Part of an exciting new series with Trainer Anthony Olick!
Last week, certified personal trainer Anthony Olick imparted some valuable workout wisdom on the topic of making the most of your time and efforts at Club Julian through full-body strength workouts. He explained the “why” part in-depth last week, and here, he shares his insights on the “how” to put it all together as a superset. Check it out!
ANTHONY:
A great approach to strength development, muscle building, and even weight loss is full-body workouts, and an important part of that is pairing some of the compound exercises we discussed last week with an isolation movement to form a superset. The main idea or goal of developing supersets is to try to piggyback an isolation movement off your compound movement, utilizing a muscle that was used during the compound.
First and foremost, however, for those of you who do not understand what a “superset” is yet, it is basically one exercise performed rapidly after another without a break in between. So, you would go right from one compound movement into an isolation movement without giving yourself a break. After the superset, however, you may take your rest period before repeating the sequence. What this does is reduce your immediate rest period, keeps the heart rate up, and forces blood into the muscles worked. All these things will help with hypertrophy (muscle stimulation/growth), cardiovascular endurance, and weight loss. Make sense?
Getting back to super-setting a compound with an isolation. Take a lat pulldown for instance and look at the muscles that are being worked. The primary muscles engaged in this compound movement are your latissimus dorsi, and one of your secondary muscles worked would be your biceps. So, to “piggyback” an isolation off a compound movement that re-engages a muscle worked during the compound, I would recommend pairing a bicep curl (as an isolation) with the lat pull down as a compound movement.
Let’s look at another “pairing.” If I were to do a chest press (or bench press), my primary muscles worked are going to be my pectorals. My secondary muscles, however, would be my triceps. What would I try to superset with the chest press then? For those of you that guessed a “triceps extension” (or something with triceps), you are correct!
Now, as you start to identify your pairings, you can start to build a workout. If you can hit every muscle group, you are completing a full body workout. Now you need to think about the rep ranges and rest periods. The higher the rep ranges with controllable weight, the more you will work a hypertrophy aspect into your routine. This would be the higher ranges like 10-15 reps. Along with that, your rest periods will also be a tad shorter. You would be looking at a rest period of 30 seconds to a minute and a half. But initially, take what you need in terms of rest, and don’t rush.
If you have the shorter rep ranges (5-10) with heavier, controllable weight and slightly longer rest periods (1-5 minutes), you may be working a bit more of a strength training routine. To simplify even more, below there is the beginning of a typical full-body routine to help put the pieces together:
Superset= SS, DB= Dumbbell, EXT= Extension, CBL= Cable
Hack Squat (controllable weight)
12-15 reps
SS with
Leg Extensions
12-15 reps
Repeat sequence 2-3 sets.
Machine Chest Press
12-15 reps
SS with
CBL Triceps Ext
12-15 reps
Repeat sequence 2-3 sets
Straight Leg Deadlifts
12-15 reps
SS with
Seated leg curls
12-15 reps
Repeat sequence 2-3 sets
Underhand Grip Machine Row
12-15 reps
SS with
Dumbbell Bicep Curl
12-15 reps
Repeat sequence 2-3 sets
Seated Dumbbell Military Press
12-15 reps
SS with
Seated Lateral Dumbbell Raises
Repeat sequence 2-3 sets
Again, keep your rest periods shorter if you can. Maybe start with 90 seconds but work toward going closer to 30-45 seconds between supersets.
Then, there is always the topic of giving your muscles adequate rest between workout days so that you can maximize your efforts, but we will save that for another “Ask Anthony.” I look forward to reviewing and responding to more questions in the future. If you have questions about this post or suggestions for another, please do not hesitate to leave them on the blog site under COMMENTS at the end or comment on Facebook.
Thank you – and good luck with your new routine!