What Are the Benefits of Supersets?

Is anyone aware of any specific benefits to supersetting besides the obvious time benefits? They’re horribly inconvenient in a commercial gym, and I find they leave me feeling too drained to train my muscles properly.

I would much rather perform straight sets with 60-90 sec rests and sacrifice the 10-15 min that might cost me per workout.

But am I missing anything that makes supersetting worth the annoyance??

[quote]Leafblighter wrote:
Is anyone aware of any specific benefits to supersetting besides the obvious time benefits? They’re horribly inconvenient in a commercial gym, and I find they leave me feeling too drained to train my muscles properly.

I would much rather perform straight sets with 60-90 sec rests and sacrifice the 10-15 min that might cost me per workout.

But am I missing anything that makes supersetting worth the annoyance?? [/quote]

You just answered your own question. Time under tension, and shorter workouts. More work in less time leads to more growth.

Time benefits, aided recoevery by the antagonist having to further relax so less resting needed to perform at a high level. Like a push pull pairing the push muscles have to relax further inorder for the pulls to work. Etc…

In, out, eat,rest and repair.

Lots have been written about it here by Staley, CW, and others.

Hope that helps,
Phil

There’s also a hormonal and anaeroboc response difference. Supersetting drains the anaerobic energy system a lot more than straight-sets. This will lead to more lactic acid build up (which changes your hormonal response to exercise). The lactic acid increase contributes to you feeling drained.

Supersetting (let alone “Giantsetting”)is thus a way of conditioning your anaerobic energy system in a non-sport-specific manner. Probably a good thing to do from a general fitness perspective, but arguably less than ideal from a muscle-building perspective - in the long haul anyway.

I hope the experts will chime in here, but I believe supersets will not promote as much strength-gains (and hence ultimately growth-rate) as straight sets with longer rest periods.

Supersets will promote a greater short-term increase in GH. Some say this is good. Some say it’s irrelevant. Please pick the one you like. :slight_smile:

At the end of the day, guess what? Supersets have a place: they allow you to mix it up (as well as save time). Use them sometimes - they might be a welcome change for your body after 10 weeks of very heavy weight workouts. :slight_smile:

$0.02

WiZ

It’s horrible to set up at home too if you only have one bar.

I can say all that fancy stuff too, but really, the only benifit I see in it is spenting less time.