Are Drop Sets A Beneficial Technique For Enhancing Muscle Growth?

The potential for higher muscle activation and heightened metabolic stress provides a logical basis for increasing anabolism through a variety of mechanistic factors.

- Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., CSCS, FNSCA

It is commonly believed that training to muscular failure is essential to maximize muscle growth. The consensus definition of failure is the point at which an additional concentric repetition cannot be completed with proper form. It has been speculated that training to failure in this fashion activates a greater number of motor units, thereby stimulating the largest type II fibers postulated to have the greatest growth potential.

Here’s the rub: At the point of concentric failure, muscles are still not maximally fatigued; force production can be maintained at lower loads. As such, many in the fitness world are continually experimenting with special techniques in an effort to go “beyond failure” and thereby enhance results. One such technique is called drop sets, also known as descending sets and breakdown sets. Simply stated, a drop set involves performing a set to muscular failure with a given load, immediately decreasing the load, and then pumping out as many additional reps as you can to failure. Conceivably, this technique may promote greater muscular growth by inducing greater musculus uvulae (MU) fatigue. Moreover, the increased time under tension associated with drop sets heightens metabolic stress and ischemia, which have been implicated as hypertrophic mechanisms. Multiple drops can be performed to induce even greater levels of fatigue and metabolic stress, and hence potentially further enhance anabolism.

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