As a bodybuilder looking for size gains, it is critical that you recognize the importance of working the muscles beyond failure from time to time. Drop sets are an excellent method — when executed correctly — of allowing you to go beyond failure.
Training to failure means you can no longer complete another repetition (full lift) before the central nervous system causes the muscles to give out once stress has reached a crescendo. And, normally, that is where the exercise ends.
With drop sets, a set of ready loaded lighter weights are on hand to immediately be used (immediately is crucial so you work beyond failure) allowing muscles which failed at heavy weights to continue working and fatiguing more muscle fibres with lighter weights rather than stopping.
Using an Olympic bar and plates, on an exercise such as the squats or bench press, it’s common practice for the lifter to have training partners remove the weight for them whilst still holding the weight, which is sometimes called ‘the stripping method’.
You can do two to three drop sets if you wish, but I recommend one to be enough for the steroid free trainee. There is a fine line between giving the central nervous system a positive shock and creating growth from it, and shocking it so much it shuts down and leads to overtraining.
Drop sets can be performed on any exercise imaginable from free weights exercises to machine exercises. Remember, the key to success in bodybuilding is not doing the same thing over and over again but by using these special techniques to provide a constructive shock to the system once in a while.