Recently I wrote an article on training complimenting muscle groups, as you will get the full workout from each muscle. Today however, I’m going to give the other side of the coin and tell you about the benefits of train opposite muscle groups.
Basically, opposite muscle groups are two sets of muscles which have no effect on each other when performing exercises. An example of this would be the back and chest. Most of the back exercises (lat pull down, cable row, seated row etc.) require a pulling motion, whereas most chest exercises require a pushing motion (chest press, dips, incline press etc).
The main idea about training opposite muscle groups is that once you have finished working out one group of muscles, you can move onto the next group. This next group will not be fatigued at all because they haven’t been used in the previous workout. This means you can lift much heavier weights, therefor tearing more muscle tissues.
One disadvantage is that it could lead to overtraining. This is because if you train chest and back on Day1, and then triceps and biceps on Day 2, the two muscle groups one Day 2 were worked out on the previous day (because they are complimenting muscles). This could be seen as overtraining.
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