If you’ve been hitting the gym for a few months already and haven’t switched up your workout, you may have noticed that you’ve hit a plateau. Your body has already adjusted itself and gotten comfortable with your workout regimen, so it’s time to change things a bit. Besides changing out your weight lifting exercises completely, you can change your current exercises by turning them into supersets and/or drop-sets.
A superset is one of the best techniques to maximize your muscle growth… and it’s easy to do! Basically, a superset is performed by doing two exercises in a row without taking a break. Each of your exercises will be working out opposing (antagonistic) groups of muscles (for example, doing barbell curls (biceps) and then immediately doing skull crushers (triceps)). After you complete your set, you can have your resting period. Other opposing groups of muscles include chest & back and quadriceps & hamstrings. Shoulders don’t have any direct antagonistic muscles, but you could do shoulders & back.
(Note that you don’t HAVE to do opposing muscle groups. You could do it with just about any muscle combination, but by doing opposing groups, you’ll be able to save time and keep your workout at high strength levels)
In addition to supersets, you can also perform drop-sets. You can do this by itself or along with supersets. A drop set is going to work like a pyramid: The amount of weight that you use is going to go higher for the first 3 sets. Immediately after your third set, without a rest period, begin to drop your weights for the next set. Complete that set and then drop again… keep dropping weights for each set until you reach complete muscle failure. (i.e. my workout may look like this if I’m doing bicep curls: 27, rest, 30, rest, 32, 27, 20, 15, 10) In the end, you may end up curling just a bar or be doing a little 5 pound weight! You may look like a weakling to other people when you’re just doing a light weight, but they most likely won’t have any clue about what you just completed.
The drop set is effective is because it tears down your muscle fibers more as you approach muscle failure. Your muscles are weakened such a great extent that it’s going to have to repair the fibers. Supersets are also very effective because they increase the production of Lactic Acid, which increases the level of growth hormones in your body. These growth hormones are what help you in burning fat and creating muscle-building hormones.
So there you have it. Doing supersets and drop-sets are an excellent new addition to your workout, and can help you boost your muscle growth considerably if you do it consistently.
