2970: Best Supersets for Every Muscle Group | Chest Back Shoulders Legs Arms and Core

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded health, fitness, and entertainment podcast in the history of all time, approaching over half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about supersets. The best supersets for every muscle group. Look, this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Z-Biotics. So Z-Biotics is interesting. It's actually the only product of its kind on the market. It's patent pending. It's a genetically modified probiotic drink designed to be taken before you drink alcohol. Now, why is that? Well, the bacteria has been modified to break down acetaldehyde. This is one of the negative byproducts of alcohol. So typically, your liver breaks down most of the acetaldehyde and you're fine, but some of it gets released in your gut. Then it gets absorbed in the bloodstream. And when that happens, you get nasty side effects. Like you feel like crap, you're tired, you feel dehydrated, maybe achy. So when you drink Z-Biotics for 36 hours, this bacteria is in there breaking down acetaldehyde. It's the pre-alcohol drink. It's the only one of its kind. Go try them out. Go to zbiotics.com slash mindpump26. That's Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S dot com slash mindpump26. Use the code mindpump26 and get 15% off. Also, for the first time, for the first time in mindpump history, we now have the software and the trainers to individualize a MAPS program for you. If you're watching this or listening to this right now, and you would like a custom workout written just for you with your goals, your fitness history, the equipment you have access to, how many days a week you want to work out. If you want a program that's individualized, we will do it for you. Here's how it works. Go to mymapsprogram.com. Fill out the questionnaire. Within a week, you will talk to one of our trainers, a real human being, a trainer who works for mindpump will call you. You get on with them and they will deliver to you an individualized MAPS workout program. It's at mymapsprogram.com. All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Let's get super. Are you superseding a lot right now? I am, but not for this category. It's more for time. Yeah. So it's more just to see. It's a good save time. It's a good time-saving technique. It can be. Okay. So let's talk about what a superset is first. So someone's like, what's going on here? Is it a set you do with a cape on your back? No. That's not what a superset is. Because that's what I do. That's what you all were thinking. No, a superset is technically, and there's different kinds of supersets, and people will call them different things, but technically, when bodybuilders refer to a superset, it's two exercises back-to-back. That's all it is. With no rest in between. So you go from one exercise to another. Now, for the sake of this episode, what we're not going to talk about are supersets that target different muscle groups. Okay? So like what you just asked me about, Adam, I'm doing antagonistic muscle group supersets. So I'll do like a chest exercise to back, and that's really just to save time because my chest is fatigued. I can go do a back exercise and not really get too much fatigue in the back exercise, and that's just to save time. Yeah. But these supersets are for the same body part. Yeah. You're trying to really maximize. You're trying to really maximize that pump by going back-to-back. Yes. Yes. And there's different ways to use these. And I don't know. I like supersets for this category, particularly for what you said, Justin, to really get just a crazy. It's explosively. Pump in that muscle. You feel like you're going to explode. And to really feel it. And there's different ways of doing this. And so one way of doing this, and this is the first time I ever did a superset, I did what's known as a push-up. It's a pre-exhaust superset. So at this time, I'm 15 years old, so I've been lifting weights for about maybe a year. And I bought a book called Heavy Duty. This was written by Mike Menser. So Mike Menser was a bodybuilder in the 70s, became famous when he protested the 1980 Mr. Olympia because he showed up and Arnold came back and won, and he thought he should have won. And so, but he was this bodybuilder that trained very differently from other bodybuilders. A high intensity guy, right? Yeah. So in those days, especially, if you were a bodybuilder, you did just tons of volume, especially in the 70s and 80s. Like you just did lots and lots of sets of different exercises for each body part. And then Mike Menser comes along and he started training in that way because that's how bodybuilders worked out. And he learned a technique or a training philosophy from Arthur Jones. Arthur Jones was this scientist who. Tried to study how muscle growth happens. Came up with this theory. He actually designed Nautilus equipment. So he's one of the first designers of like selectorized exercise equipment. And Arthur Jones said to him, you know, all these sets that people are doing are a waste of time. They're compromising growth. What you need is just one super intense set and that'll trigger enough. That'll trigger the muscle growth. Anyway, we know now that volume also plays a role in hypertrophy. But there are some. There are some people that respond really well to the style training. Nonetheless, one of the challenges that Mike Menser had with this theory was he was afraid, well, if I do, you know, if I do my chest and I do one set to failure, is it my shoulders and triceps that are failing or is it my chest that's failing when I'm doing the bench press? So his idea was, well, the smaller muscle groups are probably the ones that are failing first when I'm doing a bench press, for example. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a isolation exercise. So I'm going to do a single to compound to failure for the large muscle group. Then I'm going to go into the compound lift. And because it's pre-exhausted, I know for a fact that it's my chest that's going to fail in a bench press. So a good example is you would do like a fly to failure, then run over to a bench press or you would do like a dumbbell pullover to a pull-up or a row. And so this is known as a single joint to a compound joint lift. So you go single to compound pre-exhaust. This was my first experience. And it was a lot of work. It was a great experience because up until this point, so I've been working out for a year. I'm a teenager. I'd gotten pumps in the muscles that I worked, but I never had experienced a pump in my back. It's a very hard muscle group to get a pump, especially in the beginning, because I don't think I had enough muscle to develop to get a pump there, but also just feeling the back work really hard. And I'll never forget, I got this book and I did dumbbell pullovers, which isolate the lats to an extent, went straight to pull-ups and then I rested. And then suddenly I felt a pump on my lats for the first time. So I had this really cool experience with this particular type of superset. Now that theory has been disproven, right? That that's, you're not, he's, you wouldn't fatigue your chest. I mean, your chest would not be the muscle that was, or excuse me, your small muscles, triceps, shoulders would not be the muscles that failed first in that press. So long as you have good form and technique, 80% of that muscle would fail. That load is being taken on by your, your chest. It's a, it's a, it's a good theory, but in practice, um, the muscles that fail are the muscles that fail. Um, and you're right. Your technique makes a big difference. Um, and you know, that's, it's, it's actually a good point, Adam supersets, uh, in the data don't seem to build more muscle than straight sets. However, and this is where I always like to counter the data. Muscle building studies are typically eight to 12 weeks long. And I, I think. When you stretch out your training, uh, for long enough that something novel, like a superset definitely has value. So in a 12 week period, maybe not, but if you've been working out for years and you've been training straight sets for the last nine months, I think supersets can definitely play a role in building muscle. I've experienced it and I've had my clients experience it. So, yeah, I mean, there's also the value too, from the bodybuilder's perspective, which is, you know, um, doing a heavy, heavy loads, uh, with long rest. So, you know, I think that's, that's, that's a good point. I think that's a good point. you know getting ready to do a calorie uh surplus and i want to try and gain i've been training a program or a cycle one way now i'm also going to introduce something like this and this novel stimulus with the additional calories and the additional volume tended to result at least in practice for me more muscle yeah and and i saw that time to now what i also would and as a young kid um realizes that i could stay in there too long and the the benefits that i reaped early on would diminish over time yeah it's very short period yeah so it's a it's a very short period so it's just like when you're chasing failure so like there's lots there's value in going to failure occasionally because absolutely it will stimulate some more novelty and and get gains from that but can be taxing and plateaus hard after a short period of time and so i found that same thing with supersets is great interrupter to a normal kind of you know uh programming and then but in and out of it i'll run it for a few weeks and then i'm out of it my fate so i rarely ever used supersets with my clients just because i trained a lot of everyday people and it's a really intense yeah it's an advanced technique it's advanced technique it's really intense it's so it's a little too much stress uh for people but occasionally i would use them and i like to use this one in particular to help the person feel what it feels like to have that muscle get a pump right there's a there's a psychological benefit also when you have when a muscle gets a pump it's easier for you to feel when you target that muscle in any subsequent sets yeah there's a neuromuscular connection uh that you get there when you can actually get a muscle to get a pump and like especially like your back i'm sure you notice and like all of a sudden now i can flex and access you know the lats and i think that's a super valuable thing to teach people um especially too if you're a muscle user and you're a muscle user and you're a muscle user and you're a muscle user if you're in the middle of a compound lift and you need to make adjustments and totally you know squeeze certain areas so like i would use this for example if i had like a female client who wanted to build her glutes and uh i wanted to give her a pump uh we would go hip thrust to squats or hip thrust to walking lunges um you know single joint you know hip thrust is somewhat of a single joint exercise it's closer to single joint than a compound lift yeah to an exercise that's compound and then they tell me oh my god i feel my glutes when i'm doing the lunges whereas before i was doing the lunges i was doing the lunges and i was doing the lunges and i was doing before i couldn't feel them uh maybe one of the best examples of this that we have when when when you think back to the type of majority of clients we trained were uh middle-aged women a good portion of those uh ladies uh cared about building their butt and they're quite dominant and a lot of them were quad dominant or struggled just to feel it in their glutes and so this became uh a tactic that worked really well to help them feel it in their butt before they would squat and i think there's a ton of value for using it this way another way to do it we need to flip it compound lift to a single uh lift this is more of a traditional superset that you would see bodybuilders do where they do a compound lift and they'd go straight to an isolation exercise a good example would be an overhead press straight to like laterals or straight to rear flies and again the idea is really give a crazy pump yeah to that muscle you see like a bench press done to a cable fly or a cable crossover yeah yeah yeah 100 that's the more traditional way of doing these and i know justin you obviously being an athlete you're not going to be able to do that you're not going to sleep supersets not tons of value yeah but then you got introduced to this when you became a trainer i did and i i kind of went crazy with it for a while just because it was so novel and i was like wow man i really feel that um and then all different combos like one of my favorites was a close grip bench into like dips right oh my god up and it just i think it was really like you know just having more access to um you know feeling the muscle groups specifically because i was so movement focused for so long that uh that was an entirely new thing for me new stimulus and it did uh you know make an impact on my muscle growth so that's awesome uh and then there's another way to do a superset that isn't talked about often but this is one that applies to athletes uh and now they don't call it a superset they call it post-activation potentiation and this is where you do a heavy lift straight to an explosive lift uh and so you would do like a single rep of a heavy squat rack it up and then you would do a jump and what they find is you activate more fast switch muscle fibers and you actually jump higher yeah like a heavy squat yeah yep into yeah a nice vertical jump like yeah we used to do that for and again you have to be very careful with your application of it obviously so you don't get fatigued going into that explosive movement but if you do it right and you're able to really like get that recruitment at its maximal potential and then come over to do an explosive movement makes a difference and we had a lot of people who were people like their numbers for combines went up isn't it rad this also works in the reverse so you could do something like i used to do this yeah before squats like before i do heavy squats i used to love to prime by doing a explosive just jump i would like literally just explode as high as i could and it just lights up the entire cns so that one of the things like anybody obviously anybody who's uh lifted heavy on squats you know you see a lot of like traditional way of doing this is like you know they got like four and they're like four and they're like five and they're like four or five warm-up sets to like really get warmed up and activated and you do a couple explosive jumps you're warm yeah it gets you really warm it's up your whole nervous system and yeah and i remember the first time that i did this it was really surprising i was just like oh man i'm like ready to go uh right away from that so this works in the reverse too really well um and man i've also done things like a heavy single deadlift and then you go do a pull-up you want to you want to feel like you're 100 pounds lighter until you throw yourself a little more yeah and also too you can use isometrics in that regard which i've done as well dumpy squat oh yeah or if i have like you know like a chain and i'm doing a like a deadlift like but like an isometric version where i'm applying as much force as possible and then you know i used to do that and then i would get into like a power clean oh yeah well i mean this is how i i'm um i've been on this kick for a while now uh ever since i shared that uh video about joe defranco that joe defranco put up i mean my uh my getting ready before squat i squat a lot of times i'm yesterday is uh just an ice just a single leg or a um you know a lunge position uh hold an isometric on each side and just light everything up and then i go right into it great stability feel incredible yeah feel incredible going in all right so let's go through the different body parts and talk about our favorite supersets uh for each body part and why we like them and so we'll start with chest and i'll go first um i love and again this is just uh again i got this from do we want one for each one of the three categories that you just said like no i'm gonna go with just just in general yeah what's our favorite okay okay okay so i'm sure uh justin's probably gonna be a little bit more athletic yeah that'll be good so it'll be different yeah okay go ahead so for chest uh if i do uh flies and then go to an incline press the pump i get across my chest is just absolutely crazy and so i'll do this i'll warm up real well because going heavy on flies is scary if you're not warmed up then i'll do some heavy flies either flat or incline go straight to the incline press i don't have more than 135 pounds on the bar do some presses maybe get five or six reps out and then that's it and i am just pumped so that's funny you i'm the reverse of that so i love an incline press right into a fly yes yes and i did the same reason yeah that yeah the pump from that uh and the squeeze i get uh with the fly after that i mean i get that first heavy stimulus from the the heavy compound lift and then i go right over to an isolation cable fly and just feel like i can finish filling all the blood into that muscle and i and because it's a cable and it's lighter i can slow it down and squeeze and so that's for sure that's not bad i love that it's similar i mean i'll do like a heavy bench press and then i'll go into a ring like a really really deep ring push-up uh as low as possible and it's just really to hit like that in range yes stretch and it just fills me up like crazy that's awesome all right for back uh i said it earlier this is still king for me for back and i'll do this probably once every three to four months heavy dumbbell pullover and i can work up to 120 pound 130 pound dumbbell straight to pull-ups and i'm maybe gonna get five pull-ups and my lats feel like they are going to fly off my body like i just it's the craziest feeling ever and it's just this i did it when i was a kid still my favorite back uh superset uh heavy deadlift to a lat pull down that's just i mean and maybe there's some nostalgia there i've never done that before i've never done that i gotta do oh my god i've never really done that nothing has ever made my entire back feel completely pumped and like just messed it was i was addicted to it when after it happened after it happened the first time it became like every back routine for a year there was like i had to go do that because then the rest of the workout i just felt like my back was probably i probably felt like it was two times bigger than what it really was yeah because i never felt the entire thing just pumped like that at one point and then i was like i'm gonna do it again and i'm doing like a variation but i did like a snatch grip like really wide and then went to like just lat pull downs oh oh that's gnarly i haven't done snatch grip uh deadlifts in a long time i did those map strong has those so that's literally how i would change that up is like it would be snatch grip or conventional but i heavy deadlift you know whether it be snatch or conventional over to a lat pull down was just all right such a great part all right next one for shoulders uh you give me upright rows straight to rear fly and there is not a part of my shoulder that is not coming off the bone and it just blows me up like crazy upright row to rear flies it's like every single part of my shoulder is on fire after i do that so i have a weird one for this um and i'm gonna do something different just because i could i love training shoulders shoulders one of my favorite muscles and i have a lot of probably different ones like this but i'll give a different one that i learned really i like being in a seated position and i will do alternating lateral raises and then i'll hinge over and do reverse flies oh yeah oh that's great oh just gives me such a and i typically would do that after i already did like the compound lift in the workout 20 of the work yeah so that's like this like i would do i would have always done that too started the workout with dumbbell presses or military press or traditional shoulder press that would start the workout i get my big heavy compound lift so i've already got a lot of blood in the shoulders and then i go over to a seated alternating lateral raise so i can and i'm seated and i can go kind of heavy and controlled and one especially because one side's heavy and the other side's heavy and i can go kind of heavy and controlled and one that's right that's right so i can go kind of loaded and then i hinge over uh and i do rear a rear fly and that's just well it's interesting because like you know you'd probably think i'd start with like a heavy overhead press which you know i have done but for a fuel thing like i love doing laterals and then i'll go into the viking press like right now just to pump you know take it to the moon so viking press is uh by the way one of the most uh it's got to be one of the most underrated shoulders we all felt that's so dude it feels so good it's the best shoulder machine i've ever used i actually miss us not having it set up in here i know yeah we've had a couple i've been a couple i worked out the other day and shoulders in here and i was like so mad that we didn't have it like set up and i'm like oh man somebody was squatting there and i'm like i can't use it right now yeah i want to use that all right glutes i know you guys love working your glutes i'll tell you the ones my clients uh love the most uh and it was a hip thrust uh to walking lunges uh and it never failed to produce okay the feel that my female clients uh were looking for uh they just really loved it and i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my and i would go heavy thrust to higher rep walking lunges okay and after that they would always come back and be like okay i feel my glutes i had well similar to that i was definitely hip thrust and then you know barbell hip thrust and then it would go like supported bulgarians oh yeah so you get you get rid of a little bit of instability but then you just really kind of try to target it oh yeah so uh a heavy squat to a uh moderate to light uh rdl yeah that's another good one love love love that you're getting a great posterior chain and glute pump um from that and you already got kind of a pump in the quads from that and so your legs just all felt your legs glutes everything fill up from that and because you're doing a rdl and you're not doing the heavy like a conventional deadlift it's safer controlled and so yeah that's a that's a favorite of mine all right quads now there was a second there the one body part i only have one body part my whole body that grows easily that's my quads uh and there was a second there i was like let's see how big it is and i was like i could get these suckers and let me tell you barbell squats to sissy squats oh yeah exploded my quads exploded them like they grew and i would introduce me to sissy squats it was great because i was in the cage i didn't have to go anywhere i would do my heavy squats and rack it up then i'd hold on to the side of the cage get down deep into that stretch at the bottom of the sissy squat come up and squeeze that makes sense oh gosh my quads look crazy after that yeah i don't even know if i actually that's one of my favorites for quads um the only difference is i would probably do squat so that's to put even more emphasis on that and so um i love uh i love intentionally doing elevated heels for like really targeting um uh the quads and so i would do something like that with a sissy squat just to finish them off afterwards and just get a massive pump on the yeah i'll do elevated heel front squat uh and then i'll actually take it to explosive like like lunge jumps oh come on that's a good one though that yeah because it is not really evil yeah yeah dude that's a good one that's a gnarly one all right hamstrings this one you got to be careful because uh you'll get some cramping happening in your hams uh but rdls to leg curl machine and let me tell you bro you get the rdls you go heavy you get that stretch you come up then you go right to a leg curl yeah whole now with the leg curl i got a little tip for everybody bring your thighs off the pad so as you do the leg curl push your thighs off the pad to really get the hamstrings involved and your hamstrings are going to be able to get the hamstrings off the pad to really get the hamstrings off the pad so i would do uh conventional deadlift to seated leg curls oh seated yeah seated with right after a heavy so heavy conventional and then i'd go over to like a more again moderate to light uh seated where i can just focus on the squeeze just gnarly probably romanians are seated yeah that's a good one all right triceps uh this one i still will do uh here and there and it's tricep press down with the rope nothing fancy about that straight to close grip push-ups on a bench and let me tell you after you do that you're going to be able to do a lot of push-ups and you're going to be able to do the press down that close grip push-up is really hard to do uh but the pump i get my triceps is uh gnarly yeah i like i like a dip um and a dip and then i'll use like a free motion machine and almost do like a standing skull crusher yeah uh that the doing and you can do a machine dip or you can do actual uh body weight with weight loaded or like that so it depends on like how strong you are in that area and like how much room and space you have to get to this back and forth because you typically need like two different areas so i'll do some of that and then some form of a dip uh heavy and then go to something like a free motion machine or a cable rope and do uh like a standing skull crusher yeah i love the cable rope but if i'm like you know just doing um like close grip bench to dip and that's like close by i'll probably you know prefer that that's your thing all right biceps here's a cool one this one's really fun uh is a preacher curl to an incline curl and it's really just changing the elbow position so elbows in front and then now i'm at an incline and i like to set the incline low so i got a really good stretch on my bicep and let me tell you that second exercise you don't go very heavy like i i go 15 17 pounds maybe and that stretch it's fire on the bicep so one of my favorite is to sit in a uh a preacher bench that you can use a camber curl and you preach your camber curls flip around and put your back against it and then do you pin your elbows against the side and do hammer and then do hammer curl oh with dumbbells so i got my dumbbell set there and i'm going right and and i love being able to flip around on that and then you can pin your elbows against the back of the preacher bench and it's i love that camber bar i'll do that for curls like heavy as i can go uh and then i'll have the incline bench alternating oh yeah curls right oh that's good all right so for calves i'm gonna cheat a little bit this is not really a super set it's a tri set but i did these for a while and i loved them and the gym i would go to had all these different calf machines most gyms have like one or two calf machines but where i was going this was at gold's back in the day they had this wonderful like setup of calf machines and i would go standing calf raise seated calf raise donkey calf raise oh my god end with the stretch from a donkey calf raise machines are hard to find but they give you this crazy stretch in your calves because you're bent over because the calf the big part of the calf uh attaches actually up higher on the femur and so when you're bent over like you're stretching your hamstrings you also kind of stretch the gastrocs and so it would end up like a stretch in your hamstrings and so it would end up like a stretch and at the end of that and it was just fire yeah i mean i was going to be it's this is there's not a lot going on here so it's very uh so i tell you what i'll give you a curveball because i think the traditional standing to seated calf raise is what are you gonna do right yeah it's like pretty much takes care of business but a different one that i don't think a lot of people would think to do that i used to love to do is i would do a seated calf raise and then i go right into a tibia race oh yeah if they and if you got them some gyms if you have it that's for the tibialis yes and so i used to do those oh man the back-to-back like that gives you a big solid cap and it's just a neglected area it is so that's why people get shin splints yeah so there's a lot of there's a lot of good benefit for like exercise who trains their tibialis right yeah and there's a muscle there so if you were looking for size and stuff like that it was an area that um i mean i was doing everything i could to to add volume and size to my my calves yeah i don't do this a lot but uh if i'm in the gym and i'm bored like i'll do um i'll do the standing calf raise but then i'll do like a standing calf raise and then i'll do like a standing calf raise and then i'll do like a standing i'll just drive a really heavy sled after that oh god that's a great idea that is that is actually really good so yeah yeah burn them out like i said he's like i did this one time he's like i did this one time freaking hurt on accident yeah it wasn't even the guy with the biggest calves in the gym doesn't work out his calves that's always what happens yeah yeah core i got a great super set for core and i did this for a long time it was decline setups to cable chops oh my god that was mine and it was just such a great isn't it great such a good one yeah right those two things i know for abs decline you can't really top that no i can't no uh well that i do like a reverse um crunch after decline after decline can you do those not real well but yeah yeah it hurts yeah so there you have it there's some good options for supersets now the truth is supersets should be used sparingly use it as a novel way to stimulate uh muscle growth but if you're working out for a while and you want to have some fun and you want to have some fun and really think about it this way do i want to have some fun yes in fact as we're talking about this i'm like i'm going to try some of these tomorrow supersets can be a great time it could be a great way to have some fun look if you like the 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