Drop sets are a powerful technique worth trying if you’re looking to build muscle faster, break through frustrating plateaus, or get more from your workouts in less time. Popular among bodybuilders and strength athletes, they push your muscles beyond failure to maximize time under tension, which is a key factor in stimulating growth.
In this guide, we’ll break down what exactly a drop set is, how it works, and the many benefits it can bring to your routine. Plus, you’ll find practical tips, sample exercises, and beginner-friendly advice to help you get started. Let’s dive in.
What Are Drop Sets?
A drop set, sometimes called a descending set, is an advanced resistance training technique designed to induce muscle fatigue so that it enhances muscle growth faster than standard weight training alone can.
It starts by lifting heavier weights to failure, when you cannot do another repetition with proper form. Then, you quickly lighten your load by about 20-30%. With little to no rest, you complete another set of reps with the lighter weights and continue to failure once again. You can then repeat the process and go to lighter weights once again if you are able.
How Drop Sets Enhance Muscle Growth
The additional repetitions you perform after reaching failure induce muscle fatigue and enhance muscle hypertrophy (growth). It’s because it allows you to keep performing lifts, prolonging the time your muscles are under tension, even after you have reached failure, simply by switching to a lighter weight.
Prolonging the time your muscles are under tension in this way significantly enhances muscle growth and can easily break through plateaus. It works because the weights place an external force on your muscles, which stimulates an increase in muscle fibers and their growth. This is a form of progressive overload, which people often only associate with heavier weights, but that’s only half the story.
The other key to progressive overload is intensity. Since a drop set routine allows you to keep pushing yourself past failure, keeping your muscles constantly under tension, you can push your body to its limits, forcing it to adapt and grow to deal with the increased intensity. This increases metabolic stress and muscle fiber recruitment, further enhancing hypertrophy for maximum muscle growth in less time than traditional methods.
The Benefits of Incorporating Drop Sets
Here are some of the most important benefits of incorporating drop sets into your workout routine.
Faster Muscle Growth
One of the primary benefits is promoting hypertrophy. Contrary to what we may naturally believe, that more weights equal faster growth, drop sets produce faster muscle growth because of the mechanical and metabolic stress they provide by extending the time your muscles remain under tension, which is a crucial component of achieving faster muscle growth.
Enhances Muscular Endurance
They also enhance muscle endurance since they involve continuing reps past your normal failure point by progressively reducing the weight load with little to no rest in between. This is because they train your muscles to keep performing under fatigue for extended periods, which is excellent news for those looking to improve their athletic performance.
Time Efficiency
They’re also incredibly time-efficient workouts, which is helpful for those with busy schedules or looking for quick gains. You can achieve greater gains in less time since you push your muscles to failure and keep going in a single exercise. Studies have shown that you can achieve the same results as traditional training in 30-70% less time.
Breaks Plateaus
They are also excellent for helping those who have reached a plateau, where they keep working out but don’t make any additional gains. Since they force your muscles to work past your normal fatigue point, they can quickly stimulate new growth and enhance gains, pushing you past that frustrating plateau so you can level up your weight training routine.
Used With Various Routines
Since drop sets are a technique of weight training rather than a specific exercise, they can be used in a wide variety of routines. They can be incorporated into full-body routines, leg workouts, bicep curls, cable rows, and more, allowing you to target and enhance different muscle groups to help you quickly build a balanced, sculpted physique.
How To Perform Drop Sets
Paying attention to how to perform a drop set correctly will produce your best results. Follow these simple steps to promote faster muscle growth today.
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Choose an exercise that allows for fast and easy weight adjustments. Some good beginner ones are bicep curls and leg presses. However, cable rows using an advanced cable machine like the Speediance Gym Monster 2 often enable the most rapid and seamless resistance adjustments.
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Start with a challenging weight, between about 65% and 85% of your 1 RM (1 RM = the most weight you can lift in a single repetition). You want to choose a weight that allows you to do 6 to 15 reps while still maintaining good form.
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At that point, you should be near failure within those reps. If you’re unsure, say you can do 20 reps, then your weight is probably too light. However, it's too heavy if you can only do 3 while maintaining proper form. In either case, adjust and try again.
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After you reach failure, immediately reduce the weight by 20% to 30% without taking a rest in between. This is your first drop, which is why choosing exercises that allow you to adjust the weights quickly is essential.
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Perform another set with the lighter weights and ideally perform 10 to 15 reps until you reach near failure once again.
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If you are not fully fatigued, why not push your body to the max? Drop the weight again by another 20% to 30% and perform 10 to 15 more reps without compromising proper form.
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Once you cannot maintain proper form or push through the full range of motion intended with your workout, it’s time to rehydrate and rest for a few minutes before moving on.
Popular Exercises That Can Utilize Drop Sets
One of the many benefits of drop sets is the vast number of exercises that you can incorporate them into. Get creative and try different routines to see what works best for you. Here are some easy upper and lower body exercise ideas to help you get started.
Upper Body Exercises
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Dumbbell Bicep Curls are easy to adjust your weights, whether using dumbbells (especially if you have multiple sets with progressively lighter ones ready to go) or with a cable machine. They are a great way to target the biceps for rapid gains, and are a perfect beginner routine when first learning to train to failure.
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Lateral Raises effectively target the deltoid muscles in the shoulders, which is great for those looking to enhance upper body strength and improve their posture and stability. These can be easily done with dumbbells or cable machines.
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Lat Pulldowns using a cable machine are a terrific choice for those who want to target the entire back, shoulders, and biceps, and the cable machine makes it easy to adjust the resistance rapidly.
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Chest Presses are another excellent one if you’re using a cable machine. Otherwise, you may need a partner to help you quickly change out the weights. Still, done right, it will rapidly improve chest hypertrophy and muscle endurance.
Lower Body Exercises
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Walking Lunges are a great dumbbell exercise and can be used as drop sets when you have lighter sets ready to go, and you can use bodyweight alone for a final drop. These are great for targeting the entire lower body and enhancing muscular endurance.
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Dumbbell Goblet Squats are a compound exercise that targets the quads, glutes, and hamstrings. These can easily be done using the drop set technique by switching to lighter dumbbells or kettlebells at each drop.
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Leg Presses are machine exercises that effectively target the glutes, quads, and hamstrings. The machine allows for heavy initial loading and quick weight changes after each drop.
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Leg Extensions are another machine-based exercise that targets the quads, with fast, easy adjustments made possible using a cable machine.
Precautions and Considerations for Drop Sets
The first precaution when doing drop sets is the common mistake of starting with too heavy weights, thinking it will help you maximize your gains. However, this can increase your risk of injury and be counterproductive to your goals. Be sure to choose a weight that allows you to complete about 6 to 15 reps with good form before reaching failure. The goal is to focus on control, not the weight.
Another issue related to weight is not reducing it enough. Some people recommend reducing the weight by as little as 10%. However, if you only use a 10% reduction and cannot complete your next set, you’re not doing the exercise correctly. Ensure you reduce your weights between 20% and 30% so that you can keep pushing yourself to failure and not compromise your form or call it quits early due to excessive fatigue or, worse, injury.
A final consideration is to start slow and work your way up. Even for experienced lifters, you never want to go all in and do a drop set with every routine you do. It can lead to overtraining, excessive fatigue, and those dreaded plateaus where you don’t seem to achieve additional gains, no matter how hard you work. Limit them to one or two exercises per workout, and no more than three days each week.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Are the Benefits of Descending Sets?
A descending set (or drop set) pushes your muscles to failure two or more times within a single set with little to no rest. This increases the time your muscles are under tension, promoting faster muscle growth, endurance, and breaking through plateaus, all in less time than traditional workouts.
What Is the Difference Between a Drop Set and a Down Set?
Drop sets and down sets are weight training techniques involving multiple reps of an exercise with decreasing weights. However, a drop set is continuous, with no rest between weight reductions, while a down set allows for a short rest between reductions.
Final Thoughts
Drop sets are an innovative, efficient way to improve your strength training. Pushing muscles past failure and extending time under tension promote faster growth, boost endurance, and help you overcome frustrating plateaus.
Whether you’re training the upper or lower body, these exercises can be adapted to a wide range of routines. To reduce your risk of injury, just remember to prioritize form, start gradually, and avoid overuse.
You can make your drop sets even more effective with the Speediance Gym Monster 2 for fast, adjustable resistance built for real results.
