Dosage, dosage, dosage. If you’re into bodybuilding or powerlifting, you know that discussing the optimal dose of strength training is all the rage. When it comes to training volume, there’s a veritable mountain of evidence to work with — and everyone has their own stance.
This can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, there’s a tremendous amount of information being passed around about training volume.
If you need to know how many sets per muscle group per week you should be doing, the real difficulty lies in separating the wheat from the chaff; cutting through the static and getting a clear-cut answer. Luckily, that’s what you’re about to get.
What Is Volume?
In the simplest terms, the number of sets you perform within a given period of time is one way of measuring your overall training volume — the amount of work you’re cranking out during your workout program.
Volume is just one dimension of strength training. However, a wide array of scientific research has shown that training volume is perhaps the most important factor driving both muscular and neurological adaptations (as in, bulking up and getting stronger). (1)(2)
Volume vs. Frequency
If volume — measured in number of sets per week of training — is how much work you’re doing, your training frequency refers to how often you need to hit the gym to get it all done, usually within a week.
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When it comes to frequency, or dosing, of training, the data are pretty clear. Logically it stands that the more often you practice doing something, the better you get at it. This supposition holds up empirically, with most studies asserting that training a specific muscle group at least twice per week is preferable to only doing so once every seven days. (3)
Volume vs. Intensity
Intensity is a colloquialism, sure, but it also has a formal definition in exercise science: Training intensity refers to the proximity of your training volume to your 1-rep max, or how closely your working sets approach muscular failure. In the strength sports, intensity generally refers to the former. For bodybuilders, intensity is all about proximity to failure.
But no matter your sport, one thing remains constant; training intensity and training volume are inversely correlated. That is, the harder you work on each individual set, the fewer sets you can ultimately crank out.
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That’s why there’s some scientific evidence showing that even very low training volumes can elicit substantial strength gains, provided you work very hard on those few sets. (4)
For hypertrophy training, things are a bit murkier. High-intensity, close-to-failure training isn’t necessary for muscle growth, but most studies assert that you shouldn’t be doing too many easy sets, either. (5)(6)
How Many Sets Per Muscle Group You Should Do
With the groundwork laid, you might be itching to get to the heart of the question about optimal training volume. Unfortunately, there’s no crystal-clear answer regarding how many sets you should do to build muscle or increase strength. But the scientific community is undoubtedly sharpening their perspective.
For Muscle Growth
If you look at the training methods of IFBB pro bodybuilders from different eras of the sport, you’ll walk away with more questions than answers. Some athletes, like Mike Mentzer or Dorian Yates, favored very low training volumes and, at times, absurdly high intensities.
Others, like eight-time Mr. Olympia winner Lee Haney or the legendary Tom Platz, weren’t afraid to stack up set after set after set during their workouts.
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This indicates that training volume is highly personal when it comes to muscle growth and that you should experiment to some degree. That said, in a landmark paper from 2017, (1) researchers put forth a widely-accepted “optimal” range of weekly sets: Anywhere between 10 and 20 challenging sets, per muscle group, per week, should grant you a majority of your gains.
Why such a large range? Because of those person-to-person differences. Everything from muscle fiber type composition to lifestyle factors can influence how you tolerate and respond to bouts of resistance training.
For Strength
In the arena of strength gain, things are a little more neat and tidy. The general rule of thumb among strength coaches when it comes to training volume is that more is usually better, as long as you can tolerate the volume and recover from it.
This is because gaining strength isn’t a purely physiological process; you’re training the skill of, say, a picture-perfect sumo deadlift just as much as you’re teaching your muscles to contract to move the weight. Muscular strength and muscle size have a synergistic relationship as well, (7) so performing a bit more volume should elicit some more muscle mass to boot.
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So, if more is better (mostly), what’s the minimum effective dose of volume to build strength? Clinical answers vary here. Some studies have shown as few as one single set to be enough to increase 1-rep max strength, even in participants with lifting experience. (4)
Other data specifically studying powerlifters have offered a figure of three to six “working sets” per week, spread across multiple days, to be a solid starting point. Adding more work on top of that will speed things up, but not significantly. (8)
How To Organize Your Training Volume
So, you have all the numbers laid out. The next step, and perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle, is actually organizing your training volume. This means properly dividing the number of sets you perform across a week of training. Here’s how that might shape up:
For Muscle Gain
Say you’re trying to grow your wheels with bodybuilding-style leg workouts. You need to perform 10 to 20 working sets for each muscle group in your lower body. No sane person wants to slog through all of those squats and deadlifts in one day, so your best bet would be to break up the work across two dedicated leg days, like so:
Day One
- Back Squat: 4 x 8
- Romanian Deadlift: 4 x 12
- Lunge: 3 x 15
- Leg Curl: 3 x 15
- Calf Raise: 5 x 10
Day Two
- Leg Press or Hack Squat: 4 x 6
- Stiff-Legged Deadlift: 4 x 10
- Step-Up: 3 x 15
- Leg Extension: 3 x 15
- Back Extension: 3 x 15
- Calf Raise: 5 x 10
These two workouts would net you 10 or more working sets for your quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves, as well as plenty of work for the “auxiliary” muscles like your adductors or lower back.
For Strength
Organizing all the sets you perform on a weekly basis for the purpose of strength gain can be deceptively tricky. While research indicates that you can get by in strength training with a scant number of difficult sets, most powerlifting workouts will have you doing more than the minimum.
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Take Mark Rippetoe’s Texas Method program, for example. In a powerlifting-focused program, you’ll generally divide up all your movement-specific training (as in, your squats and squat accessory exercises) across your training week to increase your frequency of practice:
Day One
- Back Squat: 5 x 5
Day Two
- Back Squat: 2 x 5
Day Three
- Back Squat: 1 x 5 or 1 x 1
In a program like the Texas Method, you perform the squat thrice per week, each with different loading parameters. This is a form of what’s called daily undulating periodization, which entails changing your set and rep scheme on a workout-to-workout basis.
[Read More: Nail the Front Squat for Leg Muscle and Power]
From a volume perspective, the purpose here is two-fold: You’re only doing eight sets per week, but dividing them up allows you to work at a range of intensities. Further, performing only a few sets at a time in a given workout saves you some energy so you can focus on refining your technique.
Can You Do Too Many Sets?
In the arena of resistance training, you can absolutely have too much of a good thing. There’s nothing inherently wrong with performing more work over time — doing so is actually required if you want to build up your muscular endurance.
However, in the same way that further increasing your calories during a “dirty bulk” is more than likely just going to increase your body fat rather than your muscle mass, additional “junk volume” can predispose you to recovery issues or even injury in some cases.
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The exact value of “too many sets” differs from person to person. Informally, experts like Dr. Mike Israetel or coach Jeff Nippard recommend monitoring your volume closely and assessing its impact on your recovery.
If you’re doing 20 or more hard sets per body part per week, and you find it difficult to maintain progressive overload by adding weight to your exercises over time, you might be overdoing it.
The same goes for your muscle recovery; if you notice more aches and pains than usual, or feel lethargic, unmotivated, or downtrodden consistently, you may be veering into overtraining territory. (9)(10)
FAQs
Mastering your training volume can make, or break, your results. Here are a few common questions you might have about performing the correct number of sets per muscle group per week.
Research shows that between 10 and 20 sets for an individual muscle group or body part is effective for most individuals who want to build muscle. To build strength, you can get by with doing less as long as you work very hard and maintain high intensity.
“Too much” is a complicated label. Your body is exceptionally versatile and can adapt to plenty of different stressors, including extra bouts of resistance training if endurance is your goal. That said, most of the available data would agree that 30 weekly sets for an individual muscle group is excessive or even redundant.
References
- Schoenfeld, B. J., Ogborn, D., & Krieger, J. W. (2017). Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of sports sciences, 35(11), 1073–1082.
- Colquhoun, Ryan J.1; Gai, Christopher M.2; Aguilar, Danielle2; Bove, Daniel2; Dolan, Jeffrey2; Vargas, Andres2; Couvillion, Kaylee2; Jenkins, Nathaniel D.M.1; Campbell, Bill I.2. Training Volume, Not Frequency, Indicative of Maximal Strength Adaptations to Resistance Training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 32(5):p 1207-1213, May 2018. | DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000002414
- Schoenfeld, B. J., Ogborn, D., & Krieger, J. W. (2016). Effects of Resistance Training Frequency on Measures of Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 46(11), 1689–1697.
- Androulakis-Korakakis, P., Fisher, J. P., & Steele, J. (2020). The Minimum Effective Training Dose Required to Increase 1RM Strength in Resistance-Trained Men: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 50(4), 751–765.
- Nóbrega SR, Libardi CA. Is Resistance Training to Muscular Failure Necessary? Front Physiol. 2016 Jan 29;7:10. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2016.00010. PMID: 26858654; PMCID: PMC4731492.
- Schoenfeld, B. J., Grgic, J., Ogborn, D., & Krieger, J. W. (2017). Strength and Hypertrophy Adaptations Between Low- vs. High-Load Resistance Training: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 31(12), 3508–3523.
- Akagi, R., Kanehisa, H., Kawakami, Y., & Fukunaga, T. (2008). Establishing a new index of muscle cross-sectional area and its relationship with isometric muscle strength. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 22(1), 82–87.
- Androulakis-Korakakis, P., Michalopoulos, N., Fisher, J. P., Keogh, J., Loenneke, J. P., Helms, E., Wolf, M., Nuckols, G., & Steele, J. (2021). The Minimum Effective Training Dose Required for 1RM Strength in Powerlifters. Frontiers in sports and active living, 3, 713655.
- Hedelin, R., Kenttä, G., Wiklund, U., Bjerle, P., & Henriksson-Larsén, K. (2000). Short-term overtraining: effects on performance, circulatory responses, and heart rate variability. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 32(8), 1480–1484.
- Karen M. Myrick, Overtraining and Overreaching Syndrome in Athletes, The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, Volume 11, Issue 10, 2015, Pages 1018-1022, ISSN 1555-4155.
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