Somebody asked Thibaudeau about how to use drop sets in their program. C.T. gave a great answer that explains why/how to use “intensifier techniques” like drop sets and rest/pause in low volume programs.
Near the end is a cool 8 week progression, ramping Intensifiers as you go, then backing off before you start over again.
"The most obvious variable that impacts it is volume. The more volume per muscle or session you do, the least often you can use intensifiers.
If you look at an extreme (and well-documented successful program) case of low-volume, DC Training, it has really 1-2 work sets per muscle per week. The program use an intensifier (double rest/pause) pretty much all the time. Which can be done because of the extreme low volume of work.
On the other end of the spectrum, programs using 12+ sets per muscle in a workout should VERY rarely use intensifiers.
You need to understand what the purpose of intensifiers is. It’s NOT to get a bigger pump bro, it’s not to tear that muscle apart, it’s not to get a nasty burn in your muscles.
It is simply to get more effective reps in without having to do more sets.
If you are not aware of what “effective reps” are, then that’s the first thing you need to learn about. I talked about them often in articles.
Essentially “effective reps” are repetition that have a significant impact on stimulating muscle growth.
Without getting into the physiology of it (I’ve done so many times already), to be effective a rep must a) recruit the fast-twitch fibers and b) must require a high level of effort.
Essentially if you go to failure on a set, the last 4-6 rep will be effective (so by extension, if you stop 2-3 reps short of failure you’ll only have 2-3 effective reps per set).
Now, muscle growth IS dependant on volume. But NOT total reps (or sets) volume, rather, the volume of effective reps. You need 15-25 effective reps per muscle/per week to stimulate hypertrophy properly. More than that might provide better gains, but the dose-response curve flattens out after the 25 reps point. Meaning that after 25 effective reps, ay additional rep provide less and less benefit until there is no more benefit.
Anyway, what intensifiers are (for the most part) is finding a way to add reps once you hit failure on a set.
It can be done by:
- Lowering the weight (drop set)
- Taking a brief rest period (15-40 sec) then resume the set (rest/pause)
- Reducing the range of motion (ROM drop set)
- Switching to an “easier” version of the exercise, for example going to DB hammer curls once you hit failure on DB curls (mechanical drop set)
But in all 4 cases, the mechanism is the same: you add effective reps to a set even once you hit failure. As a result, you can provide up to 10-12 effective reps in a set rather than 4-6.
Now, intensifiers respond to the same rules are regular sets. Meaning that only the last 4-6 reps before failure are effective reps.
For example, if you do a drop set that looks like this:
You start by doing 10 reps to failure then you drop the weight and perform 8 more reps.
That drop set will give you 10 effective reps… but to me this is a poor drop set because you did 3 ineffective reps in your drop, meaning that you do more work for nothing.
As such, my recommendation when using intensifiers like drop sets and rest/pause (or mechanical drop set) is that you should not be able to do more than 5 additional reps. If you can do more than 5 in a drop set, you lowered the weight too much. If you can do more than 5 reps in a rest/pause you rested for too long.
Now, if you do a double drop set or a double rest/pause, it’s the same thing: you must use a drop that only allows for 5 additional reps or less.
For example:
Drop set
8 + 5 + 5 is good
10 + 8 + 7 is not
The reason is that the first double drop set gives you 15 effective reps out of 18 (83% effective) and the second gives you the same 15 effective reps but out of 25 (60% effective).
You are doing more work without stimulating more gains. And it can even be detrimental by causing more central fatigue, glycogen depletion and muscle damage.
Now that we understand this…
We can see why intensifiers are more useful for low-volume (low sets per muscle): it allow you to get enough effective reps for growth, compensating for the low number of sets.
If you are doing 12+ sets per muscle at a reasonable effort level (let’s say 2-3 reps in reserve) intensifiers are not needed because you get plenty of effective reps already, from the sheer volume of work you are doing.
In fact, with a higher volume of work, intensifiers can backfire by causing more central fatigue and muscle damage, both of which will hurt both the quality of your training and the gains from that (and likely the next) session.
Use of intensifiers during a low-volume/effort-based approach
If you do 5-9 work sets per muscle (which is a common volume for effort-based plans), to failure, intensifiers are not necessary. Simply going to failure with that amount of volume would give you 25+ effective reps, enough to stimulate growth optimally.
However, if the volume is lower than that, let’s say 1 (as in DC training) to 3 work sets per muscle you likely will need an intensifier to reach the proper number of effective reps to grow optimally.
Another way to use intensifiers is what I call “effort cycling”. This is best used with a very low volume of work (1 to 5 sets per muscle) in which we use intensifiers as a form of progressive overload (progressing increase in training stress).
Essentially, when the body under as certain level of stress it adapts to THAT level of stress, and the same level will be less effective the next time you do it.
One way to progressively overload is to add weight from session to session, another one is to ramp up the intensifiers.
For example (performed on the top set of an exercise):
Week 1: Going to failure
Week 2: Drop set
Week 3: Rest/pause
Week 4: Rest/pause + lengthened partial reps
Week 5: Double rest/pause
Week 6: Double rest/pause + lengthened partials
Week 7: Keeping 2 reps in reserve
Week 8: Start over"