Paul Carter posted about these recently, and I remember his original article from 6-7 years ago.
Micro Dropsets are a combination basically of Dropsets with Rest-Pause Training.
Traditional drop sets don’t have any advantage over straight sets for hypertrophy. The way they are usually performed, you do a set day of 10 reps, strip off a bunch of weight, do another set of 8-10 reps, strip off weight, etc
While this is definitely fatiguing and you get a pump, it’s an inefficient way to get in meaningful, growth-producing reps.
In contrast, Rest Pause Training, in which you do multiple subsets with the same heavy weight, research shows this can be superior for muscle and strength gains.
Micro Dropsets are a kind of hybrid. You could call it Rest Pause, but you’re taking very small drops in weight to continue getting hard reps in.
Do a set to failure, 6-10 reps.
But only reduce the weight by an incremental amount, say 5%.
Do another set, 2-3 reps
Reduce weight.
Do a final set, 2-3 sets.
In a proper Micro Dropset then, you can get about 10 total stimulating reps.
You are only resting as long as it takes you to change the weight (about 30 seconds at most)
Basically the equivalent of performing 2 straight sets to failure
This works fantastic for low volume training. You only need to do the above ONE Time. It’s an efficient way to train, with objective measurement of strength gains.
I typically like to do this for one exercise each workout. I train fairly low volume (this MicroDrop on weighted pull-ups was the only set I did for this exercise) and the gains are consistent.
As always, progressive overload does apply.
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