[quote]Professor X wrote:
williamj wrote:
First post here and just my 2 cents, but in my experience with drop sets I have had tremendous increases in both size and strength. I haven’t done them in a long time but have recently just started doing them again. I love drop sets!
We need specifics on “tremendous increases in both size and strength”.
How much did you weigh before. How much did you weigh after? How much did your strength increase and on what movements?
It got old on this site for new posters to claim they saw AMAZING progress but yet show no details of what “amazing” means.[/quote]
Please excuse my ignorance… I meant no disrespect to the forum. Sorry I don’t have #'s to share as it was quite a few years ago. But the fact is they worked great for me and after a long layoff have decided to do them again.
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
LiveFromThe781 wrote:
ive done hacksquat drop sets for 42 reps starting with 3 plates plus either a 25 or 35 and worked down to a single plate.
no complaints, it gave me one hell of a DOMS
And, did it make your quads grow 4 inches ? Did it speed your strength gains up significantly ?
[/quote]
Did your quads grow 4 inches once after a squat workout? Ofcourse doing it once won’t produce (noticable) results.
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
adamhum wrote:
Off topic, Professor X’s shoulders are bigger then his head. I would hate to meet him in a dark alley!
No worries. He’d have to face you sideways anyway. Dark alleys are usually tight.
[/quote]
I can’t be the only one who laughed his ass off at this…
[quote]williamj wrote:
Professor X wrote:
williamj wrote:
First post here and just my 2 cents, but in my experience with drop sets I have had tremendous increases in both size and strength. I haven’t done them in a long time but have recently just started doing them again. I love drop sets!
We need specifics on “tremendous increases in both size and strength”.
How much did you weigh before. How much did you weigh after? How much did your strength increase and on what movements?
It got old on this site for new posters to claim they saw AMAZING progress but yet show no details of what “amazing” means.
Please excuse my ignorance… I meant no disrespect to the forum. Sorry I don’t have #'s to share as it was quite a few years ago. But the fact is they worked great for me and after a long layoff have decided to do them again.
Next time i’ll know better… thanks[/quote]
Dont get to worked up over some comments
Just people get sick of answering the same questions and dealing with the same silly questions sometimes they forget their manners !
Dont take it to heart, feel free to post anything and if it sounds to you like a beginner question just post there
[quote]on edge wrote:
djm_e22 wrote:
I used to think it was fast twitch fibers first too and still might, but from what I got out of the article was something like no matter what your ST fibers are always twitching during a set. No matter if it is 1RM or 8RM. On a heavy 1RM the ST fibers obviously are not doing much cause they twitch to slow, but the are still twitching.
On an 8RM set both muscle fibers are twitching but with the 8th rep failing your FT fibers have completely fatigued and now your ST Fibers are the only ones working but they twitch to slow that they can’t keep the weight from falling down. So I would think if you continued with drop sets you just keep beating the crap out of your FT Fibers cause your constantly so close to failure.
My eyelid started twitching while reading this.[/quote]
haha, i was waiting for someone to say something. I felt like i was saying that word way to much. lol
CC,
I understand your point that drop sets don’t help with progression and I have noticed the same thing from my experiences.
I was hoping, however, you could explain to me why this is? Do you ever find “beyond failure” techniques (forced reps, drop sets, not counting RP of course) to be useful?
[quote]That One Guy wrote:
on edge wrote:
djm_e22 wrote:
I used to think it was fast twitch fibers first too and still might, but from what I got out of the article was something like no matter what your ST fibers are always twitching during a set. No matter if it is 1RM or 8RM. On a heavy 1RM the ST fibers obviously are not doing much cause they twitch to slow, but the are still twitching.
On an 8RM set both muscle fibers are twitching but with the 8th rep failing your FT fibers have completely fatigued and now your ST Fibers are the only ones working but they twitch to slow that they can’t keep the weight from falling down. So I would think if you continued with drop sets you just keep beating the crap out of your FT Fibers cause your constantly so close to failure.
My eyelid started twitching while reading this.
You are so on-edge. You need to chill.[/quote]
I’m not sure what you’re saying here, so, if by chance you are insulting me, screw you.
If you want to target your fast twitch muscles, just move the weight FAST. Ballistic movements are great too.
Try sets with 5-6 reps using 25-50% of your 1rm for squats and do jumping squats and and/or lunges. Explosive crossover pushups or use a medicine ball and shove it straight into the air from a bench press position.
Also, try moving weight from a stopped position. Put safety pins on a squat rack a few inches above chest level for bench press and do sets of 3-5 reps with about 75% of your 1rm with the barbell stopped on the pins. Try it off the pins from the bottom of a squat too. Deadlifts are a good exercise to yank some serious weight with high bar velocity too.
Do all this at the front of your workouts when you’re not too fatigued to recruit your FT muscles or use good form on ballistic movements. The key to recruiting FT muscles is to maximize the force applied to the movement. Once you get tired, you can’t apply as much force, even if you are trying as hard as possible, so perform a lot of sets but just a few reps.
Studies show that maximum power is developed with explosive movements using 30-40% of an exercise’s 1rm. But in order to gain size and strength along the way, use 70-80% of your 1rm max on exercises also. But the bottom line is BAR VELOCITY.
I don;t think he was insulting you.
I think he was referring to the eyelid muscle being fast-twitch.
[quote]on edge wrote:
That One Guy wrote:
on edge wrote:
djm_e22 wrote:
I used to think it was fast twitch fibers first too and still might, but from what I got out of the article was something like no matter what your ST fibers are always twitching during a set. No matter if it is 1RM or 8RM. On a heavy 1RM the ST fibers obviously are not doing much cause they twitch to slow, but the are still twitching.
On an 8RM set both muscle fibers are twitching but with the 8th rep failing your FT fibers have completely fatigued and now your ST Fibers are the only ones working but they twitch to slow that they can’t keep the weight from falling down. So I would think if you continued with drop sets you just keep beating the crap out of your FT Fibers cause your constantly so close to failure.
My eyelid started twitching while reading this.
You are so on-edge. You need to chill.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here, so, if by chance you are insulting me, screw you.[/quote]
Drop sets can be a useful tool (among others) once you have a solid personal foundation both physically and on the knowledge end. In other words, most people who have to ask about stuff like this have more fundamental things to concentrate on.
Do reverse drop sets, start with a weight tht your can do 8-12 reps with, then rest just long enough to ADD weight and do 6-8 reps, then ADD again and try to knock out 3+.
Will this work…who knows
Have I tried it… nope
why did I even post this… why not?
give this drop set a try and let us know how it work.
my 2 worthless cents…actually just ignore this post completely
[quote]tribunaldude wrote:
I don;t think he was insulting you.
I think he was referring to the eyelid muscle being fast-twitch.
on edge wrote:
That One Guy wrote:
on edge wrote:
djm_e22 wrote:
I used to think it was fast twitch fibers first too and still might, but from what I got out of the article was something like no matter what your ST fibers are always twitching during a set. No matter if it is 1RM or 8RM. On a heavy 1RM the ST fibers obviously are not doing much cause they twitch to slow, but the are still twitching.
On an 8RM set both muscle fibers are twitching but with the 8th rep failing your FT fibers have completely fatigued and now your ST Fibers are the only ones working but they twitch to slow that they can’t keep the weight from falling down. So I would think if you continued with drop sets you just keep beating the crap out of your FT Fibers cause your constantly so close to failure.
My eyelid started twitching while reading this.
You are so on-edge. You need to chill.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here, so, if by chance you are insulting me, screw you.
[/quote]
We all know eye-blinking/twitching is the ultimate muscle mass builder.
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
Professor X wrote:
williamj wrote:
First post here and just my 2 cents, but in my experience with drop sets I have had tremendous increases in both size and strength. I haven’t done them in a long time but have recently just started doing them again. I love drop sets!
We need specifics on “tremendous increases in both size and strength”.
How much did you weigh before. How much did you weigh after? How much did your strength increase and on what movements?
It got old on this site for new posters to claim they saw AMAZING progress but yet show no details of what “amazing” means.
1)-“I’ve made AMAZING progress on this 4-week routine!!!111 My strength is through the roof!”
= I’ve increased my working weight by 5 lbs for the first time ever (because the routine told me to do that) and I think I look a bit bigger in the mirror!
Alternative version (for guys using the ten sets of three protocol):
Look at me! I used to bench with the 35’s, now I’m using the 50’s! (omitting the fact that he is now doing 3 reps per set instead of 8 or 10 as he used to and didn’t actually get stronger at all).
2)-“I’ve had great success with doing 6 lifts per bodypart, 5 straight sets each + 3 drop-sets”
= I’ve done this for 3 workouts now and the pump is unreal! I feel totally smashed! Progress? What do you mean?
“I’ve gained 50 lbs on this routine!!!”
= I went from 120 to 170 because I finally started to eat more than 1500 calories a day and will hit a brick-wall once I get past my newbie-gains
[/quote]
I took some NOxplode for the first time in my life and I got a massive pump on my bicepz, then I hit some poses and I couldn’t tell, but I just felt bigger in front of the mirror, you’re saying that I didn’t progress? NOOOOOO!!!
I see people in the gym all the time doing nothing but getting a pump or trying some kind of extended set. These are guys who have been doing the same thing for years and seeing no gains in strength or size. These are the same guys who have a shit CNS because they never lift lower than 8-12 reps.
Learn how to lift first. Basic, simple exercises, then worry about the advanced stuff.
A lot of CSCS guys, and other strength guys, will frown on anything that doesn’t lead to increased relative strength. As a bodybuilder you don’t need to be absolutely strong…you just need to LOOK like you are strong. That is where drop sets and other extended sets come in.
The ultimate muscle builder will be the thing you aren’t doing and won’t be the thing you’ve been doing since Barney Rubble was giving you the look.
[quote]SquatDeep385 wrote:
CC,
I understand your point that drop sets don’t help with progression and I have noticed the same thing from my experiences.
I was hoping, however, you could explain to me why this is? Do you ever find “beyond failure” techniques (forced reps, drop sets, not counting RP of course) to be useful?[/quote]
Imo Rest-pause works best for progression… especially when coupled with an exercise rotation instead of doing the same exercise every session (double or triple rotation, depending on how advanced you are).
But of course as a long-time DC trainee I’m kind of biased, lol. I’m also referring to the DC-way of rest-pausing, not Mentzer RP or so.
Forced reps… Hmm. If you have a great training partner who knows how to spot, and you’re using the standard bb method, then try 'em out… Yates used them a lot, Levrone did (on btn presses and some other big exercises only, though)…
I have no training partner, so no forced reps for me. And of course you mustn’t overestimate yourself here… Or you’ll likely get injured easily.
Let’s say your max in the lift you’re drop setting is 150 pounds, and you start out with 125 pounds ? 80 percent of your max. You go to failure, then drop the weight by 30 pounds. You’re now using 95 pounds, or 63 percent of your max. If you go to failure again, and drop by another 30 pounds, you’re now at 65 pounds, or 43 percent of your max.
So, even though you just worked your ass off, you were using an insufficient load for two-thirds of the set. The external load wasn’t heavy enough to maximize motor-unit recruitment, and the fast-twitch fibers ? those that are the most primed for growth ? were shot after you went to failure with 80 percent of your max. After that, you were relying mostly on intermediate and slow-twitch fibers.
This brings home what I said earlier in this thread.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Drop sets can be a useful tool (among others) once you have a solid personal foundation both physically and on the knowledge end. In other words, most people who have to ask about stuff like this have more fundamental things to concentrate on.[/quote]
Nice comment as Mr. Tate said you cant isolate bone
If the goal is to grow then even light resistance has value if you are already extremely fatigued (drop sets, supersets w/no rest, etc). This leads to hypertrophy without strength. Also, don’t forget the importance of connective tissue strength as well as metabolic conditioning.
Take a distance runner for example. They are weak as shit but many have huge calves. Why? They have overly developed slow twitch fibers. Put them in the gym and while they lift crap for 10rm they have the conditioning to go again with little rest.
There are many ways to progress a workout and many ways to overload the body. You can increase your strength (weight goes up), you can increase the volume (reps/sets go up) or you can decrease the rest (time between goes down).
If drop sets enable you to improve metabolically so that you can drop the rest, increase your ability to lift high weight with ever increasing lactate levels, which in turn deliver a higher growth hormone response then drop sets have value.
Of course increasing “lactate” or “lactic acid” isn’t really the cause of your fatigue it’s just an easy term to use that we’ve been using for 50 years…but that’s a post for another time…
