If you’re tired of doing the same kinds of exercises over and over again and are looking to shake things up, try adding drop sets to the mix! Whether you’re trying to maximize your muscle growth, get a little stronger, or both, trainers and fitness enthusiasts alike encourage adding drop sets to your training regimen. These sets combine the intensity of heavy lifting with the challenge of pushing your muscles until failure, adding a difficult but rewarding twist to your workout. Read on to learn more about the science behind drop sets, including how they can affect your body composition and how to do them correctly to get the most out of each rep.  

What are drop sets? 

Drop sets are a multi-part exercise. They involve performing an exercise with a heavy weight for several reps, then immediately “dropping the weight” to a lower weight (or no weight at all), and again repeating that same exercise for a higher number of repetitions. There aren’t any hard-and-fast rules for the number of times you should perform the movement at each weight. However, many people advocate for doing your drop sets until failure — in other words, until you physically cannot do another repetition while maintaining the correct form. Take a bicep curl, for example. One drop set might look like curling:  

• 35 pounds until failure 

• 25 pounds until failure 

How drop sets can take your training to the next level 

Not only do drop sets shake up your usual workout format and add some challenging interest to your usual exercises, but they also let you capitalize on the benefits of both high-weight, low-rep sets and lower-weight, high-repetition sets. 

To understand how this happens, it’s helpful to understand how muscle growth (also known as muscle hypertrophy) works in the first place. 

The golden rule of muscle hypertrophy is progressive overload, which involves gradually increasing the “load” that you lift during your workout. The easiest way to do this is by gradually lifting heavier and heavier weights. Adding more weight to your exercises over time continues to challenge your muscles through the same exercises, which ultimately helps you build bigger and stronger muscles after proper rest and recovery. 

But there’s also something to be said for lifting lighter weights as long as you’re lifting them for a higher number of repetitions. Performing an exercise for a higher number of repetitions in a set can help you build muscular endurance, which has plenty of positive implications both inside and outside of the gym. 

What’s more: progressive overload doesn’t necessarily need to always look like increasing the weight that you’re lifting. It can also mean increasing the number of reps that you perform! 

This finding was highlighted in one interesting study, where participants were instructed to perform the same exercise, but in two different formats: 

• Either performing the same number of weights while increasing the weight lifted, or   

• Performing the exercise with the same weight throughout but increasing the number of repetitions. 

After the researchers evaluated the results, they found that the muscle growth was moderately better in the group that increased the number of reps, but the strength improvements were slightly better in the group that increased the amount of weight lifted. In other words, both high-rep and heavy-weight training led to significant improvements in strength and muscle growth, albeit in slightly different capacities! 

Some researchers also believe that training to failure can help you break through training plateaus. Research indicates that performing an exercise until you physically cannot anymore can better activate your motor units, which are the neurons and muscle fibers that need to be activated in order for your muscles to produce force and move. It also better activates the release of growth-promoting hormones, which are necessary for making gains. However, it’s also important that you’re still lifting weights that are heavy enough to be challenging so that you can reap these rewards. 

Altogether, this means that drop sets — which combine lifting heavy weights, performing a higher numbers of reps, and training until failure — can have many viable benefits in your training. It targets the need for progressive overload in multiple ways, making it a challenging yet interesting workout format that can ultimately help you reach your body composition and strength goals at once. 

When compared to traditional training sets, in which you would perform an exercise with one weight for a set number of repetitions, one of the biggest benefits of drop sets is that they’re remarkably time-efficient. One study found that both drop sets and traditional training led to significant and comparable hypertrophy results, but that the drop sets took half to one-third of the time that it took for traditional training sets to see those results! 

So if you’re looking to shake up your workouts and get an effective, time-efficient workout, adding a couple of drop sets into your workout routine is a great idea. You’ll see similar results when compared to other traditional sets, but you’ll get to challenge your body in new ways and potentially see results a little more quickly. 

Tips for adding drop sets to your training 

Select a moderate starting weight. 

Choosing the right weights for your drop set will depend on your personal strength and fitness level, but you should choose a heavier weight that is moderately challenging but still comfortable to lift. Try starting your drop set with a weight that you can perform 8-10 sets of your exercise with. Then for the “drop,” decrease that weight by about 15-30%. For example, if you’re doing dumbbell shoulder presses, your drop set might look like: 

• 8-10 sets of 35 pounds 

• 12-15 sets of 25 pounds 

Have your weights ready to go 

When you’re performing a drop set, the exercises should be done immediately with no rest in between the different weights. As you’re setting up for your set, have your weights ready to go and within reach so you can quickly grab them without pausing. 

Stay safe.

Finally, don’t compromise your form and risk an injury! “Until failure” means that the last rep that you perform should still be done in the correct form. Listen to your body and recognize when to stop your workouts so that you don’t accidentally hurt yourself during your drop sets. This is especially important for heavy compound workouts like barbell back squats or bench presses, in which failure can be dangerous. 

Conclusion 

Drop sets allow you to lift heavy weights and challenge your muscular endurance, both of which can help you accomplish your body composition goals while saving time. To get the most out of your drop sets, choose challenging weights and work through your movements until failure. You’ll get more out of the same workouts, and often in less time than traditional workout formats might take!