Quadruple Your Gains

Sometimes, if you're after maximum muscle mass , one exercise just isn't enough. Here's how to combine two, three, even four movements into one hellacious and effective set.

In the 1987 movie "Wall Street," corporate raider Gordon Gekko famously proclaimed, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

Of course, he turned out to be the so-called bad guy in that film, and in many instances it could be argued that more is not necessarily better. Greed, however, in the gym, does have a place. After all, why do only one exercise, when you can pair two together? Or how about three? Four?

It's not recommended all the time, but combining two or more exercises into one mega-set can pay off in a big way as far as muscle growth. Use the tactic too much, and your body will go bust from overtraining, but knowing when to get a little greedy can be, to paraphrase Michael Douglas in his Oscar-winning turn, a very good thing.

TWO FOR THE MONEY

In a standard set of an exercise, you choose a challenging resistance (i.e. weight) and aim for a particular number of repetitions or a range of reps. Then you stop, rest for 30-90 seconds (closer to the former if you're doing lighter weight and high reps, and toward the latter if you're working at near-maximal poundages), and do it again. For instance, you select 140 pounds on the leg extension machine, do 12 reps, then stop and rest.

The concept of a superset is simply to take two of those standard sets, for two different exercises, and put them together. Thus, in our example, instead of stopping to rest after 12 reps of extensions, you immediately jump on, say, a lying leg curl machine, and perform 12 reps. Then you rest the same amount of time as you would if you were only doing one set, and perform the sequence again.

What's the point? Whenever you can squeeze more workload into a shorter period of time, you're increasing the intensity of your training, which propels growth processes in your body. In the case of the extension (which hits your quadriceps) and the curl (which targets hamstrings), you're also taking advantage of the efficiencies of working two opposing muscle groups. In this type of superset , you work antagonistic muscle pairings, pumping more overall blood into that area (which brings nutrients and carries away waste products) and takes advantage of their synergistic nature.

Of course, supersets can also consist of two exercises that attack the same muscle group, basically taking a two-barreled aim at the target. (This style is sometimes referred to as a compound set, although in the accepted gym vernacular today supersets can refer interchangeably to both versions.) There are a few different ways you can effectively home in on one muscle group with supersets -- using " Standard ," " Pre-Exhaust " or " Leverage " approaches, all of which we get into a bit later in this article.

LAGS TO RICHES

The benefits of pairing exercises are not limited to two. You can also experiment with tri-sets, which are three exercises done back-to-back-to-back with no rest in between. And, for those who want to go even further, there are giant sets, which are simply four (or more) moves assembled together into a string.

Whichever you choose, the training techniques are designed to help thoroughly exhaust a muscle group, helping ensure no individual muscle fiber goes untouched during your workout. Think back to your last training session to envision how this can benefit you. If you were training chest, maybe you did five sets of bench presses, pyramiding up in weight set-to-set, working in a 6-10 rep range, stopping about 60 seconds between each to catch your breath. You may have followed that up with five pyramided sets of incline presses, and finished up with dumbbell flyes and a few final sets of cable crossovers.

Now, that's not a bad workout, all in all. But think of all that time between sets you spent resting, allowing your pectorals to recover -- even if you took a number of sets to momentary failure, the most your muscles were ever put through in any one set was 10 reps. Imagine going back and, this time, pairing your incline presses with dumbbell flyes, and your bench presses with crossovers. Essentially, your total rest would have been cut in half, causing your muscles to undertake more work in a shorter period of time. And, best yet, you didn't drastically cut the weights you used for each exercise, as you would have to if you instead increased your bench press reps from 6-10 to 15-20 per set. More volume in less time with an overall heavy workload -- that's improved intensity, and especially valuable for a lagging body part.

Whether you go two, three, four or more, you can choose the " Standard " option (simply picking two exercises that hit the muscle in the same way); the " Pre-Exhaust " method (using an isolation exercise for the first move while the second is a heavier compound move); or the " Leverage " technique (moving from an exercise that puts you in a weaker position to one that puts you in a stronger position, thus allowing you to continue repping longer overall). Here's more on each:

Standard : As mentioned, a "standard" superset, tri-set or giant set simply pairs two-to-four exercises that hit one body part. For example, pairing a lying French press for triceps with a cable pressdown, or a standing calf raise with a seated calf raise. It's brutally simple, yet brutally effective.

Pre-Exhaust : The pre-exhaust technique has been around gyms for decades, and with good reason -- it works. The theory is this: When you do a compound move (such as a seated barbell press), your triceps, being a smaller muscle group, will likely fatigue before your stronger deltoid muscles, thus causing you to end the set prematurely. However, if you do a movement that isolates the target muscle first, such as standing dumbbell lateral raises in this instance, when you do the compound move after, it's more likely your "pre-fatigued" delts will give out before your tri's do. This technique is meant for larger muscle groups, and not smaller ones such as biceps, triceps, forearms, calves and abs.

Leverage : This technique takes a bit more forethought, but it can really help extend your muscles beyond what they're used to. In this sequence, you move from an exercise that puts you in a weaker biomechanical position to one that puts you in a slightly stronger one, like a martial artist dropping his center of gravity to throw an opponent or a baseball power hitter shifting his weight on a swing. Here's an illustration: Start a shoulders tri-set with seated dumbbell presses; then, when you reach failure, stand up, which allows you to use a slight knee bounce to get the weights up, and continue repping. A common pattern for "Leverage" would go from a dumbbell exercise, which calls on a lot of stabilizer muscles, to a barbell, which puts you at a slightly better biomechanical position because a weaker-side muscle can help a stronger side, and finally to a machine, which takes most assisting muscles out of the equation.

For more examples that cover every body part, see our " Sample Pairings Chart " below. But keep this final caveat in mind -- Mr. Gekko may not have agreed with this, but too much of a good thing is, in fact, counterproductive. Instead, like all training techniques that drastically increase your workout intensity, you want to use this one judiciously, and not in every single workout. With that said, feel free to cash in on everything supersets, tri-sets and giant sets have to offer.

SAMPLE PAIRINGS CHART

Looking for a way to include supersets, tri-sets or giant sets in your own training? Here are a few options to get you started.

                                Superset                                                 Tri-Set                                    Giant Set

BACK                      Pre-Exhaust:                            Leverage:                                 Standard:

                                Straight-Arm Pulldown            Pull-Up                                    T-Bar Row

                                Bent-Over Barbell Row           Assisted Pull-Up                     Smith-Machine Bent-Over Row

                                                                                Wide-Grip Pulldown               Seated Cable Row

                                                                                                                One-Arm Dumbbell Row

CHEST                    Standard:                                 Pre-Exhaust:                            Leverage:

                                Incline Barbell Press                Flat-Bench Dumbbell Flye      Incline Dumbbell Press

                                Incline Dumbbell Flye             Cable Crossover                       Incline Barbell Press

                                                                                Smith-Machine Bench Press    Flat-Bench Barbell Press

                                                                                                                                Decline Smith-Machine Press

SHOULDERS          Leverage:                                 Standard:                                 Pre-Exhaust:

                                Bent-Over Lateral Raise          Upright Row                            Cable Lateral Raise

                                Reverse Pec-Deck Flye            Seated Dumbbell Press            Bent-Over Cable Lateral Raise

                                                                                Seated Lateral Raise                 Barbell Front Raise

                                                                                                                                Seated Machine Press

THIGHS                  Pre-Exhaust:                            Leverage:                                 Standard:

                                Leg Extension                           Barbell Squat                            Barbell Squat

                                Smith-Machine Squat              Hack Squat                               Romanian Deadlift

                                                                                Leg Press                                  Horizontal Machine Squat

Dumbbell Walking Lunge

TRICEPS                 Standard:                                 Leverage:                                 Standard:                

                                Parallel-Bar Dip                       Seated EZ-Bar Extension         Close-Grip Bench Press

                                Rope Pressdown                      Standing EZ-Bar Extension      Flat-Bench EZ-Bar French Press

                                                                                Cable Pressdown                     Overhead Cable Extension

                                                                                                                                Dual-Arm Dumbbell Kickback

BICEPS                    Standard:                                 Leverage:                                 Standard:

                                Standing Barbell Curl               Incline Dumbbell Curl              EZ-Bar Preacher Curl

                                Alternating Dumbbell Curl      Seated Dumbbell Curl              Dumbbell Concentration Curl

                                                                                Standing Dumbbell Curl           Standing Cable Curl

                                                                                                                                Reverse-Grip Cable Curl

CALVES                  Leverage:                                 Standard:                                 Standard:

                                Standing Calf Raise                  Standing Calf Raise                  Donkey Machine Calf Raise

                                Seated Calf Raise                     Donkey Machine Calf Raise    Seated Calf Raise

                                                                                Seated Calf Raise                     One-Leg Standing Calf Raise

                                                                                                                                Weight-Plate Toe Raise

ABS                         Leverage:                                 Standard:                                 Standard:

                                Hanging Leg Raise                    Reverse Crunch                        Swiss-Ball Crunch

                                Hanging Knee Raise                 Crunch                                     Vertical-Bench Knee Raise

                                                                                Oblique Crunch                        Decline Twisting Crunch

                                                                                                                                Plank

FOREARMS           Leverage:                                 Standard:                                 Standard:

                                Barbell Wrist Curl                    Reverse-Grip EZ-Bar Curl      Behind-Back Barbell Wrist Curl

                         Behind-Back Barbell Wrist Curl     Dumbbell Wrist Curl               Dumbbell Wrist Curl

                                                                                Reverse Dumbbell Wrist Curl Reverse Barbell Wrist Curl

                                                                                                                                Farmer's Walk*