their hypertrophy will be limited more so by how much time they have than potentially by recovery so if you're someone who's limited by time if you can use super sets and all of a sudden go from getting say 10 15 sets for your biceps in the given week to say 15 20 or 20 or 25 and that increases your hypertrophy that's a huge deal hey folks Dr Mike here for RP strength I'm here with Coach Dr Milo wolf of the wolf pack which is you and pack Dr pack uh a wolf pack of two that's
not a lot of wolves but you guys are both quite large so we make up for it with size fun fact we want to call ourselves wolf pack I know podcast wolf pack but a backpack brand beat us to the punch oh come on there's no way that like they're going to sue you for using our names I mean yes your names it's also podcast like we're not trying to make a backpack that's true is it a nice backpack I've heard it is and I've seen them Expose and stuff but I can't speak to their
quality good enough I think to deserve wolf P you should fight for it legally until you spend all of your money doing it and lose yes well loser we don't we don't have a choice in that we just fight that's our job and speaking of fighting you know what enough fighting we need more love in this world and one of the best ways to show love is through summarizing recent literature about how to get jacked by training less now sounds like clickbait to me Milo open up my ears a little bit explain to me what's
going on so that I'm no longer as confused and upset as I am currently if you use the right training strategy you can probably train less and grow more muscle before the commenters get all twisted up trying to call me a click baiter there's a recent technique that we've researched a fair amount now called antagonistic paired super sets or even just overlapping super sets as you've previously called them and we just finished conducting a study on this exact Topic in train lifters with around on average three years of training experience we compared doing all of
your training for the upper body as either traditional sets where you do one exercise followed by the next followed by the next followed by the next Etc in this case that was with rest breaks correct traditional rest breaks with the Smith machine bench bench press the lat pull down the dumbbell curl the cable push down the leg extension and the leg curl okay so a relatively full body complete program we compared that approach of just taking traditional rest times to Super setting those six exercises into three pairs the Smith machine bench press super seted with
the lat pull down the Dell curl super seted with the push down and the leg extension suers seted with the leg curl what's the rest time like when you do those super sets I believe it was 2 minutes from top of my head so so 2 minutes between each set for the traditional group okay and two minutes between each super set for the superet group so they would do a set of bench press and then straight away go into a set of pull downs and then rest 2 minutes got it after that two minute break
do another set of bench press immediately followed by a set of pull Downs then rest two minutes again so we're saving two minutes every time because we're not resting two after each just two after the combination correct which is good good time savings there all right what did you find well when looking at total session duration as you'd expect the superet group saved around 40% of total workout time that's good that's a meaningful amount to that's a very meaningful amount um I want to save 100% of workout time uh not quite there yet 40% is
realistic 40% is something like if I normally train for an hour and a halfish now I'm training for like an hourish y not a 20 minute timesaver but a big deal Y and obviously those guys since they SC they skipped out on the work of resting and waiting they must have not grown as much right well no they actually grew the exact same amount oh damn now there have been previous studies on the exact same topic where this is now the third study looking at this idea of suers setting two movements with no muscular overlap
or ideally even two movements that are antagonistic in nature so for example a bicep curl where you're flexing the elbow and a cable push down you're extending the elbow and real quick just for folks not in the know the unrelated part means like you do a squat and then after you do a push-up uh pushing up is not antagonistic to squats but it doesn't involve any overlapping musculature so basically you just one muscle is resting while the other is training then they're both resting and then the next muscle goes correct one caveat I would give
to that specific example is that I'm not sure how this generalizes to more compound movements that just tie you out a ton in general like I'm not sure I would personally try super setting a squat with anything else quite yet just because the squat uses so much musculature and imposes such systemic fatigue overall that it might just be too much fatigue to really superet effectively with a different exercise at all if that makes sense speculating speculating because you don't have direct research on the squat in the first place but I certainly think for most upper
body movements and most if not all isolation movements you can likely suet two movements with no muscular overlap save a bunch of time and get mostly the same stimulus that is certainly with the research to date suggests as I mentioned this now makes for the third study looking at Super sets versus tradition training we have one study on banded curls and band trip extensions doing them separately or super sets and the other study is on like curls and light extensions in both of these studies as in the present one we saw largely similar hypertrophy so
all three studies we have on this concept as far as actually looking at hypertrophy have found similar hypertrophy from doing traditional training versus using these super sets so all the research really suggests that you could be saving up to 30 to 40% of the time maybe even more by doing most of your exercises that lend themselves to this technique as super sets there's a few small caveats okay specifically in the study we just conducted we did have around twice as many reports of nausea in the suet group as compared to traditional group that makes sense
because essentially you're increasing the training density creating greater systemic demands and that seemingly led to a bit more sort of overall nausea related issu so you just get don't get as many rest breaks you get more tired and throw throwy upy correct okay correct likewise at first when they started the study we asked them how hard they found both the suet training session and the traditional training session and just when being tested for the first time on these sessions they found the superet training session a bit more challenging when they had to rate out of
10 they rated the superet session as around 8 out of 10 and the traditional session is about 7 out of 10 so it is a bit more challenging almost being equal you're doing the same amount of training and just less time so you're training harder in a way however when you actually average their difficulty ratings across a study they were pretty similar between the superet group and the traditional group so it might be something get used to sure that is my suspicion well you get used to almost everything the real question is by the time
you get used to it is it still harder than the other thing like if you sprint for 30 seconds versus run all out for an hour even when you get used to running all out for an hour sprinting for 30 seconds is still easier but in this case at the end of the study you guys notice no difference in ratings on average on average pretty now ideally we would have done a session where the superet group did the traditional session at the end as well so we can then compare how they experienced the traditional session
having done the harder thing of doing super sets but we didn't however just looking at the average ratings across the study it would suggest that you get used to it to a reasonable extent yeah they'll probably just be pretty bored with a traditional session because it takes so much Dam time sit around for no reason now these three studies aren't all we have we also have around five acute studies looking at the concept of super sets and looking at performance specifically and broadly speaking across these five or so acute studies looking at whether or not
super setting exercises imp pass performance as compared to doing just one exercise with tradition rest intervals follow by the next you generally see similar performance or in the case of antagonistic paed super sets sometimes even slightly better performance explain why when you're bench pressing and especially when you're untrained your body will to an extent still activate your back musculature which can impair how easily you're able to lift the weight because it directly resists the motion list a a nonproductive co- contraction you're just kind of corre but you're not uh pointing all your muscles in the
direction you need them to go uh okay and that's actually how beginners grapple too when they do Jiu-Jitsu they just kind of constrict everything and you're like actually that's not it's nice b b constrictor thing and it makes you really tired and so on and so forth but for them because when the bench press tires out your chest your chest doesn't interfere as much with your lat pull Downs because your body's like chest is too tired Buck it we're not going to co-contract and then you end up having a better performance on the lap pull
Downs so that's interesting now you may not actually have a better muscular stimulus from that second set because the co-contraction still provides resistance against your muscles so your lats might get the stimulus one way or the other but in the condition in which you're co-contracting a lot you're going to have a lot more fatigue because you're using a lot of your own internal resistance versus just letting the weights do the work certainly and I think the research on hypertrophy would kind of support the hypothesis in the sense that we don't observe better hypertrophy typically from
Super setting we OB similar hypertrophy but at the very least in beginners and these studies except for the one we just conducted were mostly in beginners you see similar or slightly better performance by super setting two antagonist motions sure but overall the research does seem to be suggesting that hey if you want to save time in your sessions up to like 40% or maybe even more Super setting different movements that don't have any overlaps can be one of the best ways to do that amazing who does this not work for slash is maybe a bad
idea I can think of a few things what can you think of sure just on a principled level I could imagine it all working super well for super Advanced people where even the set of bench press let say five or 10 reps sort instead of bent over rows or what have you could create enough systemic fatigue to become an issue yeah importantly that is US speculating right the research we have on relatively trained lifters of like three years of training experience these people relatively jacked did still find similar hypertrophy when super setting versus taking traditional
rest intervals yeah so this is me speculating but someone in the comments might say this wouldn't work for me I'm way too strong and that may or may not be true the evidence doesn't support that yet but I could see it potentially being a concern if that makes sense sure um if you're really strong you exact more systemic fatigue from any single given movement and that fatigue doesn't just go away right after so you can't just go to bicep curls after bench press so that's automatically a concern larger muscle mass exercises compound movements maybe like
squats and deadlifts you would be so systemically fatigued right after and cardiovascularly fatigued that next set of whatever you're doing is just going to be way way underperforming so those two things are definitely a concern the other thing is some lifts for more advanced people I think many lifts turn into a very mind muscle connection Zen in on the technique and really pound that muscle super well three years of lifting you're just going through the movements mind muscle connection doesn't mean anything to most people of that advancement but if you're really trying to get everything
you can at of inclin barbell bench it's not going to be possible right after you got after done with pull Downs because you need to settle and really get your mind right and really push super super hard so in those cases what would happen experientially and I've tried this before is you just don't get as much tension perception in the Target muscles that it's not working for you don't get as big of a pump and your volume drops off significantly let's say you're doing a Skull Crushers with 100 pounds in a barbell but now you're
doing them let's say after a set of curls typically you get 100 for set of 12 now it's set of seven set of five set of four I mean if you do enough sets technically speaking you could do it but then you're not really saving time anymore and you're adding quite a bit of fatigue uh training that much so those are the things I can think of that would hypothetically take this idea of super setting in relative beginners moderately trained lifters and mostly with isolation move movements and kind of predict how if you expanded it
out to more advanced people with more compound movements how it might not work every time or as intended but also you could rest a little longer for those and also my best advice to folks listening is try this with a bunch of different movements you could be pleasantly surprised for example pull-ups are technically a compound movement quite heavy my experience they just don't systemically fatigue that much as soon as I get off and doing pull-ups I'm like so you might say I pull-ups and push-ups that's not g to work I need bicep curls and tricep
extensions but it turns out like after pull-ups you can but then again after barbell B Rose may just lay down in a corner and want to die so very much give it a shot but don't expect this to transfer Ultra well but also you can be pleasantly surprised and find that you can superet a lot more shit than you thought you could mhm I agree I think to push back a little bit on some of those one when it comes to my muscle connection I think that bodybuilding culture has emphasized there for a long time
and there is a theoretical role for it but as far as direct research confirming that focusing on among muscle connection is a necessity for maximizing hypertrophy we only have one study currently it does kind of support it some outcomes were in favor of the mus connection group some were in favor of the external focus group essentially just hoisting the weight or being explosive when it comes to more advanced lifter specifically I do agree that with them being more trained them training would exact more systemic fatigue they're able to lift more load for more rap have
a greater overall workload however on the other hand more train lifters also have greater conditioning so to an extent I would expect those two things to counteract each other I think that until we have research and train lifters I would personally be comfortable with the assumption that it generalizes reasonably well to more trained lifters especially because we have some research in reasonably trained lifters and as far as most people's muscle growth potential goes within their first three years of lifting they'll see most of their muscle growth that they'll ever get how do you know that
just from sort of like the muscle growth curve over time I think that first six to 12 months anecdotally from the research you generally observe in fact we just had a metanalysis on volume and frequency where we did a subop analysis by training status and you see that we'll speak about this in future videos actually when you look at specifically only untrained participants and studies in untrained participants versus specifically studies and only trained participants both demographics benefit from more volume for example but the absolute rate of growth just shifts down so all else being equal
as you get more advanced you will see less muscle growth that is pretty widely accepted within the literature MH so I would personally expect that if we observe in relatively trained lifters of on average three years of training experience that there is no detriment to using super sets and you don't see that much more muscle growth on average past three of lifting like it's a slow process you can certainly add meaningful amounts of muscle but it will take a long time that person who's been lifting for 3 years isn't going to be that disimilar for
someone who's been Lifting for 5 to 10 years so the same generalizable principles would still apply so I personally expect this to generalize reasonably wealth train lifter as well how long have you been lifting 10 years 10 years how similar is your strength currently to three years you I would say maybe 5 to 20% above it thereabouts and what about lean mass similar I would say like 5 to 20% maybe a bit less than that above it relative to then obviously on natural which is a a conversation to be had this might be entirely different
in enhanced lifters who have put on a lot more muscle mass and who specifically might be using certain compounds that preferentially stimulate hypertrophy as AOS to conditioning what have you but certainly I think within natural lifts this can be a great tool even with more advanced traines potentially MH that's a good point I think how strong you are absolutely probably makes a really big difference you don't really outc condition squatting 405 for 10 it's going to crush you and if you're well conditioned enough to do it you're no longer receiving a big stimulus from it
but uh if you're comparably strong to what you were around three years of training eight years in let's say yeah conditioning shouldn't be a big factor and could actually be to your advantage I guess depends on your training style as well um interesting so yeah I hear you on that stuff um I think a lot of people try to Pat themselves in the back too early for being Advanced lifters and stuff like that but um there is a big difference I've noticed with people able to continue to put out High degrees of effort in a
super set versus they really need a rest break and they could have quite good conditioning but they just pour more of their effort into that first set and they just need more recovery and so I think the ultimate Arbiter of is this working for you is we give it a shot yeah and if it's a giant disappointment now you know this ain't it but if it seems to give you perceptively similar results your strength is increasing similarly over time your muscles are looking at least as big if not bigger then yeah these sounds like really
uh good strategies to save some time the only downside here is like tough to pull off at a busy commercial gym sometimes but also you can drag a pair of dumbbells over to you know next to a lap pull down and make it work yeah agreed I think one other R case where super sets might not e as well obviously you've mentioned practical constraints where your gym might not allow for it with super high rep compound work that is technically where I would expect energy expenditure per set or what have you to go up because
you're able to lift say 50% of your max for 20 25 reps typically whereas if you're doing a heavy set of five or six the energy expans of that set might be low so super setting a relatively heavy set with another relatively heavy set might be more feasible from a systemic fatigue standpoint MH but when it comes to say sets of 10 15 20 or more on compound movements super setting two compound movements even if it's something like a push-up I'm not sure would work as well as something heavier just in terms of recovering between
one exercise and the next when you're going back to back I think a good generalistic for figuring out whether or not super sets are likely to work for your application the exercise you're picking and your training experience is if you notice a substantial drop off in your performance relative to your performance if you weren't super setting those two exercises that is a decent sign that you might be harming hypertrophy I think because then that likely implies that fatigue from one exercise is bleeding over into the next yeah and in the research that doesn't happen and
in that context we see similar hypertrophy but if it starts harming hypertrophy I could personally see where that might not be the best case for hypertrophy so that's where I would avoid it yeah that makes sense a rule I typically use and you can adjust for this by doing more sets but if you're losing a third of your reps on that second exercise compared to normal man that's tough another way to think about it is this if you are doing tricep extensions first bicep curls second typically on bicep curls with that weight you would get
15 reps now you're getting 10 what is the source of the fatigue that is capping those five reps taking them away from you systemic local fatigue is hypertrophic systemic fatigue is not so is it in a sense true that the real rir as measured at the level of the contractile tissue itself is now five yeah yeah that's not good if we believe R has some kind of uh effect on hypertrophy which is a Nuance take itself but it probably has some then yeah if you know typically you do 15 now you do 12 yeah no
big deal typically you do 15 now you do nine you got six reps there more or less every set your six most hypertrophic reps that you're just no longer getting um but if you can maintain a high level of performance and you don't have to take longer rest breaks you just saved yourself a lot of time and one thing I'd like to point out on that let's see if you agree with this one is some people will say well you know like I like to be in the gym and I like gains I don't need
to save time and that's true but the gym is itself a special kind of fatiguing being in the gym being around fight ORF flight stuff not being in your home couch relaxing basically is an opportunity not used as well to recover and adapt as it could be so to those people that say well I don't want any shortcuts think of it this way it's not a shortcut it's an opportunity to take 30 minutes of gym time and at no cost of hypertrophy replace it with 30 minutes of relaxation time that'll probably yield n hypertrophy benefit
so you know people spend a lot of time working out if you give them the same results and less time you spend less time in the gym which Yes sounds less hardcore but like you don't grow in the gym everyone knows that and so if you can do your duty and get out quicker to have more rest time wouldn't that be a benefit in your view I would agree with that and I think even more importantly most people have some time constraints on how much time they can spend in the gym and we know from
the research as we'll discuss in future video or past video that more volume yields more hypertrophy up to a relatively High Point at least on average Within These studies so if you have five hours in the gym per week or even seven most people have some constraint because you have a job because you have a family you have relationships maybe even Hobbies or maybe even friends oh careful not on this channel hopes for friends which hoping does take up its own time so time for hoping thinking about having friends yes that's good pretending to have
a friend at the very least you have some practic constraint out there yeah and for most people I think their hypertrophy will be Lim more so by how much time they have than potentially by recovery so if you're someone who's limited by time if you can use super sets and all of a sudden go from getting say 10 15 sets for your biceps in a given week to say 15 20 or 20 or 25 and that increases your hypertrophy that's a huge deal even if you enjoy being in the gym just spend more time in
the gym or as much time but do more volume by using super sets and that will you do more growth beautiful yeah I love that anything else on that what do we miss I'll give you a quick practical breakdown of how to apply this or at least how I like to apply it the one thing we know is you still want a rest time between one super set and the next personally the way I like to do it is to do exercise a one set rest about a minute typically thereabouts do one set of exercise
B rest about a minute typically do a set of exercise a again so having some rest time between each exercise is good you can certainly Auto regulate because the systemic fatigue from one exercise could definitely bleed over into the next if you take no break you're fucking tired 3 seconds after you finish lap hold down get out of my face you know lie down for Skull Crushers you're not like all right here we go you're like come on is not going to be your best set 100% so take a break at least you can Auto
regulate for sure but taking a break between each exercise is how I would go about it and generally I think roughly 2 minutes or so between sets for a given exercise so for example you do a set of exercise a you rest for about 30 seconds to a minute you do a set of exercise B rest for about 30 seconds to a minute that is going to net you around 2 minutes of rest between two sets for the same exercise yeah which from the hyper research on rest times we know is going to be quite
effective by sure but still shaves off quite a bit of time very cool very cool folks this has been Dr Milo he's got his own YouTube he's got his own Instagram he may even have his own website that we're not allowed to talk about catch them on there and learn more science see you guys next time
