Mechanical Drop Sets - How To Train On The Go

Drop sets are simple. Load up the bar, work, take some discs off the bar, repeat. Mechanical drop sets segue into an easier movement instead of a lighter load, meaning they're more transportable and versatile.

When we want to get more results from the same amount of time spent training, we pick big multijoint movements and shoot for intensity. (Note: with good form. Otherwise, you’ll get a really intense injury.)

You can’t just knock them out like they’re nothing, and if you’re training up in the range of about 85% of your maximum – a range where you can do only between one and six repetitions with good form – you’re going to spend a lot of time resting. So how can we throw in a bit of conditioning while keeping training oriented toward strength, and increase the volume too?

A drop set is self explanatory: you start the set, then you drop some weight and continue it, sometimes making multiple drops. The advantage is that it lets you use significantly the same movement, unlike supersetting, where you’ll often superset a compound move with a move that targets some of the same muscles but isn’t a similar movement. What that means is that drop sets let you groove in motor patterns in a way that supersets don’t. 

To give you an example: say you do a drop set of back squats with a barbell. You’d do your set, then remove some of the weight from the bar, get back under and continue to squat, this time with a lighter load. This process might be repeated several times. Obviously, as you continue to work, your muscles become more exhausted and the amount of weight you an lift decreases. So you reduce the amount on the bar and continue.

So drop sets are a way of training to failure – and staying there – with the same exercise.

As such, they’re popular with people who do exhaustion training for sports reasons, and with those who realize that that’s the kind of training that can trigger hypertrophy, like bodybuilders. But they have another obvious advantage, too:

You’re working the whole time.

But to do it, you need access to a gym. To barbells, or dumbbells at least, right?

Not at all.

Mechanical drop sets

A mechanical drop set is one in which you change the exercise to an easier one instead of changing the weight on the bar. That doesn’t mean supersetting bench presses with kickbacks and calling it something fancy. Rather, you’re replacing an exercise you’ve trained to failure with one that’s mechanically easier to do.

Let’s look at an example: let’s suppose you’re immensely strong, and when it’s time to train your upper body push you opt for planche pushups. After you do a few, though, you can’t do any more, so you transition to tuck planche pushups, then put your feet down and finish off with ordinary pushups. OK, I missed a few steps – when you do it, feel free to throw some Maltese pushups in there. But at very stage, you’re doing the hardest upper body push you can do, even as you move down the ladder of progression.

The Ladder Of Progression

No, King Crimson isn’t at the top. This simply means that if you want to do something incredibly hard – a seriously tough gymnastic position like an iron cross or a planche, for instance – you need to start with something you can do, and build on it. Rather than using the barbell and putting more weight on, you tweak the movement every time you get better to make it more effective and more challenging.

An example might be to go from split squats to full bilateral squats to supported pistols to full pistols: at every stage the movement remains ‘squatlike’ but gets more challenging.

You’re just tweaking the move, remember.

The big advantage of this is its portability. It’s hard to get a training session in a hotel gym with nothing but a Swiss ball and a crossstrainer in it – just doing pushups doesn’t trigger much strength or hypertrophy past a certain point, while choosing a super-challenging move means you’re not going to be doing much of it. Build a workout on the go around mechanical drop sets and you can get the best of both worlds.

How would we implement something like this?

Obviously the place to start would be workout design, but for now, let’s assume that you’re doing a fairly standard push/pull/squat setup.

Push

Handstand (for time)-headstand (for time)-Hindu Pushups (for reps) – pushups (for reps) – straight-arm plank (for time) – elbow plank (for time)

A handstand for our purposes means standing on your hands with your arms straight, while a headstand is a tripod or yoga-style headstand. If you’re immensely strong and you laugh in the face of handstands for time, feel free to knock out handstand pushups for reps. If you’re not and you’re uncertain of your ability to do handstands, either omit them or do the yoga ‘downward dog’ pose on tiptoes, throwing more weight onto your arms.

Pull

Pullups (for reps) – Inverse rows (for reps) – Piked pullups (for reps) – piked inverse rows

A ‘pike’ is where you bend at the hips til you’re at about 90° there. That means you’ll be moving less weight because your legs will be taking some of the strain. At every stage, remember, you’re looking for a similar, but easier, form of the movement.

Squat

Pistols (for reps) – box pistols (for reps) – step-ups (for reps) – squats (for reps) - lunges (for reps)

See Also: Serious Gains With Serious Squats

Instead, they represent a way to get some real training done in hotel gyms, at home with minimal equipment or even in hotel rooms or friends’ houses if you’re staying over.

If you like something you saw here and you want more details, or if you think I’m wrong about something, or you have something to add, get hold of me in the comments section below and we’ll talk about it.