Utilize Supersets For Optimal Body Composition

The Best Training To Help You Get Lean

Supersets are one of the best ways to train if your goal is to get lean because they burn more calories in a shorter period of time.

Supersets are when you train one set immediately followed by another with little to no rest. You can do an upper body exercise like bench press followed by a lower body exercise such as lunges, or you can do agonist/antagonist sets, such as bench press (muscles on the front of the body) followed by bent-over rows (posterior muscles).

And then there’s the advanced version of supersets in which you exhaust a muscle group with two or three exercises in a row. For example, you could try front squats followed by back squats with your heels elevated, and finish with jump squats. Another option would be chin-ups followed by pull-downs, followed by overhead press.

You can see the benefits with a study that showed that supersets increase energy expenditure during a workout and result in a higher post-exercise oxygen consumption, effectively maintaining the metabolic rate after exercise ceases.

The new study found that performing superset exercises with a load of 70 percent of the 1RM resulted in a greater energy expenditure (more calories burned) in a shorter period of time than a traditional training protocol. Participants went directly from the agonist to the antagonist exercise without rest, but rested 60 seconds before performing the next superset. Post-exercise oxygen consumption was elevated and higher blood lactate concentrations were recorded from superset training due to greater anaerobic metabolism.

Researchers suggest this rest-work ratio would be best for trainees who have limited training time and are exercising for fat loss. It could also be used by aerobic athletes whose primary focus is muscular endurance.

To train more for strength and hypertrophy, you should allow a brief ten second rest between agonist-antagonist exercises and allow for a more complete three-minute rest before starting the set over again.