When you can't add another rep, should you use rest-pause or drop sets?
Rest-Pause or Drop Sets When Your Reps Stall? An 8-Week Trial in 23 Lifters
· By Anthony Falcone
Verdict: Keep it, with a caveat. Use whichever you prefer. In 8 weeks, both groups gained about the same lean mass and both got stronger on the bench, with no significant difference between methods. The trial was small and short and had no plain-sets group, so it can't say either beats simply training hard.
What the researchers did
Adding reps at the same weight is a common way to progress, until the reps stop going up. Drop sets (lower the weight after failure and keep going) and rest-pause (rest a few seconds after failure, then squeeze out more reps with the same weight) are two popular ways to push past that point. This trial asked whether the choice between them matters.
The researchers randomised 23 trained adults to drop sets (11 people) or rest-pause (12 people). Everyone did the same supervised upper-body session twice a week for 8 weeks: seven exercises from bench press to biceps curl, three sets each, at 80% of their starting one-rep max, with 2 minutes' rest between sets. Every set went to failure.
The techniques only came in when the reps stalled. First on the last set of an exercise: the drop-set group cut the weight by 20% and carried on to failure again; the rest-pause group paused for 30 seconds and carried on with the same weight. When that stopped helping, the same technique was added to the second-to-last set as well. Each person also had one lighter recovery week, with loads cut by 30% and no sets to failure, timed to their own fatigue.
Everyone followed a prescribed diet supervised by a sports-nutrition physician: 39 kcal per kg of fat-free mass, 2.2 g of protein per kg of body weight and 1 g of fat per kg, the rest from carbohydrate. Body composition was measured with a DXA scan, and strength with a one-rep max bench press.
What they found
Both groups gained lean soft tissue: 1.4 kg with drop sets and 1.2 kg with rest-pause. The difference between them was nowhere near significant (p = 0.688). Upper-body lean tissue rose by 1.0 kg and 0.8 kg. Fat mass barely moved in either group, which the authors put down to the diet not being designed for weight loss and the modest training volume.
Bench press 1RM went up 12.3 kg with drop sets and 9.5 kg with rest-pause. That gap leaned towards drop sets but didn't reach significance (p = 0.086), and the authors note a real difference can't be ruled out with this few people.
Weekly training volume (sets × reps × load) ended up similar in the two groups. The authors' reading: as long as the training stays hard and heavy enough, the exact trick you use to add reps seems to matter less than keeping the overload going.
How sure can we be?
Not very. It was a convenience sample with no power calculation beforehand, so small differences between methods could easily be missed. Eight weeks is short, and the authors point out that the techniques were only in use for a limited part of it, so any longer-term difference between them is untested.
DXA counts all non-fat tissue, so the lean-tissue gains are a rough stand-in for muscle, not a direct measurement. And there was no group doing straight sets, so the trial compares the two techniques with each other, not with plain hard training. One author formerly sat on the scientific advisory board of a fitness-equipment maker; the study lists support from the University of Málaga and no company funding.
What this means for you
- Progress by adding reps at a fixed weight first. Reach for a drop set or rest-pause only when the reps stop going up.
- Pick the one you like and can recover from: in this trial both gave similar lean-mass gains and both raised the bench press.
- If you use drop sets, the trial dropped the weight by 20%; for rest-pause, it paused 30 seconds. Start on the last set only.
- Plan a lighter week when reps stall across most exercises or you feel run down; the trial cut loads by 30% and stopped training to failure that week.
How much to trust it
- The authors' own: only 8 weeks; a convenience sample with no power calculation, so a real difference in bench press strength (p = 0.086) can't be ruled out; food intake was prescribed but not analysed; DXA estimates fat-free tissue rather than muscle; and loads were not raised as people got stronger.
- No group trained with straight sets only, so the trial can't tell you whether either technique beats simply training hard to failure.
- Young, trained, mostly male lifters (20 of 23 were men), upper body only. The findings may not apply to women, beginners, older adults or leg training.
- Strength was tested on one lift, the bench press.
- No company funding; the study lists support from the University of Málaga. One author (Schoenfeld) formerly served on the scientific advisory board of Tonal, a fitness-equipment maker; another reports speaking fees on exercise science.
The study
Vargas-Molina S, García-Palumbo A, Petro JL, Bonilla DA, García-Sillero M, Carbone L, Schoenfeld BJ, Benítez-Porres J. Comparison of Repetition-Based Progressive-Overload Strategies in Resistance Training: Rest-Pause Versus Drop Sets. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 2026. doi.org/10.1111/sms.70327
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