Drop Sets and other Advanced Training Techniques can help you build muscle. Drop sets, rest pause, myo reps,... many variations with a common goal, boost your training.
In this post you'll get an overview of what advanced training techniques are and how they work. Later, we'll talk about drop sets and the main advanced training techniques used in the gym.
What are Advanced Training Techniques?
Advanced training techniques are protocols used to increase mechanical tension and metabolic stress.
The response to these techniques activate mechanosensors to regulate future muscle adaptations (study).
All the advanced training techniques lead to the same goal; increase mechanical tension, metabolic stress and create muscle adaptations.
This is done by increasing mechanical load, volume load and intensity.
Why Do Advanced Training Techniques Work?
Advanced Training Techniques help you build muscle. However, the mechanism behind are still quite unknown.
They increase metabolic stress, related to muscle hypertrophy (study). The metabolite accumulation and acidic conditions act as signal to create more muscle.
These techniques work by taking your trainings beyond conventional intensity. The best recommendations for normal sets is to take them close to failure (study).
Advanced training techniques take your set beyond muscle failure. This gives an extra stimulus to the muscle.
When to Use Advanced Training Techniques
Advanced Training Techniques are not essential in your trainings.
You can build muscle without doing any of these techniques. But they are another tool of our 'toolbox' to build muscle.
These techniques are not recommended for everyone. The high technical requirements and increased muscle damage make them suitable only for certain subjects.
Advanced Training Subjects
As you go to the gym, it is harder to keep building muscle. In these cases, advanced training techniques could be useful.
Adding a new intense component on your workouts, you'll be able to mantain the normal volume load for a bit longer while still creating adaptations.
At the end of the session
Advanced Training Techniques cause large amounts of fatigue. During your workout you acumulate muscle fatigue
The excess of muscle fatigue may lower your performance and muscle fibre activation (study).
If you do these techniques at the end of the workout, it won't affect performance, as you have nothing left to do.
During your warm-up
It seems counterproductive to do advanced techniques at the beginning of the session. But, in certain scenarios, they can fit in our workout.
These techniques during your warm up can help you activate the target muscle before the effective sets.
Late on the Mesocycle
Mesocycle is a period of time in where training parameters progressively increase to build muscle adaptations. These parameters include volume load and intensity.
When both of them are reaching a plateau, you might want to add advanced training techniques to keep progressing without adding any extra volume or intensity.
Drop Sets and the Main Advanced Training Techniques
There are thousands of different advanced training techniques around... but not all of them work as good as some others.
The advanced training techniques with the highest evidence and efficiency are drop sets, BFRT, eccentric loading and cluster sets.
Drop Sets
Drop sets are one of the most popular advanced training techniques.
They take the set beyond conventional intensity and add extra volume load.
Due to the very high intensity degree, the technique of the exercise is usually forgotten. This can increase the risk of injury in those who don't master the technique.
How to do it?
- Take your set close to failure, leaving 1-3 reps.
- Wait 15-20s, drop the weight by 20-30% and perform another set to failure
- Drop again and do the same. Do it as many time as you want.
Recommendations
Two to three drops are, based on my experience, the most practical application. It doesn't cause a sh*t ton of muscle damage and you can still feel the burning in your muscle. Set a range of reps and lower the weight in order to get to that range.
Accentuated Eccentric Loading
The eccentric phase of an exercise induces large amounts of muscle adaptations (study).
During this advanced technique, you choose the weight that only allows you to do the eccentric phase.
For this technique, you'll need of another person to assist you partially or completely.
This technique increases muscle hypertrophy... but so does muscle damage. Careful, and don't abuse!
How to do it?
- Choose a weight 10-30% higher than that chosen for normal sets
- Perform a set of 3-10 reps with a controlled eccentric phase of 2-3"
- Get a gym mate to assist you during the conccentric phase
Recommendations
Don't do this technique until you really have mastered the technique of the exercise. And, based on experience, this technique works best at the beginning of the session. No fatigue is present yet, and we are fresh to perform at our best.
Rest-Pause Sets
Rest-Pause are similar to Drop Sets, but here you are not dropping any weight.
Instead, you'll have to maintain the weight but progressively decrease the repetitions.
Rest Pause Set increases muscle hypertrophy by adding extra volume load in a very short period of time(study)
How to do it?
- Choose a weight to perform 12-15 reps leaving 1-3 reps to failure (RIR 1-3)
- Rest 15-20" and do another set of 8 with the same weight
- Rest 15-20" an do it again with 6 reps
At the end of the set, the cadency should look something like : 12-8-6-4-2-1
Recommendations
Don't take the "normal set" to failure. This will affect performance on the rests-pause sets following and you won't be able to perform the reps proposed. Choose a weight with which you are comfortable doing 12-15 reps.
Myo-Reps Set
During this technique, you are aiming for a high number of repetitions, but performed in micropaused-sets (E.g: doing 25 reps by doing 12-6-2-3-2).
Compare with rest-pause sets, this technique takes a higher intensity degree performing all sets to failure. It's a great tool to take your sets way beyond conventional intensity.
How to do it?
- Set a number of reps (+25) and a 12-15RM weight. Start the first set to failure.
- Do a micropause of 10-15" and go to failure again, doing as many reps as you can.
- Do it again as many as times as you need to get to those objective reps.
Recommendations
As you can see, intensity and muscle fatigue here is going to be high. If you don't want to compromise your workout, perform this technique at the end of the session. Some exercise, because of a difficult set up, don't enable you to do this type of techniques. Choose an easy, low load exercise.
Super Sets
This technique is great in terms of time efficiency. It joins two exercises together performing them alternarly.
They can be antagonist (e.g: lat pulldowns and chest press) or agonisst (e.g: lat pulldowns and cable crossover). Both are based on the same principle: take the resting time of exercise A to perform exercise B.
In this study, it was seen how supersets could increase muscle hypertrophy in unit per time, but longer muscle recovery might be needed (study)
How to do it?
- Do a normal set of exercise A. Don't take it to failure
- Go to exercise B and do the same. Resting time will be that of going from A to B.
- After both exercises, take a normal resting of 1-2' after doing it again.
Recommendations
This technique is great to save you some time at the gym. But it takes a lot of space, and your gym might be too crowded for that. To avoid that, choose exercise preferrably with dumbells or the same machine (e.g: both in the smith machine).
Other Advanced Training Techniques
Besides the main and most popular advanced training techniques, there's a long list of other techniques you can use to increase the intensity of your trainings and enhance muscle hypertrophy.
21’s Set
In this technique, you'll be doing repetitions at three different key areas of the movement. Doing 7 repetitions on all three areas, you'll end up with a set of 21 repetitions in total.
By focusing an the three different areas of the lifting, you'll be working equally the different parts of the muscle.
Recommendations
This advanced training technique works specially well for exercise with accentuated areas such as bicep curls, bench press, triceps pushdown,...
Half Repetitions
This advanced training technique is done taking the set beyond muscle fialure.
Once you are done doing the total sets, take a micropause of 10-15 seconds and keep going, as if it were a rest pause. When you see you can't do a single more full repetition, keep doing repetitions at partial range of motion.Â
Doing those half repetitions, you are adding more volume load and intensity to your training.
Recommendations
This advanced training techniqued is recommended for exercises with an easy and comfortable set up. This include seated harmstring curls, leg extension, seated chest press,...
Pre-Exhaustion
Pre-Exhaustion creates fatigue on the muscle to work before the real training session begins. It increases muscle fibre activation on the working muscle.
Recommendations
Do the pre-exhaustion for compound exercises involving more than one muscle group at the same time. By doing it there, the true limiting factor will be the muscle of interest. This include overhead press, bench press, squat,...
Isometric Training
Besides the concentric and eccentric phase, we can also induce muscle hypertrophy doing isometric exercises (study).
By adding an isometric load after your normal set, you'll be adding more volume and intensity to your session. And that translates to more muscle gains.
This advanced training technique causes a lot of muscle damage. And you want to stay alive for the next workout
Recommendations
Perform this advanced training technique at the last exercise of the session. It's a nice way of finishing the workout, and the fatigue created won't harm any other exercise of the routine.
Aspects to Consider
When deciding to do an advanced training technique or not, you should take some things into account.
Do you Need It?
First of all, you might not need it. If you can add more volume load or intensity before, these options are more recommended.
Time
Second, time. Some people might not have too much time to workout, therefore advanced training techniques are a great tool to induce muscle hypertrophy and compact their trainings.
But if you do have the time, we highly recommend you adding that extra set before mantaining volume but with an advanced technique.
Technique
Third, technique. The advanced training technique is useless if your technique is not appropiate.
The stimulus won't go to where you go and you'll just be building up more muscle fatigue. So, before any advanced technique, make sure you know how to do the exercise properly.
Muscle recovery
Last, muscle recovery. If muscle damage is too high due to advanced training technique and excess of volume load, you might want to reduce that volume. Muscle recovery is crucial for performance (study), and too much muscle damage may eventually lead to overtraining.
Need, time, technique and muscle recovery. Evaluate all four and decide if that advanced training technique is for you
Conclusion
Drop sets and other advanced techniques are a great tool to maximize muscle hypertrophy. However, one should know when and how to use them wisely.
They work by adding extra volume load and intensity, two king factors for muscle adaptations.
