How To Do Drop Sets Without Weights

Push your shoulders, chest, and triceps to their limit with a great home workout

Post includes the lowdown on drop sets without weights, how best to utilise them, and a muscle-boosting 4 move workout

Drop sets are a fantastic tool for helping to build muscle. They’re a great practise to follow for eking out that little bit more, and bodybuilders regularly follow this principle. Performing a set with heavy weights, then immediately grabbing some lighter ones and cranking out another set, is a great way to break out of a plateau and keep building muscle.

But how can this principle be adapted to training at home? This question becomes a bit more difficult to answer when a plethora of weights aren’t available to you. Well, there’s a few ways you can adapt drop set training to your home gym setup.

How to do drop sets without weights

Method 1 – Weighted Vest (or Loaded Backpack)

The first method for doing drop sets without weights, which is very easy to follow, is to swap the weights with something that you can wear or strap onto your back. A weighted vest is a great example of this, or if you don’t own one of those, a loaded backpack can do a great job.

A lot of possibilities open up to you once you start with weighted vest training. For example, performing a set of push-ups while wearing the vest, before quickly dropping the vest on the floor and performing some more reps with just your body weight, is an obvious and easy-to-follow routine.

But push-ups aren’t the only move that you can adapt to include drop sets. Pull-ups, squats and lunges are all great compound moves that you should consider giving this a try on.

I’ll perform giant sets with exercises like the squat, by first having a weighted vest, loaded backpack and a barbell on me. Once I’ve done a set, I’ll drop one of the items, then crank out another set, drop another item, and so on until I’m barely able to do a few reps with just my own bodyweight!! You could do this with quite a few exercises too, not just the squat.

Method 2 – Mechanical Advantage Drop Sets

Another great way to perform drop sets without using weights is by performing different variations of the same move, in a sequence, without rest. For example, if you’re doing pull-ups and have hit a bit of a plateau, focusing on the variation where you are at your weakest and doing that first will really help to strengthen those specific muscles, and as a result break out of that plateau.

Typically a wide-grip pull-up is more difficult for a person to do than a narrow-grip pull-up or a chin-up. So performing that first allows you to really focus on that variation & those muscles. Then you can ‘drop’ the difficulty slightly by immediately performing an easier variation afterwards, such as the narrow-grip pull-up.

A great mechanical advantage drop set can typically use as many as 4 variations of the same move. You could use something like this:

1. wide-grip pull-ups
2. narrow-grip pull-ups
3. neutral-grip pull-ups
4. chin-ups

This helps strengthen your weaker points as well as hit as many of your muscle fibres as possible. Bear in mind that a huge drop set like this is pretty taxing, so you wouldn’t want to do lots of these types of drop sets in a single workout. Multiple drop sets with just 2 variations might be an easier proposition for a single session however.

Method 3 – Resistance Bands

The third method you can try to really upgrade your workout routine is to use resistance bands. You can really test yourself by using bands of different strengths for the same exercise.

Here’s an example: perform some curls with a stronger resistance band held in your hands and under your feet. As soon as you’re done, swap it for a slightly weaker band. This means you can crank out some great drop sets with minimal thought or elaboration, whether you’re performing it with just 2 different strength bands, or 3, or 4…

You don’t just have to stop at curls though. All kinds of moves such as the squat, shoulder press, push-up, triceps extension, and so on can all be adapted to resistance band training. And it keeps things really simple.

Drop Set Push Workout

Now, here’s an excellent example of a workout that includes drop sets and make things really challenging. It’s a fairly quick routine, incorporating just 4 moves, because drop sets are pretty exhausting. Trust me, you’ll be knackered by the time you’re done.

This workout incorporates the weighted vest, but as stated above, use a loaded backpack if you don’t own a vest. Perform each drop set a total of 3 times, followed by 1 minute rest.

1. Raised-leg push-ups: With your feet placed on a raised platform (such as a stool), perform as many reps as you can while wearing the vest, before dropping the vest off and cranking out another set without rest.
2. Standard push-ups: Do away with the stool and repeat the above, but with your feet on the floor.
3. Raised-torso push-ups: This time place your hands onto a raised object (the stool again!), so that your torso is raised and your feet are on the floor. Lower your chest to the stool, before pushing back up. Once you can’t do any more reps, drop the vest and go again.
4. Diamond push-ups: In a push-up position with your hands almost touching underneath you, bust out some more push-ups to failure, then drop the vest and go again.

It’s not a long routine, but because all the moves are drop sets, your muscles will be taxed a lot more. But the benefits are definitely worth it. Try this workout at home, and keep tracking your progress so that you’re increasing the amount of reps you’re doing each time you hit this workout.

Remember: you can adapt any movement to include drop sets, not just what I’ve put into a workout here. Start incorporating drop sets without weights into all of your training routines, and you’ll start reaping rewards before you know it.

Check out some more great content below! More workouts coming soon, until then take it easy.