[Lou Schuler]

This is a work in progress; feel free to email me with your own suggestions, or simply add to this thread via replies.

I'm confused about "superset with full rest." Do I do both exercises in the superset, then rest for the designated time (60 seconds, or whatever), or do I rest between exercises as well?

Rest between exercises. Do the first exercise in the superset, rest, do the second one, rest, and repeat the superset.

In some programs (such as Strength I) Alwyn prescribes supersets "with no rest between exercises," which means exactly what it says: do the first exercise, do the second exercise, then rest for however long the chart indicates.

The only time I can get to my gym is right after work, when everyone else has the exact same idea. Supersets are impossible -- once I start using a piece of equipment, I don't dare walk away from it. And tying up two pieces of equipment at the same time is sure to create ... unpleasantness. Can I still do Alwyn's workouts without supersetting? Will I get the same benefits?

Believe me, I sympathize. I work out when my gym's not at all crowded, and I've still gotten into a couple of arguments over my use of two startions. It starts off with the other person upset that I haven't stripped the weights off a bar after using it. Then, when he sees I'm still using it, he's upset because he has to wait a few seconds before he can use it.

Either way, it taps into a person's sense that there's deep injustice in the world.

The short answer is, sure, you can do straight sets instead of supersets.

The main thing you'll lose is recovery between sets.

Let's say you're doing Strength I, Workout D (page 244). You're supersetting chin-ups and barbell shoulder presses with full rest, 180 seconds between exercises. With the superset as written, after you finish the first set of chins, you rest 180 seconds, then do the first set of shoulder presses, then rest another 180 seconds. That's probably 6 1/2 minutes between the first and second set of chins.

Now, if you do that as straight sets, you'd probably still rest 180 seconds after the first set of chins, but instead of doing a set of shoulder presses, you're doing another set of chins.

Different people reach full recovery at different moments; three minutes may be too long for one guy, and not enough for another. But I think every lifter will see some difference in performance if he's doing five sets of chins in 12-15 minutes, vs. five sets of chins and five sets of shoulder presses in 25-30 minutes. It might be slight, and it could be positive or negative, but it'll be there.

In your case, the difference doesn't matter, because you don't have the option of supersetting. So do what you can and enjoy the results you get.

My boyfriend/husband/love slave/sexually ambiguous cousin bought the book, and I read it before he did. (Those new handcuffs are finally paying off.) Can I, a female, do the workouts in New Rules? Or are they just for guys?

I’ve been playing catch-up on the differences between men and women when it comes to training, and the good news is that there really aren’t any that matter, in terms of program design. The muscle fibers are exactly the same, and results are achieved in the exact same way.

The differences are mostly the obvious ones; men start with more size and strength and a hormonal environment that favors muscle growth, but proportionally, women make very similar strength gains to the same programs. Since size follows strength, there’s no reason why women shouldn’t make proportional gains in size, as well.

Why do you have squats and deadlifts on the same day in Hypertrophy I? Isn't that too much stress on the lower back?

At that point, the program is using an upper-body/lower-body split. That's why deads and squats are in the same workout.

Yes, it's tough to do them back to back. But the loads are moderate to low (10 or 15 reps per set) two-thirds of the time, so you're only working with really heavy loads (5 sets of 5 reps) once every two to three weeks (depending on your training schedule).

Workout B -- the lower-body workout -- is also lower in volume than Workout A, which has 7 exercises vs. 5 in A.

If you feel like it's too much after going through it once or twice, try taking an extra day of recovery between workouts. So if you're on a four-days-a-week training schedule, try three until your muscles adjust to the routine.