exercise utilizing a muscle group back to back. There are even different reasons for prexhausting a muscle group. For instance, someone wanting to really emphasize the triceps might do a compound exercise that utilizes the triceps such as the bench press and then do a more isolation exercie for the triceps such as tricep extensions. While someone seeking to force more chest recruitment in his bench press might do the same two exercises but will do the tricep extensions first and then do the bench press because with the triceps prexhausted they won't be able to help out as much on the bench press forcing the rest of the muscles to do more work than they normally would to help out the tired triceps.
Some target stabilization strength by doing a strength exercise for a muscle immediately followed by a stabilization movement for the same muscle.
Some target speed strength in the same manner supersetting a power exercise with a strength exercise.
And that just scratches the surface of what can be targeted. The reasons/goals for supersets are as numerous as the reasons/goals for resistance training itself.
In Fat Loss I, Alwyn was trying to give you the metabolic advantages by short 1 minute rests but giving you the strength advantages of lifting heavier weights by giving the individual muscle about 2 1/2 minutes between sets for that muscle group. By using the lower body push paired with the upper body pull and the like, even though he utilizes compound movements, the muscles used in the first exercise were recruited as little as possible in the second movement. With the rests (supersets with full rest) built in, by the time you get back to the first movement, you should be able to use a weight similar to what you can handle if you were doing straight sets with 2-3 minutes rest in between.
One key thing to remember when supersetting. Be careful about prexhausting sensitive areas (either intentionally or unintentionally) such as the back. As these muscles get tired and form breaks down, injury risk goes up dramatically. I would hesitate to do any program that places an exercise with heavy spinal loading on the back end of a superset.
So what do you want to achieve?
Also, with only two days to weight train. I think it is imperative that you go full body. Stimulating a muscle group only once a week might be OK if you can really blitz that muscle group but that would entail working only one or two muscles a day like in a 4 or 5 day bodybuilding type split.
I do supersetting for efficiency...minimize "down time" I do opposing muscle groups, but not full body like that. I would do for example bicep/tricep or push/pull. hamstring/quad. I rearrange then to take advantage of what makes sense then in terms of location in the gym and weight used. Like I do 1 arm row and tricep kickback together because they are both on a bench, and then I do bicep and military together because I do them both standing with the same weight (for now).
I try to rearrange them every once in awhile in case one is preexhausting for another even though they should be different groups. And I alternate the order of the exercises some.
Depalma, I'm having a hard time answering your question. I want a time-efficient workout that burns fat and builds strength. I think I first started with the supersets as a way of varying my workout, as I'd been doing the same thing for too long. I think my problem right now is that I don't have any specific goals, and no goals leads pretty quickly to lack of commitment, at least for me. I need to formulate new goals.
At any rate, since I think FBWOs are the way to go at the moment, what about a simple push/pull superset thing. Like:
DB Press/DB Row
Mil Press/Lat Pulldown
Squat/Deadlift
and maybe also Lunge/Crunch, just to get lunges in.
I really need to start varying my exercises a bit more (maybe I'll do front squats or something today), but I also have no strong sense of how to work the sets/reps/rest scheme. Does it matter over the long term? Can I decide to do 5x5 using this simple push/pull scheme, and then switch to 3x15 in 6 weeks or so? Or would it be better to do 5x5 on Tuesday and 3x15 on Thursday? And shorter rests are better, right?
Most of that looks good baffled except the squat/deadlift combo towards the end of the workout. As I said, I am very careful about placing a heavy load on the spine on the back end of a superset. This is even more important late in the workout. Doing deadlifts right after squats, particularly this late in the workout with your lower back, glutes, and hamstrings all pre-exhausted to an extent is a recipe for a back injury.
I would do one of two things. Either move to a superset set up more like the one you did in Fat Loss I in which you pair a knee dominant exercise with an upper body pull (in this case Squats and DB rows) and a hip dominant exercise with an upper body push (in this case Deadlifts with DB presses) with the Squats and Deadlifts done at the beginning of the supersets or at the minimum move the lower body exercises towards the beginning of the workout and try to reduce some of the loading on the back end. In this case, since you will be working out twice a week, I would start out the workout with squats on the first day and Deadlifts on the second day. I would then pair the squats with perhaps a single leg stiff legged deadlift or perhaps a pull through. I would pair the Deadlift on the second day with a bulgarian split squat or step up (the single leg allows you to use less weight overall but you are still placing a similar load on your legs but a reduced load on your lower back and other supporting muscles) or perhaps I might look for the support that a machine based exercise can give and go with a leg press.
Thanks Depalma. I always do legs first--I just happened to put squat/deadlift at the bottom of my list, but I did them first, fear not. I'll have a think about those other splits. I pretty much always just do regular squats and regular deadlifts (with occasional stiff legged deadlifts), but maybe you're right that I include more lower body exercises over all. I probably do need to try some more deadlift variations in my routine--it's easy to keep adding weight to the squat bar, but I'm maxed out at 110 with the deadlift barbells (unless I start using the squat bar--which would make a squat/dl superset rather tricky). Step ups or one-legged dls might be a good way of increasing my progress.
Given the goals that you stated, I would alternate between a 3x10 with 60 seconds rest and 4x6 with 2 minutes rest. If you feel comfortable working with different set/rep/rest schemes within the same week (you've gotten a taste of this doing NROL Fat Loss I), then I would do day 1 with the 4x6 (doing the strength emphasis/heavier load day when you are more rested) and doing the lighter/higher rep day on day 2). If you didn't really care for changing the rep/set scheme during the week, you can go with a more traditional linear periodization and do the 3x10 hypertrophy type scheme for 3 weeks and then move on to the 4x6 strength phase for the next 3 weeks. With either one, we are using the supersets to add a fat-burning aspect to the workout.
One more question, could I use a dip/pullup superset as an alt for the mil press and lat pulldowns on one of the days? I think I'd like to work up to unassisted pullups, but that machine is way on the other side of the gym with all the nautilus machines; there's nothing else to superset with except the dip on the same machine.
Help with Supersets
