• Home
• Muscles
• Cardio
• Nutrition
• Myths
• Tips
• Exercises
• Motivation
• Routine Creator
• Forum

These are quite simple and a great way to save time.

A superset is performed by performing two sets of exercises without any rest.

An example of this would be performing 8 reps of chest press, then straight away 8 reps of dumbbell flyes with no rest, thus forcing you to perform your chest workout at a higher intensity.

This can also be used to speed up routines where you perform two opposing muscles (biceps and triceps for example) by performing your biceps set followed by a triceps set, in effect doing your biceps and triceps routine side by side (performing 8 reps of biceps curls then straight away 8 reps of tricep extensions).

A pre-exhaust superset is a cycle in which the isolation exercise is performed first, and then followed by the compound exercise. An example would be the triceps pushdowns immediately followed by close grip bench press.

By following the isolation exercise with the compound exercise, other muscles are used to assist the main muscle group. These types of supersets will help save time and allow a lighter weight to be used on the second exercises. However these supersets will not necessarily aid in strength gains.

The triceps often tire before the pecs on pressing exercises. By doing your isolation work first, you all but guarantee that the pecs will fatigue first. Besides, anything different is a good bet for sparking new gains.

The next time you train chest, do all isolation exercises (cable crossovers, flyes, pullovers) first in your workout, making sure to exhaust your pecs by any means necessary training to failure using such techniques as drop sets, rest-pauses, etc. Follow that with your pressing moves (flat, incline or decline dumbbell and/or barbell presses). Exercise selection should go something like this: 2-3 isolation exercises followed by 2-3 compound moves.

Similar to above, post-exhaust supersets are performed with the compound exercise first, and the isolation exercise second. This essentially allows you to warm up the main muscle group first and allows greater usage of the muscle fibers in the isolated exercise.

An example would be performing T-bar rows followed by straight arm pulldowns.

The theory behind this is that you would be able to lift heavier in the isolated exercise than if you were to just do the exercise on its own.

This type of supersets involve following a workout program used by legendary bodybuilder Serge Nubret. He would advocate 16 cycles of exercises for arms. Triceps (pressdowns) followed straight away by biceps (barbell curls), with NO REST whatsoever between exercises, accumulating in 32 sets for arms.

Perform flys on a flat bench with dumbbells that allow you to do 8-10 reps. Then with no rest do 10-15 flys on an exercise ball with a lighter weight.

By doing the ball exercise immediately after the traditional version (supersetted), the lighter weight now becomes more of a challenge for the chest because those muscle fibers are already fatigued.

A partial rep is a rep that stops short of the typical range of motion for that exercise. If you continue with partial reps until you can no longer budge the weight, you know without doubt that you taxed the muscle to its upper limits.

By doing reps in the lower bench range of motion, you minimize the role of the triceps and maximize the use of the pectoral muscles. This is very tiring so make sure to use it sparingly.

Perform your standard chest presses, and when you can no longer do complete reps, continue with a smaller range of motion until you can no longer push the weight to the halfway point. Make sure to have a spotter nearby for these.

There is larger potential energy built up in the muscles when you lower heavier weights, meaning you will be stronger on the way up.

Therefore perform your chest presses with 6-8 reps, and on each rep of the third set, have a spotter push on the bar as you resist it down to your chest. Then your spotter lets go and you push the weight up with your enhanced strength.

A lot of people focus too much on the weight used when training, causing them to lose focus on actually working the targeted muscles. One way to reduce the chance of this happening is to use unilateral exercises. Hopefully this will allow you to remain focused on targeted the correct muscles and maintaining strict form.

This involves doing high rep sets on one exercises then low rep sets on another exercise. For back workouts its best to do high rep (lower weight) sets on machine exercises and focusing on isolating the correct muscle group, followed by low rep (higher weight) sets on free weight exercises.

Using unique lifts is a great way to shock your muscles, so be sure to mix it up every now and then with varying grips or machines.

Below are a few exercises we recommend:

High-cable arms-out pulldowns;

Seated cable high rows with an overhand grip;

Incline dumbbell rows (Lie face-down on an incline bench and row two dumbbells up);

One-arm pulldowns;

One-Arm Dumbbell Flye;

One-Arm Machine Press (Performing unilateral presses will help minimize chest imbalances);

Barbell Pullover (Most people prefer to perform pullovers with a dumbbell, which is fine. But incorporating a barbell into the move on occasion (with a shoulder-width grip) will hit the pecs from a slightly different angle);

Clap Push-Up

Choose a weight with which you can bench press for only about two reps and do one set of one rep. Rest and do a set with a weight that allows you to normally get 6-8 reps. You should be able to get 10 reps out of this second set.

Performing one rep of an extremely heavy weight primes your chest to use as many muscle fibers as possible. Then when you use a lighter weight, your chest will be used to using the same amount of muscle fibers as when were pushing your one rep maximum, allowing you to push many more reps.

When you do a bench press, you push the weight off your chest as fast as possible, but you have to slow it down at the top due to the length limit of your arms. This reduces your power and strength because you spend part of the lift pulling and not pushing.

Set up a Smith machine with a weight that lets you get only about 6-8 reps. Do one set of normal bench presses with that weight. Immediately strip off about 50%-70% and do 3-5 ballistic bench press reps.

The benefits of this are essentially that of plyometric training.

Start: For the plyometric portion, push the bar off your chest as fast as possible, letting it go at the top.

Finish: As it comes down catch it and then move into the next rep by bringing the bar to your chest and exploding back up. Only use enough resistance to the bar to stop it hitting you in the chest.

Train the first day with high reps (around 25) and not going to failure, then follow up the next day with heavier 6-12 reps.

The idea behind this is that you are priming your chest to take more nutrients after and push harder for the heavier workout.

Use this sparingly to avoid overtraining.

If you usually perform 8 reps then instead in each set do 2-4 reps, rest for about ten seconds then do 2-4 more, and repeat until failure.

The idea behind this is that it will allow you to do more reps for a given weight. The benefit of increased volume of work is clear, and this should be used sparingly to avoid overtraining.

Eventually you should be going to failure, resting briefly, then continuing.(Make sure to rest for a very short period of time otherwise it will be similar to doing normal sets)

Most people use a strict rep range of 6-12 for months on end, leading to reduced muscle endurance.

It is therefore important to occasionally take a couple weeks to perform high rep sets of about 20 reps per set.

In order to shock your muscles into growing and getting stronger use various resistance techniques.

Be sure to add elastic bands to your workout by adding them to your smith machine workout if your gym has the capacity whilst decreasing the weights used to account for the bands. These bands will increase workload at the top of each rep.

This can further enhance your workouts by doing your next sets without the bands and increase the amount of reps used.

Be sure to reduce the weights by the appropriate amount decreasing by too few may not boost GH levels high enough, while too many may mean the resistance isn’t heavy enough to overload the muscle and produce growth.

Be sure to drop the weight by 20%-30%.

For more see our guide to drop sets

Negative reps are when you resist the weight in the downward movement, rather than pushing to raise the weight.

These can be done after each normal rep you perform or by using a spotter to lift the weight during the normal rep, allowing you to solely do negative reps

Using negative reps further increases growth hormone levels which increase fat loss.

Negatives of around 4 seconds after reaching failure would help maximize the fat loss.

For negative-reps it is important to have an experienced spotter. Perform your sets as normal until failure, have a spotter lift the weight for you and then perform the negative part slowly (around 5 seconds) and repeat 2-4 times.

It is easier to perform negatives on your own with one arm/leg exercises as you can use your other arm to assist the positive part of the rep.

Extended-sets involve doing increasingly easier variations of an exercise as you fatigue to allow you to continue past failure.

Bench pressing is the easiest one to explain with. Start with performing incline presses until failure, then drop to flat until failure, and finally drop to decline until failure. This will help you extend your sets as you are stronger on decline than flat, and flat than incline, allowing you to do the same weight each time you lower the bench.

Triple-sets are just like supersets (doing two exercises with no break) except involving a third exercise straight after the second.

21's involve performing sets with 21 reps and can be performed with a variety of different exercises (chest press, bicep curls etc).

Do 7 reps from the bottom to the middle of your usual range of motion.

Then perform 7 reps from the middle to the top of your usual range of motion.

Finally perform 7 reps with a complete range of motion.

As other plateau busters in this section, these should be overused as this will lead to overtraining.

This workout involves performing one exercise per muscle group (one that allows you to recruit a lot of muscle mass: squats, bench press etc).

Do 10 sets of 10 reps of each exercise with a 60 seconds break and then move onto another muscle group.

This can be supplemented with performing 3 sets of 10 reps of another exercise if wanted.

To clarify this would involve doing 10 sets of 10 reps of one exercise with 60 seconds break followed by supplementary 3 sets of 10 reps of another exercise. This would be repeated per muscle group.

The idea behind this is that refraining from negative/forced/cheat reps, hypertrophy would be achieved from the volume.

Follow Us:

Facebook

Twitter