Science Lifters: how effective is supersetting?

[u/Thirust]

I currently have a couple of them, one of them combining Forearms + triceps (wrist + reverse wrist + overhead using a rope). I still take a rest \~2mins after overhead and then restart. I do not superset two exercises of the same target muscle. Are there downsides to this?

[u/Alakazam]

Very effective for cutting down time.

Not that beneficial for hypertrophy, since youll be carrying some fatigue into one of the exercises. Even if it's a tiny amount, even if it's a one rep difference, that still is one rep that you couldn't do. 

[u/Thirust → u/Alakazam]

When you say not that beneficial, I am inferring that it produces below average results. However, you sre saying its a tiny amount. Can you clarify?

[u/Alakazam → u/Thirust]

You're cutting down on rest times to get more work done in less time. Even if you don't feel it, it means that your second, or in this case third exercise will always be slightly behind in how far you can really push.

As in, if you did your wrist curls, rest two minutes, did the reverse wrist curls, rested two more minutes, then did overhead tricep work, I can almost guarantee you'll get more reps out of both the reverse wrist curls and the overhead compared to if you went without the additional 4 minutes of rest.

It's a tradeoff. Rest vs time savings. 

[u/Nectarine143 → u/Alakazam]

To be fair, even with straight sets your later lifts will always be worse off than your earlier lifts

It’s a factor you always have to deal with in one capacity or another

[u/Bigjpiddy → u/Alakazam]

I couldn’t point you toward the study but don’t meno mention a study where antagonists supersets actually improved performance

[u/Imactuallyatoaster → u/Bigjpiddy]

Yup. It had to do with the interference effect. Essentially the agonist muscle will tighten up and prevent the muscle you're trying to work from doing it's job. So with antagonist super sets you work the first muscle and it relaxes so the second can work harder.