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Dude, it won't suffice to just bring your chains to the gym to show them off, you will also have to attach them to the barbell before squatting and benching to see results... and bro, the science on the benefits of elastic bands is much more solid - even though they are not as "cool"!

I've written about the use of bands and chains in previous waredownloadsoft articles, but Miguel A. Soria-Gila recent paper is the first meta-analysis that aggregates the available data to answer the important question, whether the use of "variable resistance" training (VRT), as the use of bands and chains is usually referred to in the literature, is generally advisable, or if the existing positive results are nothing but outliers.

Now, from the headline of today's waredownloadsoft article you already know that Sotia-Gila's analysis yielded positive results, or as the authors have it: " Long-term VRT training using chains or elastic bands attached to the barbell emerged as an effective evidence-based method of improving maximal strength both in athletes with different sports backgrounds and untrained subjects."
What is particularly interesting, though, is whether the statistically significant benefits are practically relevant enough for you to consider bringing your chains and/or resistance bands to the gym.

Figure 1: Relative strength increase in bench press (BP), back squat (BSQ), leg press (LP) and squat (SQ) in response to regular and variable resistance training; if not indicated otherwise, the variable resistance training was done with bands, only the study by Ghigarelli, et al. compared bands to chains (Soria-Gila. 2015).

To answer this question we need both, the relative and absolute strength increases in both, the variable resistance training (VRT) and control groups of the four pertinent studies in the meta-analysis - data I've plotted for you in Figure 1 and 2.

Figure 2: Absolute increase in 1-RM strength (all values in kg) in the respective exercises (see Figure 1 for abbreviations) in the seven 7-week plus studies that were part of the meta-analysis (Soria-Gila. 2015).

In five of the studies (indexed with "(T)" in Figure 1) the subjects were trained individuals, in the studies by Anderson (basketball and hockey players + wrestlers), Cronin and McCurdy (baseball, Division I) the subjects actually had ~3 or even more years of training experience. The results of these studies may thus be of particular interest for the average waredownloadsoft reader of whom I know that he / she is not a total foreigner to gym. If we assume that they / you would see the same benfits, the extra-increases on the bench and in the squat would be:

• An extra 5% increase in 1RM and thus 2x greater strength gains on the bench.
• An extra 11% increase in 1RM and thus 2.6x greater strength gains for squats.

In relative terms the benefits you may achieve after only 10-13 weeks are thus quite impressive. But can the same be said for the absolute extra-gains? Soria-Gila et al. report an extra strength gain of 5.03 kg (95% confidence interval: 2.26–7.80 kg) for all studies and all exercises. If we, again, consider only the bench press and the squat and eliminate the studies with untrained participants, the absolute values are much smaller: 1.8 kg and 2.7 kg, respectively.
References:

• Anderson, Corey E., Gary A. Sforzo, and John A. Sigg. "The effects of combining elastic and free weight resistance on strength and power in athletes." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 22.2 (2008): 567-574.
• Bellar, David M., et al. "The effects of combined elastic-and free-weight tension vs. free-weight tension on one-repetition maximum strength in the bench press." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 25.2 (2011): 459-463.
• Cronin, John, Peter Mcnair, and Robert Marshall. "The effects of bungy weight training on muscle function and functional performance." Journal of sports sciences 21.1 (2003): 59-71.
• Ghigiarelli, Jamie J., et al. "The effects of a 7-week heavy elastic band and weight chain program on upper-body strength and upper-body power in a sample of division 1-AA football players." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 23.3 (2009): 756-764.
• McCurdy, Kevin, et al. "Comparison of chain-and plate-loaded bench press training on strength, joint pain, and muscle soreness in Division II baseball players." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 23.1 (2009): 187-195.
• Rhea, Matthew R., Joseph G. Kenn, and Bryan M. Dermody. "Alterations in speed of squat movement and the use of accommodated resistance among college athletes training for power." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 23.9 (2009): 2645-2650.
• Shoepe, Todd, et al. "The effects of 24 weeks of resistance training with simultaneous elastic and free weight loading on muscular performance of novice lifters." Journal of human kinetics 29 (2011): 93-106.
• Soria-gila, Miguel A., et al. "Effects of variable resistance training on maximal strength: a meta-analysis." Journal Of Strength And Conditioning Research/National Strength & Conditioning Association (2015): Accepted article.

Supersetting is fun, time-efficient, exhausting and based on the reasonable assumption that you can benefit from training agonist + antagonist together, but does it build size & strength?

If you've been around the waredownloadsoft for some time, you will probably know what "super-setting" or "paired-sets" is. Right? Exactly! It's doing different exercises back to back. Like doing a bench press first and go to bend-over rows without taking more time to rest than it'll take to grab the barbell you already placed next to the bench.

Yes, that's intense and yes, that's fast, but the question is: "Super-Setting is Time-Efficient, But is it Also "Gain-Efficient"?" And we will deal with it at the bottom of this article. Before we do so, let's take a look at what happens to workout volume and the quality of each of your reps when you super-set.
If we go by its ability to stimulate your muscle, data from a recent study designed to investigate the acute effects of performing paired-set (PS) versus traditional set (TS) training over three consecutive sets, on volume load and electromyographic fatigue parameters of the latissimus dorsi, biceps brachii, pectoralis major and triceps brachii muscles.

Image 1: This is how you do it - you bench and from the bench you head right over to the seated row (Paz. 2015).

Fifteen trained men (22.4 ± 1.1 years, height of 175 ± 5.5 cm, weight 76.6 ± 7.0 kg, percent body fat of 12.3% ± 2.1% | resistance training experience (3.5 ± 1.2 years), averaging four, 60-min sessions per week) performed two testing protocols (TS = traditional and PS = paired set) on four test sessions on non-consecutive days using 10-repetition maximum loads.

Differences between complex training and agonist- antagonist paired training (Robbins. 2010).

• The TS protocol consisted of three sets of bench press (BP) followed by three sets of wide-grip seated row (SR). Under the TS protocol two-minute rest intervals were implemented between all sets.
• PS consisted of three sets of BP and three sets of SR performed in an alternating manner. Under the PS protocol, sets of SR were performed immediately following sets of BP. A two-minute rest interval between the completion of the set of SR and the subsequent set of BP was implemented (e.g.,, between paired sets).

Volume load was calculated as load x repetitions, so if the super-setting cost the subjects reps the total volume value would drop. The same would go for the electromyographic signal, time (CRMS) and frequency (Cf5) domain, which - if it actually dropped - would indicate that doing exercises back to back would reduce the contraction time or the frequency at which the neurons fire (meaning the "quality" of the muscle contraction would suffer).

Figure 1: Surprise! The total volume increased in the paired-set (PS) condition. On all sets where you have a $ or § the volume was either sign. increased compared to the traditional set or sign. less reduced (Paz. 2015).

If you look at the data Gabriel Paz et al. created, you'll see that the bench press (BP) and seated row (SR) volume loads decreased significantly from set 1 to set 2 and from set 2 to set 3 under both conditions.
Now what is interesting, though, is that the volume load was greater for all sets of both exercises under PS as compared to TS. Or, in other words, in contrast to what you may have expected the subjects performed more sets x reps during the super-set workout compared to the traditional set training.

Figure 2: The total time the muscle is firing increased when the subjects did paired-sets. For the back and biceps this increase was even statistically significant (Paz. 2015).

What is less surprising is that the muscle fatigue indices were greater under the super-/paired-set condition. That's not bad, though, if the volume, the quality of the muscle contractions and the intensity remained the same - an observation that confirms the results of previous studies but which has not yet been fully explained from a mechanistic point of view (an example of a suggested mechanism is the facilitatory stimulation of Golgi tendon organs and muscle spindles during antagonistic super sets).

Table 1: The efficacy analysis Robbins et al. conducted in their 2010 review leaves no doubt that antagonist-agonist paired sets (APS) kick traditional training's ass when it comes to strength and power efforts per time (Robbins. 2010).

In spite of the fact that the responses and underlying mechanisms remain unclear, we an probably all subscribe to Paz's conclusion that "in general, these results indicate that as compared to TS, PS produced a greater training volume in less time and may induce greater fatigue and thereby provide an enhanced training stimulus" (Paz. 2015 | my emphasis) - one thing I would to emphasize, though, is that this is the case for antagonistic super sets if the contemporary speculations about how it works are not totally off, doing DB and LH curls as an synergistic super-set is not going to work any "magic".
References:

• Kelleher, Andrew R., et al. "The metabolic costs of reciprocal supersets vs. traditional resistance exercise in young recreationally active adults." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 24.4 (2010): 1043-1051.
• Maia, Marianna F., et al. "Effects of different rest intervals between antagonist paired sets on repetition performance and muscle activation." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 28.9 (2014): 2529-2535.
• Paz, Gabriel, et al. "Volume Load and Neuromuscular Fatigue During an Acute Bout of Agonist-antagonist Paired-set Versus Traditional-set Training." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research (2015).
• Robbins, Daniel W., et al. "Effects of agonist–antagonist complex resistance training on upper body strength and power development." Journal of sports sciences 27.14 (2009): 1617-1625.
• Robbins, Daniel W., et al. "Agonist-antagonist paired set resistance training: A brief review." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 24.10 (2010): 2873-2882.