What Drop Sets Are

“Drop sets involve performing a set to concentric failure with a given load and then immediately reducing the load and continuing to train until subsequent failure.“ - Schoenfeld, 2011

Drop sets are typically used by bodybuilders to maximize hypertrophy. Drop sets are also called load reduction sets, breakdown sets, strip sets, descending sets, and running the racks (and more...)

Drop Sets for Strength

Drop sets do not seem to be superior for improving maximal strength, compared to regular strength training. Yet, we could argue that this is not their primary purpose. More information will be published in our full drop set article.

Drop Sets for Hypertrophy

The evidence is currently mixed on hypertrophy. Our in-depth analysis will follow in the full article.

Other Uses and Fatigue

You can use drop sets to save time. They can be added at the end of a series, but should probably not be used excessively due to concerns about fatigue and overreaching.

There is also a method which is a "child" of drop sets. It is called load reduction, and involves doing drop sets except maintaining about 1 minute rests between drops. This technique can be used to maintain the number of repetitions while lowering the weight between sets. See Quotes for more information.

How we collected the studies

This study collection was created by systematically searching databases such as Pubmed and Google Scholar. Relevant search terms included "drop set", "load reduction", and "breakdown set" (combined with terms such as "hypertrophy", "strength", "resistance training", and so on).

Both authors collected the studies separately and compared the findings at the end. After the database search, we scoured all studies and extracted more studies from study references.