You can strategically employ various resistance training techniques, including rest-pause training and pyramid training, to intensify your workouts and deliver better results. One popular approach in the bodybuilding circuit is called a drop set, and you may want to consider it if muscle gain is your goal. A drop set is an advanced resistance training technique in which you focus on completing a set until failure — or the inability to do another repetition.
The goal is to maximize potential muscle gain. This can help prevent injuries. A drop set is an advanced resistance training technique that focuses on repeatedly training a muscle until failure.
The goal is to gain more muscle than you would doing conventional sets. Drop sets are an effective way to promote muscle hypertrophy , or gains in muscle size, and muscular endurance.
A study compared two groups of participants during a 6-week resistance training protocol. One group completed three sets of conventional resistance training exercises, and the other group completed a single drop set. Researchers found that the group that completed drop set training showed superior muscle gains, most likely due to higher stress on the muscles 1. Drop sets promote muscle gain by fully fatiguing all muscle fibers in a specific muscle.
This can promote more muscle growth than a conventional set could. This held true even with less training time than typical resistance exercise protocols 2.
That means that even with less training time, drop sets can help increase your muscular endurance. And although there are proven benefits to drop sets, they should not be incorporated into every set, or too frequently in your overall training regimen. When done correctly, this training approach is very demanding on the body.
Training to failure has been shown to elevate levels of the nucleotide adenosine monophosphate AMP , compared with training to non-failure. Researchers in Brazil put a crew of gym veterans through a superset program that required back-to-back completion of lifts targeting the same muscle groups—bench press and pec deck for the upper body, and a leg press and leg extension for the lower body.
When compared to participants who mixed up the order of the exercises, though, the team found no significant difference in energy expenditure, as measured by our old friend maximal oxygen uptake. These findings held up even an hour after the workout was completed, too—in other words, supersetting had no effect on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC, which is the Holy Grail "afterburn" effect observed after particularly strenuous workouts.
Neither study went so far as to say that supersets or drop sets are bad for the user, of course, so if you want to give them both a shot, feel free! Many people like to use supersets to target opposing muscle groups—for example, biceps and triceps—instead of the same groups twice, and the study was limited to the second iteration.
Effects of drop sets with resistance training on increases in muscle CSA, strength, and endurance: a pilot study. Journal of sports sciences , 36 6 , Angleri, V.
Crescent pyramid and drop-set systems do not promote greater strength gains, muscle hypertrophy, and changes on muscle architecture compared with traditional resistance training in well-trained men. European journal of applied physiology , 2 , Goto, K. Muscular adaptations to combinations of high-and low-intensity resistance exercises. Wallace, W. Sports , 7 1 , Baker, D. Acute effect on power output of alternating an agonist and antagonist muscle exercise during complex training.
Grabiner, M. Maximum rate of force development is increased by antagonist conditioning contraction. Journal of applied physiology , 77 2 , Robbins, D. The effect of an upper-body agonist-antagonist resistance training protocol on volume load and efficiency. Sports , 9 9 , I've combined my knowledge of research and experience to bring you the most practical bites to be applied to your training.
Check Out These Articles. Drop Sets vs. Share 0. Tweet 0. Pin 0. James de Lacey. September 20, What Are Supersets? Drop sets have two main benefits when it comes to hypertrophy:. Drop Set Example There are no set guidelines when performing a drop set. So, if you were performing a double drop set on the leg extension, this is how it could look including warm-up sets: Set 1: 20 kg x 10 Set 2: 30 kg x 10 Set 3: 35 kg x 10 Set 4: 40 kg x Set 5 Drop Set : 45 kg x 10 failure , Best Drop Set Workout Program Here is an example push, pull, and leg workout that incorporates drop sets to build muscle.
Push Day Drop Set Workout. A1 Incline Bench Press. B1 DB Bench Press. Pull Day Drop Set Workout. A1 Barbell Row. B1 Meadows Row. Leg Day Drop Set Workout.
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