Exercising is
great for your health. It helps to maintain a healthy
weight and keeps you toned and in shape. It also offers a wide range of other
benefits, from reducing cardiovascular risk to lowering stress levels.
While exercising
it great for your health, it can take up a lot of time. A great way to get more
from your workouts and save time is to pair exercises. By doing this you can
get out of the gym much quicker, and reach your workout goals faster.
1. Dumbbell Bench Press + Push-ups
Both exercises
work, primarily, your chest, triceps and shoulders. By performing the exercises
back to back with no rest in between, it places more demand on the target
muscles causing more stimulus for growth.
Exercises
back-to-back like this are referred to as a “superset”. As the demand on the
target muscles is high, the reps and weights are generally a bit lower.
2. Bench Press + Chin-ups
Like the pairing
above, these exercises are performed back-to-back, superset-style. The
difference here is the initial movement. The bench press is a push exercise,
which works the chest, triceps and shoulders, and the superset chin-ups is a
pull exercise, which works the back, biceps and abs.
Working the
opposite muscle groups like this is called “antagonistic training”. The main
principal behind antagonistic training is that while the first muscle group is
fatigued, the antagonistic muscle group is working. This way you can
drastically reduce training time.
3. Military Press + Squats
This pairing is
a classic upper/lower split. Like the antagonistic pairing above, splitting in
this manner reduces training time by cutting down rest periods. The military
press will work your shoulders, triceps and core.
Then, the squats
immediately after will target the quads, hamstrings, glutes and core hard. This
way, nearly every muscle in the body is worked in a single pairing.
By pairing
simple, classic exercises, you can ensure that you get the most out of your
workouts.