Authors
Brandon Roberts
Adam Tzur

Contributions by
Richard Nijholt

Reviewed by
Eric Trexler

Published: December 30, 2018
Updated: December 30, 2018

What is a Drop Set?

With drop sets, you do several sets without rest where you reduce the weight between each set.

Learn how to do drop sets. You can run the racks, up the stacks, and more!

How Drop Sets Affect Strength and Hypertrophy

Studies suggest that drop sets are equivalent to regular sets for gaining muscle mass. In terms of increasing strength, drop sets might not be ideal. More research is needed for stronger conclusions.

Benefits of Drop Sets

Drop sets are an efficient way to make progress while spending little time in the gym. You can also combine it with other time-saving methods such as super sets. Drop sets lead to similar levels of exertion and fatigue as other types of training.

“[Drop set] training might be an efficient way to increase muscle mass with minimal time spent training.”
- Fink et al., 2017

Drawbacks of Drop Sets

If you use drop sets excessively, you might become fatigued and possibly injured. As with all types of training, excessive workloads can lead to overreaching and overtraining.

Methodology

We searched scientific databases for studies on drop sets, and analyzed their data. Read more about how we found and analyzed the studies in our methodology section.

Drop sets involve doing many sets in a row where you drop (reduce) the weight between each set.

Note that failure is traditionally used in drop sets, but is not required (learn more about training to failure). You can use machines, dumbbells, and barbells for drop sets. Barbell drop sets can be tricky because you need to rerack the barbell and remove plates between each set. This can be dangerous if done quickly, as in the example of the bench press.

It is easier with dumbbells and machines. In the case of running the rack, you move down the dumbbell rack and pick lighter dumbbells for each set. This is very quick for exercises like biceps curls.

Quotes: What is a Drop-set?

How to do drop sets

Here is how you do a drop set:

1. Lift a weight until you reach muscular failure
2. Reduce the weight and continue your second drop set without any rest
3. Do as many sets as you prefer

You can do drop sets with machines, dumbbells, barbells, and even your own body weight. we will cover the first three methods in our guide. It is practical and safe to do drop sets with machines and dumbbells, but barbell exercises require more planning. You might need a spotter to help you drop the weight.

Running the rack / Down the rack (dumbbells)

This is when you work your way down a rack of dumbbells while continuing the same exercise. Bicep curls and shoulder flys are traditionally used with this method.

If you are in a hurry, you may want to do run the rack like this:

As you can see, you need to experiment with drop sets to figure out the right weight and reps. Also, you should be mindful of other people who are exercising with dumbbells so that you don’t run into them on your way down the racks.

Strip sets (barbell)

This is when you strip plates off of a barbell between each set. For example, if you have 175lb on a barbell, on the next set you could remove 10lb from each side and continue doing reps with little to no rest. A training partner can speed up the process and help you strip plates between each set.

Up the stack / Run the stack (weight machine)

With this drop set, you move the pin upwards for every set. This is very easy and allows you to do many drop sets on your own. It’s generally safer to have muscular failure on machines such as chest presses, because they won’t crush you under their weight compared to how a barbell bench press would.

Other types of drop sets

We have described the most commonly used types of drop sets above. But if you’re interested, there are other types as well:

• Tight drop set: When you decrease the weight by a small amount (5-10%) in a drop set.
• Wide drop set: When you decrease the weight by a large amount (10%+) in a drop set.
• Drop super-set: When you add drop sets to a super-set. For example, on your last set of leg extension and leg curl super-set you use one of the above methods to decrease the weight.
• Rest-pause set: When you pause for an extended period of time (10-30 seconds) while continuing to decrease the weight.
• Halving method: When you decrease the weight by half on a drop set.

As you can tell, there are an endless amount of ways to incorporate drop sets into your workout.

Why drop sets should work - hypotheses and mechanisms

If we look at the scientific literature, there are two main hypotheses:

1. Even if you train to muscle failure, there are still muscle fibers that are not entirely fatigued. Drop sets could hypothetically fatigue the muscle to a greater extent. (Schoenfeld & Grgic 2017; Howe and Waldron 2017).
2. Drop sets increase time under tension, which could increase hypertrophy (Schoenfeld & Grgic 2017; Howe and Waldron 2017).

Muscle failure, fatigue, and time under tension should increase metabolic stress  (Schoenfeld & Grgic 2017; Howe and Waldron 2017). You can also do more volume quickly with drop sets. This is the rationale for why drop sets could maximize hypertrophy. On the other hand, it should be said that going to failure won’t necessarily give greater hypertrophy.

Scientific quotes

Information about the drop set studies

From our literature search, we identified five studies with hypertrophy data. Two of the studies used a within-subject design (i.e. Ozaki et al., 2018, Angleri et al., 2017). What that means is that they randomized the arms or legs of the participants. One arm/leg trained with traditional sets, while the other trained using drop sets. Here’s some key data about how the studies were structured:

Scientific quote

Drop set hypertrophy graph

The drop set literature is small. Four studies measure muscle hypertrophy directly by MRI or ultrasound (Fink et al., 2017, Angleri et al., 2017, Ozaki et al., 2018, Goto et al., 2004) and one measures muscle hypertrophy indirectly by bod pod (Fisher et  al., 2016). We extracted and analyzed the data from the studies that measure muscle size directly.

[Advanced discussion]

In two studies, Angleri and Ozaki, participants increased their CSA by a mean of 2.16 cm² to 2.43 cm². The between-group effect sizes were tiny ranging from 0.02 to 0.05 and the confidence intervals were wide and non-significant. Mean changes were neither statistically significant nor clinically significant between groups. Both of these studies used within-subject design where each limb was randomized to drop set or traditional training.

The Fink study had a much smaller absolute gains in muscle cross-sectional area (0.35 to 0.7 cm²). It’s unclear why, perhaps the training protocol wasn’t challenging enough. It is also the study with the largest between-group effect size (0.26 favouring drop set group). But the CI for the ES is wide and so is the significance test for the mean between-group change (p=0.577, as reported by the authors).

Drop set hypertrophy statistics

Note: the ES’ and CIs were calculated by Sci-Fit based on the reported means, standard deviations, and participant numbers (more details in the method section).

*Ozaki had three groups, low load (30% 1RM), high load (80% 1RM), and drop set. The high load group was most similar to traditional training, therefore we compared it to the drop set.

An important difference between the studies was the muscle group used during training. Fink et al., used the triceps, Angleri et al., used the thigh and Ozaki et al., used the biceps.

The final study, Goto et al., 2004, used a traditional design for 6 weeks of training, then split the groups in two during the final 4 weeks. During those four weeks one group completed five traditional sets and the other group completed the same but with an extra drop-set at the end. The drop-set group continued to gain a significant amount of the muscle while the traditional group did not (Goto et al., 2004). This could be due to the drop-set group completing 23% more volume than the traditional group.

Scientific quotes

Hypertrophy Conclusion

There is only one study indicating drop sets might be better than traditional sets when volume is equated. Our current conclusion is that drop sets are as good as regular sets for hypertrophy. More research is needed to determine if drop sets can be beneficial for specific muscle groups or if it should be used for certain exercises.

Drop set strength graph

Drop set strength statistics

The effect sizes for strength are larger compared to hypertrophy. Both Fink and Ozaki have a between-group ES of ~0.6. Let’s say we picked one participant at random from both groups in these two studies. We’d have a 66-67% chance of picking someone who made greater gains from the traditional groups versus the drop set groups.

Drop set strength conclusion

One study supports drop sets for strength (Goto et al., 2004). But it was not volume equated. The small amount of literature seems to suggest that training with drop sets is not ideal for increasing strength. This is assuming that you’re not doing more volume with drop sets. Drop sets might help if they allow you to do more volume. Still, due to the diversity in study designs, it is difficult to make any firm conclusions if drop sets are superior or inferior to other types of training.

Save time in the gym with drop sets

Drop sets are a good way of getting in the volume while spending as little time as possible lifting (Fink et al., 2017; Looney et al., 2016; Schoenfeld & Grgic 2017; Howe and Waldron 2017). In other words, they are efficient. There are also other ways to save time, such as doing super sets with other muscle groups while you are recovering.

Scientific quotes

Excessive use of drop sets can be harmful

“The continuous use of drop sets may be detrimental over time (...)”
- Schoenfeld & Grgic 2017

We must be careful with using drop-sets since they are generally completed to failure, which could cause excessive fatigue and/or injuries over time (Nóbrega and Libardi 2016; Howe and Waldron 2017; Schoenfeld & Grgic 2017). Nonetheless, there is no direct evidence that drop sets increase injury risk over the long term. In addition, there are very many ways to implement drop sets into your routine, so it’s impossible to say how it will work out in terms of injury risk.

For now, the idea that drop sets are harmful remains a hypothesis that needs to be tested. Yet, it is always a good idea to be careful.

Scientific quotes

Will drop sets make you exhausted in the gym?

There are five studies that have tested rating of perceived exertion. This rating is used to identify how difficult an exercise or training method is. The participants give a rating of how difficult they felt the exercise or training session was. Surprisingly, the studies found no difference in perceived exertion between drop sets and other sets (De Paula Simola et al., 2015, Raeder et al., 2016, Looney et al., 2016, Fisher et al., 2017).

This might go against our intuition that drop sets are exhausting. Nonetheless, if a drop set is taken very far, it can certainly become exhausting.

Note that rating of perceived exertion is an acute (temporary) measure of fatigue, not a long-term measure.

How we researched drop sets

We researched drop sets using two search engines: Pubmed, Pubmed PMC, and Google Scholar.

We used the following keywords for searching pubmed, PMC, and Scholar:

("drop set" OR "drop-set" OR "drop sets" OR "drop-sets" OR "dropset" OR "dropsets" OR "breakdown set" OR "breakdown sets" OR "breakdown-set" OR "breakdown-sets") AND ("hypertrophy" OR "strength training" OR "resistance training" OR "bench press" OR "squat" OR "strength").

Only human studies were used. We also reviewed the references of each drop set study to help us find more studies. During our literature search on drop sets we found a number of studies which use load reduction. Load reduction is similar to drop sets, but instead of continually decreasing weight with no rest between sets, the load is reduced 5-10% with normal rest periods (Lima et al., 2018, Willardson et al., 2010, Willardson et al., 2012). We excluded load reduction sets.

Data collection and extraction

We extracted data of means, standard deviations, percentage change (pre-post), as well as data about the study design (duration, etc.). In the case some data was not reported, we requested it from the authors.

Some studies such as Angleri and Goto lacked absolute data of pre and post means and standard deviations. Angleri and colleagues sent the data on request and thus we would like to thank the authors for their openness and helpfulness. We used the data to calculate effect sizes, confidence intervals, and various statistics.

Effect size and CI calculation

Effect size

We used Cohen’s Dppc2 (“Pre-Post-Control”) to calculate the between-group ES based on the difference in mean change with pooled pretest SDs (described in Morris, 2008).

Confidence intervals

The 95% CI of the ES was calculated using the Wald method (based on SEM).

Common language effect size

The common language effect size gives the probability that a person picked at random from the group with the largest mean change will have a larger individual change than a person picked at random from the group with the smallest mean change.

50% indicates that the probability is equal between groups. 66% indicates that there's a 16% greater chance that the person chosen from the largest change group has a superior outcome

It was calculated in Excel using:
=NORMSDIST(ABS(mean_change_largest-mean_change_smallest)/SQRT(pre-SD_mean_change_largest^2+pre_SD_mean_change_smallest^2))*100

Interpretation

Our interpretation of the studies is based on:

• Study design and methodology: how long was the study? How was the training program structured? How many participants took part in the study? How trained were they? Etc.
• Mean changes: how much did the groups improve their strength and hypertrophy, on average?
• Effect sizes: standardized effect sizes are helpful when compared between multiple studies.
• Confidence intervals
• P-values and significance tests of mean changes, as reported by the authors.
• Visual presentation: the visual graphs helped us interpret the data and put it into perspective and context

Overview of excluded studies

During our literature search we also found the studies below and give a brief description of why they were excluded from our analysis.

• Giessing et al., 2016 - This study used circuit training in combination with drop sets vs traditional circuit training. The HIT group used a repetition duration of 2 seconds concentric, 1 second isometric contraction at the top of the range of motion, and 4 seconds eccentric (2-1-4 seconds). The traditional group trained using a repetition duration of 2 seconds concentric and 2 seconds eccentric (2-2 seconds). This difference in repetition duration, along with the circuit training, makes it difficult to determine the isolated effect of drop sets.
• Berger and Hardage, 2013 - This study has continual load reduction, but is not a drop set, strictly speaking
• Johannsmeyer et al., 2016 - This study compared older subjects using a drop set protocol who were taking creatine vs. a placebo supplement. Since both groups used drop set training we could not determine if drop sets were superior.
• Goto et al., 2016 - This study compared acute changes in a drop-set vs a reverse drop set protocol. The outcome measures were muscle oxygenation, EMG, and MVC.  The study used rest period of 2-3 minutes between sets while either increasing or decreasing the %1RM, which falls under a load reduction model rather than a drop set model.
• Bentes et al., 2012 - This study was acute and used pre-exhaustion in combination with drop sets. They suggest that exercise order with the drop set method and pre-exhaustion or post-exhaustion have an acute influence on total training volume in a session.
• Goto et al., 2004 - This study used a single set protocol with a 50% or 20% 1RM drop set after traditional training to determine changes in growth hormone and maximal isometric strength. There were no differences in testosterone, but an increase in growth hormone with the 50% and 30% drop sets compared to traditional training.
• Greiwing and Freiwald - This study was from a book chapter. Numerous pages were missing from the methods and discussion section. We are also unable to tell if it was peer reviewed.