Not sure where to start with a chest-and-back supersets workout? Here's a sample session that can get you jumpstarted. Chest-and-back supersets work ideally with a weekly split that has you training on a three-day split that starts with legs on the first day, places upper body on the second day, and includes a third day of rest and recovery. If you try doing chest-and-back supersets, think of doing them twice a week, with at least two days of rest for upper-body training in between. This isn't the kind of workout you want to do all week, though, especially if you're training hard. Lead with the back exercise in each pair first for physique balance, you should aim to pull more weight (and more frequently) than you push in all your training.Ī chest-and-back superset workout also lets you move challenging weights you'll wind up doing major movements, such as bench presses and rows, and by lifting heavy weights, you'll spur your body towards muscle growth. Supersetting a chest exercise with a back exercise insures that you do that. It's grueling and challenging, but it will leave your entire upper body with a vicious pump, and insure that you're hitting all critical upper-body muscles.Īnd while it's challenging, it's also smartly crafted: For the health of your shoulders and your posture, you always want to blend pushing and pulling exercises into your training. On days like that, the chest-and-back superset session is one of your best training options. Sometimes, you just need to get all your upper-body training into one session. Want to try P90X for yourself? Buy the P90X Extreme Home Fitness Program here.Not everyone has time to train one body part a day. I miss my bench presses and flys, and I look forward to the next P90X phase when I can get back to the Chest and Back workout! Overall, I wonder how much one can really get out of this P90X workout when it so difficult to do a third of it. It requires that you do push ups bent over with your butt sticking up into the air. The Pike Press, although in theory shouldn’t be too bad is extremely awkward to do. Muscle(s) WorkedĪs you can see, most moves that I hate or dislike from this workout are push ups, while most that I enjoy are shoulder exercises and tricep exercises. It is recommended that women do about 12 to 15 of each of these, but in general, everyone should do as many as they can. Outlined below, I’ve provided the push ups, shoulder exercises, and tricep exercises the DVD includes, how much I enjoyed them and their level of difficulty on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the most difficult and/or awkward to perform. She smiles and doesn’t look like she is in pain the whole time. Although I believe she is more Superwoman than Humanwoman, it would be much more motivating to have someone like Dreya (on the Ab Ripper X and Core Synergistics DVDs) do the workout. Further, she never smiles and looks completely unhappy. Throughout the entire DVD, the woman (I did not catch her name) barely makes it through the push ups.
And, although this may sound catty, I think that Beach Body could have afforded to choose a different woman for this DVD (there is always at least one woman on the P90X workout DVDs). Is a matter of fact, one of the men on the workout DVD did go down to their knees for a couple of the chest workouts. I’d even go so far as to say that some men need to too. When doing strength training for my chest, I do bench presses (standard, incline and decline) and flys, which allows me to do more reps.ĭuring the Chest, Shoulders and Triceps workout of P90X, you have no choice but to recruit your knees for assistance. I like to think I’m strong enough without needing “knee assistance.” Secondly, I can’t do many reps. First off, women, especially, have to recruit their knees for assistance and there is something about that kills me. As you probably already know, I hate push ups. During the Chest, Shoulders and Triceps DVD, however, you do an equal ratio of chest moves, shoulder exercises and tricep exercises…with many of the shoulder exercises and tricep exercises recruiting the chest muscles as well. This gives you a bit of a rest between push ups. As you know, in that program you conduct two back exercises for every chest exercise. This program made me long for the first Phase’s Chest and Back DVD. That said, the fifth week started out with a real bang with the P90X Chest, Shoulders and Triceps program.
There are a variety of legs exercises but all the back exercises are pull up/chin up exercises. So the pattern is - do two legs and then 1 back exercise. For every two leg exercises, there is one back exercise. It was nice to have a “recovery week” at the end of the first block. This is my second week of P90X workouts and it starts with disc 5, Legs & Back. Last week, I started my second “block” or phase of P90X.