When first getting started out in resistance training and working out in general, you will quickly realise that there is a seemingly infinite amount of training terminology out there that you constantly seem to come across.
Honestly terms like counting macros and creating metabolic stress for muscle growth are so ingrained into my mind that it’s easy to forget these are specific terms that not every outside of this bubble is used to. The amount of people that look at you blankly when you say you are tracking macros is highly amusing.
Once you get the basics mastered in training though (compound lifts, isolation exercises, periodization, sets, reps and tempo) and your knowledge and training experience grows you will then start to look into more advanced training techniques.
Two of the most popular techniques you will come across are drop sets and supersets.
Drop sets vs supersets? Drop sets and supersets are two advanced training techniques used primarily for muscle hypertrophy. They are used as set extenders to fatigue a greater amount of muscle fibres but have different aims. A drop set will fatigue a particular muscle group past failure with extended reps whereas a superset will aim to fatigue the muscle by using two exercises back to back.
These terms have boomed in recent years and you’ll now see young lifters performing drop sets on almost every set and that is because information is just so readily available now but not always the best. I even covered drop sets in this article as they can be confused with a technique known as pyramid training.
I learned to train at a time when T-Nation was the go to resource for hardcore lifters (I was a skinny kid so not putting myself in that group) and when you read about these advanced techniques it was always an additional to a solid training program covering the basics.
The reason these are advanced techniques is because they extend the period of time in which you can recover from a workout using them. Therefore if you don’t understand proper workout programming then it is difficult to justify including them in your routine.
Therefore the purpose of this article is to put the two techniques against each other (because they are often confused and used interchangeably) and demonstrate how and when you should be including them in your routine.
Table of Contents
Drop Sets vs Supersets
I’ve titled it drop sets vs supersets because you should only ever be using one at any one time and also because there will be a best method depending on your current goals. These techniques were created with specific aims in mind.
A bench press vs dumbbell chest press might seem like the same thing but which one you use will depend on your specific goal. A bench press will increase your strength but in a lot of cases a dumbbell chest press will do more for chest activation and growth.
Before getting into it I want to emphasise again that getting stronger in (and mastering) the basic compound movements over time will put muscle on your frame for the first year or two of training.
If you use advanced techniques too early in your training lifecycle then not only will it reduce your immediate ability for muscle growth but will then reduce the effectiveness of these techniques once you get to a more advanced level and need them the most.
What Are Drop Sets
Drop sets are probably the most common training technique you will see people use in order to increase the intensity of an exercise and set. With a drop set you reach technical failure on a certain rep of an exercise and then immediately drop the weight and try to reach technical failure again.
There is some skill involved in this as there is nothing (or at least not much) to be gained from dropping the weight and only getting an additional rep. Therefore a good example of a drop set is the following:
Seated pec deck
Starting weight – 150lbs
1st set – 150lbs x 12 reps, drop the weight
2nd set – 125lbs x 7 reps, drop the weight
3rd set – 100lbs x 5 reps, drop the weight
4th set – 60lbs x 3 reps, end set
In this example all reps are performed in the same set, the 1,2,3 and 4 are just for illustrative purposes. Therefore you hit failure and can’t get another rep, drop the weight and go to failure again and so on. A drop set can be anywhere from 1 drop to 5 depending on the exercise and muscle group.
A bicep preacher curl will have less potential to keep dropping the weight as you will already be using a relatively low weight whereas a leg press could have 4 or 5 drops due to using a larger muscle group and having the potential to use much heavier weights.
A leg press has always been my go to for a drop set because you can load it up with 45lb plates, do high reps in the 12-20 rep range and the drops are easy in terms of taking a plate off either side.
Exercise selection is key for drop sets and in particular muscle growth, you want to be selecting exercises that have minimal technical skill to avoid any breakdown in form and risk injury.
Machines are typically best for this as you are locked into a fixed plane of motion and therefore it is hard to cheat once you reach technical failure whereas a squat or deadlift would be much riskier, especially when the smaller muscle groups fatigue quicker than your larger ones.
Therefore keep drop sets to isolation exercises or machines with a fixed plane of motion (even a smith machine counts here) in order to get the most out of a drop set.
Why Use Drop Sets for Muscle Growth
Now you know what drop sets are but why do people use them? There are a few reasons to use a drop set but the main one is to increase the intensity of a set and fully fatigue your muscle fibres to promote muscle growth.
When you reach a certain failure point on an exercise at a certain rep this is because you have fatigued your muscle fibres and can’t generate the force necessary to do another rep.
While this is more than enough to stimulate muscle growth it’s worth mentioning that you don’t always need to hit failure to stimulate muscle hypertrophy. Going to failure too often will make it more difficult to recover from session to session.
My favourite training principle is to stimulate the muscle but don’t annihilate it! I’ve got a logbook and utilize progressive overload but this doesn’t mean I need to be hitting failure all the time to promote further muscle growth.
With that said hitting a failure point will fatigue your muscle fibres at that point however there is further potential to recruit more motor units and fatigue more muscle fibres and that is by dropping the weight.
The first part of most sets in the 8-12 rep range you only recruit 80% of the muscle fibres needed to move that weight but once you get close to failure you are recruiting 100% of your muscle fibres needed. Fast twitch muscle fibres are the explosive heavy lifting kind and these fatigue the quickest as a result.
To visualize it think of a sprinter after a max effort 100m sprint. They’ve maximally recruited their muscle fibres at the 80m – 90m mark and then after the 100m they are gassed and need to break before interviewing.
By dropping the weight however you then start to recruit more motor units and fatigue the slower twitch muscle fibres which are more endurance based and suited to lighter loads. By fatiguing as many muscle fibres as possible you increase muscle hypertrophy and ultimately muscle growth.
What Are Supersets
Supersets are similar to drop sets in that after reaching technical failure in an exercise you then continue to fatigue the muscle further but with a superset you do this by using a different exercise rather than dropping the weight.
This can either be done to work two muscle groups simultaneously, for example doing a leg extension for the quads immediately followed by leg curls for the hamstrings to get a greater blood flow to the legs or by targeting the same muscle group with different exercises like a dumbbell bench press immediately followed by a dumbbell fly.
If you are using supersets to target two different muscle groups then this is a complete different training intention than using two exercises to target the same muscle group and this is where people will often use a superset not really understanding the reasoning.
A bicep curl supersetted with a tricep extension will push more blood into the upper arms increasing cell swelling and “the pump” but is not an advanced technique to fatigue your bicep or even arms in general.
Supersetting a seated bicep preacher curl with an incline dumbbell bicep curl however is an advanced technique to fully fatigue the bicep.
Why Use Supersets for Muscle Growth
Sticking with that last example, a seated bicep preacher curl will place more emphasis on the short head of the bicep as you get the bicep into a shorted contractile position which occurs when your arms/elbows are raised in front of you.
To test that for yourself leave your arms hanging by your side and curl your arm squeezing the bicep (no weight is needed for this) making a mental note of how it feels. Now lift your arms overhead and curl your arm whilst squeezing the bicep (try to touch your back while squeezing the bicep).
I can guarantee that you feel a significantly greater contraction when overhead even without using any weights. To fully work the long head of the bicep however your elbow needs to be behind you to place the bicep in a fully lengthened position.
Therefore at an incline you will feel at greater stretch and more resistance at the bottom of the exercise instead of at the top where the weight will feel lighter and it will be more difficult to contract the bicep. These are known as resistance curves and target different muscle heads to recruit the muscle fibre through a full range of motion.
Another example would be a standing dumbbell lateral raise to target the lateral head (side head) of the shoulder muscle. Here the weight is heaviest for the first portion of the movement but once you get past hip height it becomes easier meaning this is the more lengthened range of motion.
Now if you grab a power rack or even a door handle and lean sideways there is much less tension at the bottom and the lift becomes harder the closer you get to the top of the movement. While this isn’t changing exercise it’s still a superset because you target a different resistance and strength curve to fatigue the muscle group further.
Therefore supersets are used to fatigue a muscle group than if you just performed one straight set of an exercise. Even changing the slightest thing can extend a set, performing a barbell curl immediately followed by a dumbbell curl is the exact same movement but the slight change in equipment used will recruit more motor units due to a different training stimulus.
Which Is Better, Drop Sets or Supersets
Hopefully you now have a better understanding of what each technique is and the different scenarios in which you can make use of them but which one is better for muscle growth?
The answer of course is that it depends on your goal, a drop set can take a muscle past a point of failure and can be good for stubborn muscle groups that don’t seem to be developing in line with other muscle groups.
The best example is again the leg press, this uses large muscle groups of the legs which are very difficult to fully fatigue through straight set approaches. Therefore a drop set will do more to fatigue these fibres than potentially supersetting it with a leg extension or leg curl (though this is still a good option).
A superset can be a good way to extend the heavier compound movements that I mentioned earlier which are too technical to use a drop set with. A front squat supersetted with a leg extension is a good way to fully fatigue the quads without the use of a drop set.
In my opinion a superset is better to fatigue smaller muscle groups through isolation exercises that otherwise wouldn’t allow for significant weight drops in the weight used. A weighted tricep dip will allow more potential for a weight drop than a dumbbell overhead extension will so it’s about being practical and smart when using these techniques in your routine.
Again these are advanced techniques and should be used once or twice per week at the most in my opinion and if you haven’t even maxed out your progress on the basic compound lifts then these shouldn’t even be a consideration at all.
The recovery time needed increases after using one of these techniques as you’ve fatigued more fibres in the process. This sounds great but if it takes you a week to fully recover a muscle group after doing it then this negates the benefit as you could have worked the muscle group twice within that period increasing protein synthesis and ultimately growth.
Therefore don’t get too hyped up on these techniques, as a beginner they could hinder your progress more than enhancing it.
Also check out:
Drop sets for muscle growth by TC Luoma
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