I was reading an old T-Nation article which said that the “doubles” method was very effective. this method consists of doing one excercise for a body part then immediately after doing a different excercise for the same bodypart and then immediately after doing the first excercise again. for examlple: 1 set of bench press followed immediately by 1 set of flies followed immediately by another set of bench presses.
i am looking for input from people who have studied this method or tried it themselves. please explain why it would or would not be effective. could this method be used on a regular basis?
I’m not familiar with the article, but I would say the fatigue involved in this type of workout would line it up with drop sets or giant sets. I would say these are of little use for actual strength gain, but may produce a hypertrophy response.
I would also suggest this be used very sparingly for very short periods of time.
Charles Poliquin mentions this type of training in his book Winning the Arms Race. I don’t have the book handy right now, but if memory serves me a French Strength coach came up with the idea. What it’s supposed to do is allow you to adapt your strength more quickly to a given exercise because you are repeating it twice during the same exercise grouping. I think the rep scheme went something like 5-7 reps for the first exercise, 5-7 reps for the second exercise and 4-6 reps for the third exercise which is the same movement as the first exercise. You can pair antagonistic muscles/movements with this technique and I think about 4-5 sets were recommended. He’d use this for about 5-6 workouts or 1 month then recommend another style of exercise/program.
I’ve tried it before and it worked great. I had to warm up properly before my sets, but it was a little draining on the CNS. It makes you strong quick.