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Cut Workout Time in Half With Supersets
This technique may even speed up muscle growth

Updated August 2, 2022August 2, 2022 by Dr. Carl Juneau, PhD

A superset is when you do 2 exercises with very little rest between them. Paz et al. (2017) studied supersets. They found that supersets:

  1. Cut workout time in half
  2. Allowed lifters to do more volume than normal sets

Note that they studied agonist-antagonist supersets, which is the type we recommend. Volume is an important driver of muscle hypertrophy, so supersets should help you there. But their main benefit is really that you save time as you’re using your rest between sets of exercise 1 to perform exercise 2, and vice versa.

How to superset in Dr. Muscle

It’s easy to do supersets inside Dr. Muscle. Just open two exercises or more during any workout and do their sets back to back. Like this:

  • Tap exercise 1 to open it
  • Save set
  • Scroll down
  • Tap exercise 2 to open it
  • Save set
  • Scroll back up to exercise 1
  • Save set
  • Scroll down to exercise 2
  • Save set

And so on.

When selecting your second exercise, we usually recommend the next one in your workout list, as we’ve paired antagonist muscles together whenever possible.

Supersets Vs. Rest-Pause Sets

With Dr. Muscle, you train using rest-pause sets by default. Rest-pause sets are highly efficient and use short rests, so you may not want to superset them.

However, you definitely would want to use supersets when you’re using normal sets. Normal sets increase strength more, but take longer to do. With supersets, you’re working around that limitation, and cutting your workout time in half.

  • Author
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Dr. Carl Juneau, PhD
A University of Montreal, London, and Harvard alum, Dr. Juneau is a former trainer for the Canadian Forces with a PhD in Public Health and a specialization in Epidemiology.
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2 thoughts on “Cut Workout Time in Half With Supersets
This technique may even speed up muscle growth
”

  1. Bob Peake says:
    October 25, 2019 at 12:02 am

    OK, I’m a bit confused. I thought the purpose of rest-pause sets was to “gain muscle 59% faster”, but above you state that “Normal sets increase strength more”? Seems contradictory?

    Also, didn’t you just eliminate the SS button in the latest UI, so now you can just open multiple exercises? If so, maybe this should be edited?

    Reply
    1. Dr. Carl Juneau says:
      October 25, 2019 at 6:30 pm

      Hi Bob,

      Rest-pause sets let you gain muscle 59% faster, while normal sets increase strength more. Each set style has its own strength. Rest-pause is faster. Normal takes more time to do, but it increases strength more.

      The new UI is in beta. We’ll update this page after it becomes public.

      I hope this clarifies.

      Best,

      Carl

      Reply

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