By: Chris Gates

When you want to build muscle, you’ll take every advantage you can get.

And sometimes that means trying out some advanced lifting techniques, like supersets!

But are supersets good for muscle growth?

• Will they help you build more muscle?
• Will they help you build it faster?
• Are supersets superior to the more traditional style of lifting?

In this article, I’ll answer all of those questions and more for you so you can put together a proper strength training routine and build as much muscle as possible!

First, let’s define supersets and talk a bit about the general recommendations you need to be following in order to build muscle. Then, we can answer the question of the day: are supersets good for muscle growth?

Supersets: Defined

Before you decide whether or not to use supersets in your strength training program, let’s first make sure you have a correct understanding of what they are and how to do them.

Supersets are when you perform multiple exercises (typically two, but sometimes more) back to back before taking a rest period.

Supersets are typically used for one of two reasons:

1. To increase the intensity of your workout.
2. To cut down on the overall duration of your workout.

Let’s go over an example so you can see what I mean here…

Let’s say you have a superset in your program that calls for a dumbbell bench press and dumbbell row for 3 sets of 8-10 reps. What this means is you’ll perform one set of dumbbell bench press and immediately go right into one set of dumbbell rows before taking a period of rest.

You’d do this three times, total, to complete your 3 sets. It would look like this.

Exercise A:	Exercise B:	Rest:
Dumbbell Bench Press	Dumbbell Row	60 seconds
Dumbbell Bench Press	Dumbbell Row	60 seconds
Dumbbell Bench Press	Dumbbell Row	(Superset over)

How to Do Supersets

You can theoretically do supersets with any exercises you’d like, but typically it’s done best with antagonist exercises, which are exercises that work different motor patterns or muscle groups.

In the example above, the superset is done with a pushing (dumbbell bench press) and pulling (dumbbell row) exercise. While one muscle group is working, the other is resting. This helps you be as fresh as possible for each exercise and get the highest quality work.

If you did, say, a dumbbell bench press followed by a cable cross over, you’d be primarily working your chest/pecs in both exercises, which may cause a large amount of fatigue to that muscle group very quickly and negatively impact your performance as the sets and reps progress.

There’s research that shows doing supersets with the same muscle group can cause high levels of muscle engagement and damage, which you’d think would lead to greater muscle growth. But this probably isn’t a good long-term solution, because hitting muscle groups repeatedly is going to build up a lot of fatigue quickly and actually impair your ability to build up the training volume necessary for muscle growth (you won’t be able to do as many sets, reps, or lift as much weight as compared to doing straight sets).

Another thing to keep in mind is that supersets are also typically best performed with the same piece of equipment. This is for sake of ease.

If you did a superset with two completely different machines or pieces of equipment, it would cause some difficulties:

• You’d have to reserve two different pieces of equipment at once, and anybody who’s trained at a public gym knows how difficult that can be!
• You’d have to physically move from one exercise to another, which would actually create a short rest period in between sets.
• It may not actually accomplish either of those reasons you’d do a superset — increasing intensity and/or cutting down on time — because of the logistics involved.

Doing supersets with dumbbells, a bench, a cable/pulley, or some other type of equipment that allows you to stay in one spot to complete multiple exercises is going to be best to get the most out of this training concept, as well as maximize muscle growth.

Are Supersets Good for Muscle Growth? The Fundamental Principles…

Alright, let’s answer the question of the day: are supersets good for muscle growth?

As you just learned, supersets can lead to high levels of muscle engagement and damage, but there’s a caveat…

Supersets can lead to a high level of fatigue, which can negatively impact long-term performance in the gym, and that can negatively impact growth.

At the end of the day, muscle growth is all about progressively increasing your performance in the gym over time, and doing all of the necessary things outside of the gym to keep that progress coming.

In the gym, you need to be doing the following for muscle growth:

• Have adequate training volume (10-20 hard sets per muscle group each week).
• Increase your training performance by either adding weight, reps, or sets over time.
• Do these things consistently over a long period of time.

I’ve got an entire article about how to structure your training for muscle growth, so give that a read to learn more about the principles involved.

Additionally, here are some of the things you need to be doing outside of the gym for muscle growth:

• Eat adequate protein — ideally take your height in centimeters and eat that many grams of protein a day (Ex: if you’re 170cm tall, eat 170g protein).
• Eating in a calorie surplus will also help you to build muscle as efficiently as possible. I have an article on how big your calorie surplus should be to help you set this up.
• Get adequate sleep — most adults should average 7-9 hours of sleep to optimize recovery.
• Manage your stress levels, hydrate, and eat a diet comprised of mostly nutritious foods.

Those are the basic fundamentals, and those are the things that will lead to most of your progress with muscle growth. If you’re checking off all of those boxes, you’ll be able to maximize your potential for muscle growth, whether you’re doing supersets or not.

Are Supersets Good For Muscle Growth? How to Use Them…

So are supersets good for muscle growth? Do they positively contribute to progress over time?

Well, we know that supersets involving the same muscle group are not good for muscle growth, so we can rule that out.

Supersets involving antagonist muscle groups may be good for muscle growth when used appropriately, though.

Research has shown that supersets can be superior in helping to accumulate training volume when compared to traditional straight sets, and progressively increasing your training volume over time is an effective way to introduce progressive overload. This supports one of those key concepts for muscle growth we talked about earlier.

And if you can add volume to your workouts without adding a ton of extra time in the gym, that’s a win from a practicality standpoint. If you’re on the higher end of the 10-20 hard sets range, it may mean you’re in the gym for up to several hours a day. If adding in a couple of supersets can cut down on that time and still support your muscle growth goals, that’s a no brainer.

At the end of the day, supersets are good for muscle growth if you structure them into your program appropriately.

If you do supersets with the right exercises and at the right times in your training program, they can be very effective. But if you just toss them into your routine all willy nilly without much thought, they’re probably not going to help you with muscle growth.

Here are a few things I think you should consider when you build supersets into your training program:

1. First and foremost, focus on exercise selection. Supersets should not be done with highly fatiguing exercises. For example: I don’t want you supersetting barbell squats and deadlifts, because that’s going to cause way too much fatigue and ruin the rest of your workout.
2. Also, consider why you’re thinking about adding supersets. Is it because you want to add a little bit of intensity or reduce the overall duration of your workout? If so, those are good reasons. But if you want to add them because they look cool, or you see other people doing them, or you read in a fitness magazine that they’re “the key to muscle growth…” Those may not be the best reasons to do supersets.
3. The timing of supersets within your workout is important. I wouldn’t recommend starting your training sessions off with supersets, or even doing supersets for every exercise. Supersets are probably best tacked onto the end of your workouts. You want to be as fresh as possible for each exercise in your program, and doing supersets early on may cause too much fatigue and negatively impact the exercises later in your workout.
4. Timing is also important from a programatic standpoint. What I mean by that is… In the grand scheme of your training program, when are you doing supersets and why? It may make the most sense to insert supersets into the back half of your training block to increase volume as your training demands increase.

Overall, supersets are good for muscle growth if you use them appropriately. But it’s not because of any magic or secret.

Supersets are just like any other form of lifting weights. You pick the weight up, you put it back down, and every set, rep, and weight lifted contributes to your progress.

So just like all of the other exercises you’re doing, it will be important for you to build supersets into your program in a way that makes sense and supports your goal of muscle growth.

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I hope this article was helpful! This is a topic that hits home for me, because I actually incorrectly used supersets for years thinking it was a “secret” or “magic” to muscle growth that nobody was talking about. Turns out, I wasted a ton of time trying to find a shortcut when I could have been lifting smarter and making progress.

If you’re interested in coaching to get help with putting all of these pieces together in order to build as much muscle as possible, check out my coaching page to learn what online fitness coaching is all about! I work with people all over the world to build muscle, burn fat, feel healthier and more athletic, and build confidence through fitness and nutrition. If you’re interested in talking about your goals, fill out a coaching application form and I’ll reach out to you to talk more!

Thanks for reading 🙂

~ Chris