are supersets especially muscle growth promoting or are they just another cool tool in the toolbox that you could use in certain context hey folks Dr Mike here for RP strength and today I am joined by the illustrious magnanimous is that a word probably Dr Brad shonfeld the are there are lots of experts on muscle hypertrophy but there is only one the best and that's Dr Brad shonfeld Brad did you know that the first metaanalysis or sorry the first review of the literature I've ever read on allaround approaches to training for optimizing muscular hypertrophy was what I believe was a part of your doctoral dissertation or your Master's thesis Capstone project and it was also I believe the first review ever conducted on overall strategies to maximize muscle hypertrophy in the scientific literature no there there actually had been a few before but I think it was it put things in a context that now by the way it's called the mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application and resistance training that paper is now the Le the most viewed paper in the history of the Journal of strength the conditioning research and has close to 2,000 or maybe more citations unreal it was it was a landmark paper um and also yes I'm familiar with the older stuff but it wasn't really a global that's what I'm saying it had a it had a certain um cache to it because it looked at mechanisms and tried to tie mechanisms to how you might prescribe training approaches yes all right that was one hell of an intro now to Super sets first question what is a super set is it a set that's better than all the other sets and wears an S and flies around it's two I mean the simple answer is it's two exercises performed in succession with minimal rest as short rest as possible between the sets I know a couple of different types of super sets I'm going to list them to you let me know if I missed anything there are Agonist superpets so for example I do cable pushdowns then I do dumbbell presses both hit the triceps to some capacity so it's triceps then triceps then there are antagonist supers sets where you do tricep push downs and then you run over and do bicep curls when muscle opposes the other there are also you could technically say unrelated muscle supersets where you do a set of leg extensions on the quads and you do a set of bicep curls are there any other kind of super sets I'm missing in that no you hit the main ones so from a semantical standpoint the uh one is called an Agonist antagonist this is from the literature so like a bicep curl into a tricep press down would be an Agonist antagonist supet what you call The Agonist superset is generally called a compound superset um where it's two of the same basically working on the same muscle group so that also can be used as a pre-exhaust a lot of times so you do like a fly into a prep um but it doesn't have to be you could do a technically you could do an incline press and a flat press sure and then you have your unrelated so you can have like a squat into a bicep curer yes whatever excellent my next question to you is are supersets especially muscle growth promoting or are they just another cool tool in the toolbox that you can use in certain contexts where do you stand on that yeah they're not well generally speaking when you talk about are they muscle promoting the evidence that we have now does not show they are superior for hypertrophy we only have a couple of studies on some of the different types with one exception which I'll mention shortly um but they're much more efficient ways to to train so here's what I would say they do not generally the literature does not show a negative effect of super sets on hypertrophy so they promote similar hypertrophy and they do it in much less time um now there's one one study did look at a compound a quote unquote pre-exhaust superset and did show better results for the pre-exhaust but that has not been replicated in other in another study there's only but again there's only been a couple of studies on the compound a couple of studies uh on The Agonist antagonist I don't recall any on the unrelated um give you a scoop here so The Agonist The Agonist antagonist there were two studies in the past both of them untrained subjects we have carried out we just finished I'll give a shout out to Ryan Burke my master student was part of his thesis one of your former students great student really terrific student and um we looked at two groups one did Agonist antagonist super sets and we did uh six different exercises we did a chest press uh and a lat pull down uh a bicep curl tricep uh press down and a leg extension leg curl um now I will say we don't have unfortunately we've not finished the statistical analysis of it um so we should get that shortly but I think some interesting findings here that I can present that we do have information on one is that the supet itself the superset technique versus the non-s superet uh the vast majority of subjects got nauseous particularly in the early phases of train whereas much few some of the nons superet group did as well but much much less like half the amount got nauseous and in some of the subjects have persisted more of the subjects puked in the uh in the superset group versus the non-s superet group but again it was more early phase over time that did not replicate and interesting we did in an acute session looked at the RP it was higher in the superset but when we looked at it across the length of the study the RP kind of evened out so what it shows is if you keep doing super sets the body seems to adjust to it so if you try them and you're like dude this is way too hard keep cracking at it because you eventually you'll get used to it that's correct and another caveat to this is that uh we had all sets to failure you don't necessarily need to train the failure on all sets so you can somewhat mitigate conceivably the negative uh RP the negative perceived exertion and the potential nausea by stopping a reper too short of failure and probably getting the same I'm really glad you said that because a lot of people when they look at Agonist antagonist super sets like let's say cable push Downs to a pushup or something they for some reason assume that at least the first exercise has to be to failure and the second maybe maybe not but it's totally fine to that kind of super set stop two reps in reserve on push downs and then two reps in reserve on push-ups still get a very good effect these again are not there's no rules to these things so you can make it we we need to look to the literature which tends to show that going to failure is not obligatory that you don't need to train the failure certainly on all sets and that stopping a reper too short of failure is not going to hinder your gains and may actually help with strength yeah that makes a lot of sense so can you think of some situations I know that globally super sets are not somehow dominant to straight sets or um maybe rest paw sets mybs Etc these are all kind of good tools in the toolbox contextually can you think of some good context in which Super sets at least in the real world do have some kind of superiority I can think of a couple off hand one is if you really have trouble targeting a muscle and punching a lot of volume into it you know some people don't for whatever bro this is worth they they do a couple curls and their biceps blow up Pump sort of everything they connect with they really feel it for triceps do you remember Marcus rule body builder from back in the day he had huge biceps and his triceps are obviously massive but not as big as his biceps and he just said like I have a really hard time connecting with my triceps in that case it makes sense to me that like if you're going to do a bunch of push downs and that's it it's kind of like yeah you do push Downs it's fine but if you do push downs and then get right into close grip benching or something it can really just Target and just beat the out of the area that is something I know works are there any other scenarios in which suets offer to you a notable practical Advantage I think that's fair uh I would also at least put out we know that volume there is a dose response at least up to a certain point a benefit to higher volumes if you're going to do high volumes and you're having certain let's say two minutes rest which generally is what you're looking at for proper rest uh between sets um your session can take quite a long time by doing super sets you can minimize the total time and thus your energy level like when you start boredom can set in or whatever and people just have to get out so I think from a the time efficiency standpoint is really important when it comes to Super sets and I think at the very least it provides the the general public with an option for getting in the volume in a manageable format yes and maybe this is speculative of course but from your study on that you recently conducted showing a a great much more nausea in the superet group at least at first early phase early phase is it possible that if we do unrelated muscle supersets for whole body that we can crunch a ton of volume into a short time but because we're doing that and because no one muscle is ever limiting we end up getting a pretty not good but decent cardiovascular and health stimulus at the same time what do you think about that uh speculative but I certainly can see that look I I do think there is um your whole neuromuscular system is involved when you're it's not like your your muscles your brain can send signals directly just to that there's total body effects when we're talking about the neuromuscular system so I think there is um you're and that conceivably is what is driving the nuse at least initially is that the body is just not used to and by the way these were trained subjects so they were used to training so but the body is not used to to I guess directing the neural impulses in that way conceivably we don't know mechanistically so how that all plays out is still there's so much Mike that we don't know and so much like you think that we have all of these things really well studied and I can come on here and give you very definitive answers with high degrees of confidence but uh we're still in the really early phases particularly when it comes to the manipulation of variables in really understanding uh or at least in giving having strong conclusions on these topics I was going to write an autobiography of my life and it was going to be titled strong conclusions what do you think about that title does that look like New York Times bestseller material to you or kind of like bottom shelf I think very fitting thank you Dr rad shonfeld thank you so much for the superet chat anything you want to get out to the public about maybe some misconceptions about super sets or things people ought to know that they don't is there anything you see in social media being discussed in around this the topic of suets that you're like damn it I wish people would know XYZ well I think to your point uh you kind of trumped me with it but uh the fact that it's not like a drop set where you train the failure and then you're going to drop so a lot of people think that it's obligatory that you need to train suets that they're a failure technique kind of a Advanced Training technique that you use when you're going to failure and you're minimizing that you can use suets in however you want in whatever way you want and um I think the other thing is that the I I would say this when it comes to um s compound supersets which is same muscle you do need to be careful I think there is a Nega or conceivably a negative effect to um if you're going to do a pre-exhaust there may be some benefits to that or at least not be negatives to it needs more study but if you're going to do like a incline press into a decline press uh you're probably going to be losing out on your volume load on your second uh exercise and it probably is not an effective way to train yeah what do you think about the idea that if you have something like a closed kinetic chain second compound exercise that you pref fatigue the target muscle but then because that Target muscle starts to feel like the limiting factor on that second compound set to your neuromuscular system it seems in some people in in a particular kind of exercise in which other muscles can compensate for the Target muscle the other muscles end up taking more of the strain and actually the super set effect largely disappears for example if you do cable push downs and then you go into incline close grip dumbbell presses there's no way your pecs alone can press a dumbbell because if you just activated your pecs it would just do this you have to extend and if your triceps are pre- exhausted your triceps will be the thing pushed closer to failure at the end your pecs are kind of going to be like this is easy whereas if you take a machine press as that second exercise cable push Downs first machine press second there are no degrees of Freedom if your triceps are even let's say neurologically like inactivated we like zap the nerves you can actually press with just your pecs alone and so when people have prefatigue triceps what ends up happening is we see higher PEC activity I know that's been found in at least one study is that has that been replicated do do you think that's a concern of what kind of second movement you choose good question uh it's not been replicated longitudinally so I mean there is some EMG evidence to to your point I think the issue that I have with that is that this is just anecdotal but the triceps are going to be more limited in a chest press if your Tri your triceps generally will give out if before your UH your pecs will your pecs just a much larger muscle group so I think regardless of the um method the mode that you're using whether it's a machine I think that to me would not be an effective way to go about it I think the better pre-exhaust would be doing like a cable a fly either a cable fly or a dumbbell fly and then a chest press where your pecs are pre fatigued and then because your triceps and aren't going to be limiting where you would then allow the pecs you've already somewhat pref fatigued them and they're not going to fail before basically they can fail before you're Trier but is there World in which let's say for the PC we do a bunch of flies but then we get into a machine press for our second part of the super set and our triceps end up doing most of the work because your body detects like the pecs are tired do more tricep work and it ends up being that the biceps get a better stimulus than you would think and the pecs are more left alone or is that not a suspicion well good question I I hadn't thought of it that way but that I guess conceivably would be a possibility that's why we need to do the the research so the basically the take-home question or the take-home Point here is the principles of suets are all pretty sound they're decently well hypothesized at least but we need considerably more hard data to draw definitive um more definitive conclusions that we can really take to the gym with us and actually get some results that we're more confident in yeah well said I love it Dr Brad shonfeld when you are not literally eye lasering people's muscles bigger which is your favorite hobby what do you what is your typical uh you do actual direct research you're in the lab working with subjects that's what you do well I I mean mostly I'm mentoring my students so you know I don't uh generally I help out doing the ultrasounds and doing some of the uh assessments but the actual data collection my students are my uh basically my lifeline and they uh I I could never you know people talk about how I can be so productive it's having a great team so I would never be able to do in a big shout out to my students they are they are what fuels me and and they are really the uh my lifeline to uh to research so I love it Dr shanfeld thank you so much for appearing on the channel that was really wholesome I thought he was going to say some controversial it didn't work out maybe we'll get it next time see you guys then