Are You Ready to Push Your Limits? Try These 4 Training Methods to Challenge Your Body!

When you are new to the resistance training, it is ideal to start by performing one exercise per set to learn the technique of the exercise and focusing on getting strong in it.  As you get comfortable training with one exercise per set, you can add a few more exercises to part of your routines to challenge your body further.  This may add cardiovascular training components to your resistance training and make your training sessions more efficient. 

Although there are no rules to what exercises to add, there are few methods that has been used by trainers and coaches that can be useful when you learn them.

Agonist Supersets

If you are looking for specific muscle group hypertrophy, agonist superset can be useful. Agonist muscle means primary muscle that is responsible for movement at the joint.  So, let’s say you want to work on your pec muscles (chest).  Exercise choice can be bench press, incline bench press, seated chest press, pec fly, push-ups, and so on.  With agonist supersets, you can choose 2-3 exercises with 10-20 seconds rest in between exercises per set.  Example for chest routine can be barbell bench press for 6 reps followed by dumbbell incline bench press for 12 reps. 

Antagonist Supersets

Antagonist muscles are opposite muscle group from antagonist. So, when you are working on pec muscles, antagonist muscles will be trapezius which is muscle in the back responsible for shoulder blade retraction.  By doing so, you can give the chest muscles to rest while working on opposite muscle groups.  Because of the rest-time being reduced, efficiency of time usage at the gym will improve as well.

With antagonist supersets you may add 2-4 exercises per set.

Triset

Triset is designed to perform 3 exercises with minimal or no rest in between sets.  You can work 3 different muscle groups or 3 similar muscle groups for hypertrophy effect.  Because of minimal rest period, you can appreciate the endurance effect as well.

An example of triset for the leg hypertrophy can be 6 back squats, 8 split squats, and 10 squat jumps for 2-3 sets.  You may take 1-3 minutes of rest between sets but minimal or no recovery time in between exercises.

Circuit

Circuit refers to 6-12 consecutive exercises without rest for 2-3 circuits.  It is very endurance driven methods.  Each exercise should be 6-30 reps of 30-70% of your maximum effort.  Exercise choice and arrangement are limitless.  You can add free weight, calisthenics (body weight), free weight, plyometrics (ex: jumps), and cardiovascular exercises.   

This is useful for those who are wanting to improve their endurance but looking for something other than running, biking, swimming and so forth. Boot camp or HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) can fall into this category.

Summary

As mentioned before, these are samples and arrangements can be done in so many ways.  Most important thing to keep in mind is what is your goal?  What do you want to work on or improve?  Is it a bigger arm, improving agility, endurance enhancement or little bit of everything? Try customizing your routine to add more benefit to your training routine.

Kota Shimada