Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
When people who’ve never lifted weights before do leg exercises with either 20-second or 2-minute breaks between sets—while doing the same total amount of work—their thigh muscles grow about the same amount.
Correlational
If you’ve never lifted weights before, you can get stronger by doing either light or heavy weights — as long as you push each set until you can’t do another rep.
Descriptive
Lifting light or heavy weights to exhaustion for 12 weeks didn’t change body fat or muscle mass in women who had never lifted before.
Women who had never lifted weights before got stronger in their arms and legs after doing 12 weeks of lifting light or heavy weights to exhaustion — and both ways made them just as strong.
The increased number of hard repetitions (within 2–3 reps of failure) in drop set protocols compensates for the absence of inter-set rest, resulting in equivalent hypertrophic outcomes compared to traditional training with longer rest intervals.
Assertion
The hypertrophic benefit of longer inter-set rest intervals (>60s) is attenuated or absent in exercises involving smaller muscle groups compared to multi-joint, large-muscle-group movements.
Inter-set rest intervals exceeding 60 seconds promote greater skeletal muscle hypertrophy compared to rest intervals of 60 seconds or less, when training volume and intensity are matched.
Drop set training enhances muscular endurance (repetition capacity at submaximal loads) to a greater extent than traditional resistance training protocols with matched volume.
Comparison
Maximal strength gains (1RM) are greater when training with higher relative loads (>80% 1RM) compared to training with lower loads, even when total volume and proximity to failure are matched.
Drop set protocols involving a single series with multiple sequential load reductions are more time-efficient for inducing muscle hypertrophy than protocols with multiple discrete drop sets or traditional sets.
Drop set training produces equivalent muscle hypertrophy in significantly less training time compared to traditional resistance training, resulting in greater hypertrophy per unit of time.
Quantitative
A higher proportion of repetitions performed within two reps of muscular failure enhances hypertrophic stimulus efficiency, producing equivalent muscle growth with fewer total repetitions.
Drop set training, involving multiple load reductions without rest until momentary failure, produces skeletal muscle hypertrophy equivalent to traditional resistance training with multiple sets.
Performing resistance exercises to momentary muscular failure with maximal concentric velocity and controlled eccentric phase induces skeletal muscle hypertrophy.
Doing one heavy set plus lighter ones without resting takes less time than doing three full sets of heavy or light curls.
You can get stronger, bigger, and more enduring muscles by doing one tough set followed by lighter ones without resting—faster than doing multiple heavy or light sets.
Causal
Doing a heavy set followed by lighter ones without resting can help you do more reps with light weights, just like doing only light curls.
Doing a heavy set of arm curls followed by lighter ones without resting can make you stronger in one-rep max and static strength, just like doing only heavy curls.
Doing a tough set of arm curls followed by lighter sets without resting can make your biceps grow just as much as doing only heavy or only light curls over 8 weeks.
Rest-pause training helps you lift heavier without making your muscles bigger—so maybe your nervous system gets better at using your muscles, not just your muscles getting bigger.
Mechanistic
Measuring thigh muscle thickness with ultrasound near the top and middle of the thigh is a good way to see if your muscles are growing from training—but measuring near the knee might not show it.
The barbell squat max is a good way to tell if one training method makes you stronger than another—even if you do the same total number of reps and sets.
You don’t need to train every day—just twice a week for two months can make your upper and middle thighs bigger, as long as you do enough total work.
If you do the same total amount of work, using drop sets won’t make your muscles bigger or stronger than doing regular sets over two months.