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We don’t know if drop sets work the same way for women, older people, or people who’ve never lifted weights — all the studies were on young men.
Descriptive
We only know how drop sets affect the arms and thighs — we don’t know if they work the same way on your back, chest, or calves.
Even if you do the same total amount of work, drop sets don’t make your muscles grow more than regular sets — whether you match the weight lifted or not, the results are about the same.
Causal
Drop sets don’t make you stronger than regular sets if you’re lifting moderate weights — but we don’t know if they’d work better or worse if you lifted really heavy weights.
It’s not clear if drop sets work better for people who already lift weights versus beginners — the study had too few participants in each group to tell.
Drop sets can make your workout much shorter — up to 70% less time — than regular sets, because you do more work without resting, but this wasn’t proven in the study, just noticed in two of the five studies.
Quantitative
In one study, drop sets made the top and middle parts of the front thigh muscle grow a bit more than regular sets — but this didn’t happen in other muscles or in other studies, so it’s not clear if it’s real or just a fluke.
When you train your quads, drop sets don’t make the outer thigh muscle grow more than regular sets — both methods make it grow about the same.
When you train to near failure, doing drop sets doesn’t make your muscles grow bigger than doing regular sets — both methods build muscle about the same in young men.
The researchers decided ahead of time what size of muscle gain would actually matter — and found the difference between methods was too small to count.
Doing drop sets (lifting heavy, then lighter weights without rest) builds strength just as well as doing regular sets with the same total weight, at least in young men who already lift weights.
The muscle growth seen here — about 2% — is about what you’d expect from 10 weeks of regular weightlifting, based on other studies.
Some people might prefer drop sets because they feel less boring or tiring than long rests between sets — even if it doesn’t build more muscle.
Mechanistic
Because the participants and trainers knew which workout they were doing, their expectations might have influenced the results — so we can’t be 100% sure the differences are real.
The study didn’t include many women or elite lifters, so we can’t be sure these results apply to everyone.
It doesn’t matter if you use a fancy machine or dumbbells — what matters more is whether you do regular sets or drop sets.
Both methods probably push your muscles to about the same level of fatigue, which is why they end up making your arms grow about the same amount.
Drop sets on the Tonal machine let you finish your workout faster because you don’t rest as long between sets — so you get more muscle growth for every minute you spend lifting.
After 10 weeks of hard lifting, your arms only get a tiny bit bigger — less than the thickness of a penny — no matter which method you use.
Even with fancy machine tech that automatically lowers weights, drop sets don’t make your arms grow more than regular lifting — the machine doesn’t give you an edge.
If you’re short on time, using drop sets on a smart machine can build your arm muscles just as well as traditional lifting — you just need to spend less time doing it.
Even though one method showed a tiny bit more muscle growth, it was so small that it wouldn’t make any noticeable difference in how your arms look or feel.
Both ways of lifting weights — regular sets and drop sets — make your biceps and forearms a little bigger after 10 weeks, by about 2%.
Even though drop sets don’t build much more muscle overall, they do it faster — you get the same tiny muscle gain in less time, which is great if you’re short on workouts.