Jump Sets Workout

If you train with weights on a regular basis, then you will know very well that the only way to ensure continued progress you need to either increase the intensity that you train with or the volume that you train with. Doing the same thing with the same weight every time you train will certainly not improve your physical capabilities.

There are many different ways to approach this problem but something that you may not have thought of is jump sets. A jump set is a "super-set" doing two different body-parts and training them directly after each taking a very short rest time between the two movements.

Jump sets increase both your intensity as well as your volume so that you can push a little harder to ensure results. A good example would be doing biceps and triceps at the same time by super-setting the two movements with only a short rest between movements.

When training normally you would do one body-part at a time and when you get to the last body-part at the end of your workout you will have very little left in your tank. Jump sets is a way of maintaining your intensity by super-setting two unrelated muscle groups so that you can push it a little farther.

Let's say you were going to be training back and chest and you started with 5 sets of dips for your chest. By the time you get to the 5th set of chins you would not have much left in you to push 100% of your max. This problem can easily be solved by doing jump sets.

So now your chest back and workout would look like this:

Dips: Set 1 of 15 reps superset with Chin-ups: Set 1 of 15 reps and then continue after a good rest to fully recuperate doing the second set Dips: Set 2 for 15 reps.

Chin-ups: Set 2 of 15 reps followed by Dips: Set 3 of 12 reps and then Chin-ups: Set 3 of 12 reps. Your 4th set would be for 12 rep dips and the 12 reps of chin-ups. Your last set would be 10 reps of dips and 10 reps of chin-ups to ensure that you get the maximum out of the intensity when doing jump sets.

In the example above, you will be able to do more reps into the few sets than you would normally if you performed them the 5 sets for dips or chins one after each other. Training like this doing jump sets will increase both your training intensity as well as your volume.

Selecting the best movements to do jump sets with should be limited to training the agonist and the antagonist muscle groups. The best combinations would be chest and back as in the example above, triceps and biceps, quadriceps and hamstrings and lastly the abs and the lower back.

If we put jump sets into a practical example of movements selected it would be bench-pressing together with barbell rows, or cable cross-overs with lat pull-downs, or D/B curls with overhead D/B extensions. There are many other examples like doing preacher curls triceps push-downs together or doing leg extensions and leg curls together as a jump set.


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