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For the times when you think you can't manage another single rep.

Whether you’re doing dumbbell exercises like bent-over rows and bench presses, or bodyweight moves like squats and push-ups, you’ll eventually reach a point where you become fatigued and your form falls foul. But it’s not necessarily time to throw in the towel and head on home; drop sets are a training technique that allow you to eke out a few more reps, without running the risk of injury.

We’ll go into exactly how a drop set works further down, but in a nutshell, it’s the process of working your muscles to failure, thereby allowing you to unlock your full fitness potential. We hit up sports scientist, trainer, nutritionist and strength and conditioning coach Luke Worthington to break down everything you need to know about drop sets, from what they are, to their benefits and examples.

‘A drop set is a set of exercises in which the amount of work performed on each repetition gradually decreases (or drops),’ Worthington explains. ‘This allows for progressive overload by achieving a greater total number of repetitions in each set, with the goal being to reach total fatigue within a particular muscle.’

It’s about doing more reps, but each of those reps are, essentially, ‘easier’. There are two ways your reps can be made less challenging, as explained by Worthington.

A post shared by Luke Worthington (@lukewtraining)

As mentioned, the name of the game with drop sets is to ‘create total fatigue within a particular muscle,’ Worthington says. ‘The principle is that your nervous system has to recruit the greatest amount of motor units (bundles of muscle fibres) with heavier weights. By moving from heavier weights to lighter weights (rather than just finishing a set, or doing a longer set with lighter weights or a shorter set with heavier weight), you recruit a larger proportion of muscle fibres.’

Still with us? Worthington adds that when more muscle fibres are recruited, you ‘create more metabolic damage to your tissue’ and the ‘potential for hypertrophy, i.e. muscle growth increases’. Indeed, studies have proven that drop sets do have the potential to increase hypertrophy by increasing metabolic stress. Worthington says that this is, in fact, a ‘technique used by male and female bodybuilders to break through training plateaus’.

Studies also show that increased hypertrophy comes by increasing the time your muscles spend under tension.

To recap, the proposed benefits of drop sets are big:

There are pros and cons to everything, and we want to make sure you’re aware of any side effects before you dive headfirst into the #DropSetLife. Worthington’s biggest warning? DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness).

‘Training a muscle to absolute fatigue with drop sets can create very high levels of DOMS, so the benefits can potentially be mitigated by the inability to train effectively in the days following,’ he explains. ‘There may also be a risk of injury to the muscle tissue itself, as you push it beyond its normal limits.’

Read on for his tips on how to do drop sets safely and effectively.

Before we get into this one, know that the following drop set examples are exactly that: examples. Though Worthington has shared an example including specific weights, those weights may not be enough to hit your point of fatigue, and as Worthington says, ‘may be way past it for others’. These are purely for the purpose of this article and helping you get to grips with how drop sets work.

‘In the instance of dropping weight, you would reduce the weight you are lifting when you can no longer perform any more reps,’ says Worthington. ‘Then, you would reduce the weight by the same increment once you reach failure with the first amount of reduced weight. This would continue until you have no weight left.’

With technique drop sets, it’s about making the mechanics ‘easier’, so that you can perform more reps. There are a few ways you can do this:

Worthington shares the following example.

‘Drop sets are longer as the aim is to reach failure,’ Worthington affirms. ‘This means that they can only be performed once in a workout.' Regular sets are usually done between 3-6 times per workout.

As mentioned, drop sets hit peak popularity in the bodybuilding world, ‘when bodybuilders would perform drop sets at the end of a workout for a week or so to stimulate new muscle growth, then revert back to their regular programming,’ so says Worthington.

‘Due to the higher risk of injury and the taxing nature of this training technique on your nervous system, I wouldn’t recommend performing it continually week after week. Even in the bodybuilding world, it’s only used sparingly.’

With that in mind, Worthington advises that drop sets probably aren’t the one if you’re new to weightlifting or strength training, and should also be avoided if you don’t have someone who can spot you since your form may be compromised.

That's a lot of info, we know, so here’s a quick rundown of Worthington’s top tips and tricks for performing drop sets safely and effectively: