Are you BORED of doing 5 sets of 5 for every workout?
These clusters sets can be a great way to train in a different way to get some excitement back in your workouts!
Strength training can be boring some times.
As much as I love to lift weights, I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I feel a little bored when I'm lifting.
If I am feeling that, than I am sure some of you are feeling that too.
As humans, we like the excitement that something new brings.
Doing some thing new gives us a surge of dopamine.
Dopamine, if you did not know is a neurotransmitter and hormone that is involved in things like reward and motivation.
This may help to explain why doing new things, or buying new things, can often be more exciting the our usual routines.
In many strength training workouts, it is common to do exercise in the following way.
3 sets of 10 reps with 2 minutes rest
or 5 sets of 5 reps with 3 minutes rest with 85% of your 1 rep max.
There is no doubt that this type of training can work, but if you have been training for a long time, that may feel pretty repetitive.
Enter, cluster sets!
Cluster sets can be a great way to add some targeted novelty while still maximizing your training progress.
Cluster sets are essentially breaking a set of a given amount of reps into smaller "mini-sets"
For example, rather than doing 3 sets of 12, you can do the following for 3 sets.
Set 1: 3 reps, rest 15 seconds, 3 reps, rest 15 seconds, 3 reps, rest 15 second and then the final set of 3 reps. Then take your longer rest while you wait to do it again.
This still gets your 12 total reps, but the mini-sets will help you to prioritize your form, and keep your strength and power output higher than if you did 12 straight reps.
To see what this looks like in action, hit the video below. Note that it is sped up to save you some time.
These can be a great way to add some variety to your strength training. You can use just about any rep range here, and break it up accordingly. For example, you can do a cluster set of 8 reps as the following. 2 reps, rest 15 seconds, 2 reps, rest 15 seconds, 2 reps, rest 15 seconds, 2 reps, rest 15 seconds. Finding ways like this to make training exciting can be a great way to bust out of any training plateaus and get excited to train again. All the best, Tim Stiroh PS my Black Friday sale announcement will be coming tomorrow so be on the look out! This will be a great opportunity for you to save big not just before the holidays but also into the new year!
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