Dear jwjpilot,
1. I am on my 2nd HST cycle and want to add negatives on the exercises I can (I workout alone) for the last 2 weeks of 5's.
>>> I'm curious - how many weeks of 5s is planned for this cycle?
2. So on the exercises where I do negatives is it best to also do dropsets, or is the negative best on its own?
>>>> The Negs are for milking the primary factor of growth stimulus - mechanical tension. The drop sets are for milking secondary factors of growth stimulus - metabolite build-up, hypoxia. So, it is ok to do both. I suspect you are asking this question from a high-intensity angle, where Negs and Drop Sets are taken to failure on this premise increasing the "intensity", and from a high-intensity perspective, it is unwise to add too many "intensifying" techniques in case of over-training. Fret not. Failure is not a prerequisite on the Negs nor the drop sets in HST. They are done primarily for milking primary and secondary factors of growth stimulation.
3. On that line of thought what would be ideal for the last 2 weeks of 5's - Dropsets, or Negatives, or Negatives+Dropsets?
>>>> To my understanding, after two weeks of 5s, we progress to two weeks of Negs, but if Negs cannot be properly done e.g. because one is training alone, another two week of 5s can follow the first week of 5s. In this case, we won't really be bothering with Negs would we? Unless we did things like dumbbell curls where the non-working hand aided the working hand in the concentric rep before letting it bear the full brunt on the eccentric phase.... or push-presses for delts where with some leg power we boost a heavy weight through the concentric phase only to let the delts fight it on the negative.... but this sort of approach is perhaps, risking too much injury.... and so we do another two weeks of 5s in place of two weeks of Negs.
Dropsets can be performed in the 10s, 5s and Negs phase, and if we aren't doing Negs but more 5s, we still continue with the drop sets. There had been recent posts on dropsets (how much, how frequent) and they are probably worth reading.
Godspeed, and happy HSTing
