Agonist-antagonist Paired Sets: Here’s Why You Should Probably Use Them in Your Workouts
This is how most people train:
And this is how some of my clients and I train:
I’ll use my flawless logic to explain why I train using agonist-antagonist paired sets and why you should probably do the same.
For those of you who need some verbal diarrhea instead of an infographic to understand things: Agonist-antagonist paired set is a way of training where you perform a set of an exercise (e.g. bench press) immediately followed by a set of another exercise that trains the opposing muscle groups (e.g. cable row). Only then do you take a rest before performing the next paired set.
In the interest of not letting this post snowball into a 5,000-word novella, let’s dive into the research and see what advantages it has over traditional straight-set training.
A 2017 study looked at the bench press and seated row performance during paired-set and traditional-set (i.e…
