On the whole, the more sets people do in workouts, the more strength, endurance, and muscle they gain. If you want to maximize strength and muscle gain or break through a plateau, then you want to do more sets, not less.
If you're trying to build muscle and get bigger, doing sets of 3 or sets of 5 or sets of 10 will ALL help you get bigger, if you're eating enough to get bigger! If you're trying to lose weight, it doesn't matter if you do sets of 15 or sets of 5 if you are consistently overeating by 1,000 calories a day.
Generally, exercises with higher reps are used to improve muscular endurance, while higher weights with fewer reps are used to increase muscle size and strength.
If you've been training properly for less than a year, perform 10-15 sets per muscle group per week. If you've been training properly for one to five years, perform 15-20 sets per week. If you're very advanced and have been training properly for over five years, perform 20-25 sets per week.
Are 3 sets of exercises enough for building muscle? Building muscle, or hypertrophy, requires a greater training volume than just three sets. If you have some training experience and you are looking to build muscle, you would do 3 to 6 sets of each exercise and you would aim for two exercises per body part.
He took a deeper look into the previous meta-analysis I mentioned and found that limit to be roughly 10 sets per muscle group. So for example, on your chest day, performing over 10 hard sets dedicated to your chest will likely just begin to provide diminishing returns and start to impair your recovery.
So, How Many Sets to Build Muscle? The ideal training volume for building muscle is around 9–18 sets per muscle per week. And if you're choosing good lifts, doing 6–20 reps per set, and bringing those sets within 1–2 reps of failure, the bottom end of that range is often enough to maximize muscle growth.
While there's a time and a place for training to repetition failure, doing so too often has been scientifically proven to result in diminished gains in strength, power and hypertrophy.
Conclusion. Training volume that causes the most muscle growth seems to be around 5 sets per muscle group, per session, 10-30 sets per muscle group per week (but 20 + sets is unnecessary for MOST lifters), which means training 2-5 times per week will allow most lifters to hit their optimal training volume.
Lifting heavier weight (approximately 70-75% of your one-rep max) activates Type 2 or “fast twitch” muscle fibers, which are important in developing strength and promoting hypertrophy (muscle growth along with an increase in the size of muscle cells).
A loaded barbell isn't the only path to building muscle. According to a new study published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, you don't have to lift super heavy in order to boost strength and gain muscle. As long as you go to failure, it doesn't matter how much weight you lift.
Sets of anywhere from 4–40 reps will stimulate muscle growth quite well, but most research shows that doing 6–20 reps per set is the most efficient way to build muscle. Bodybuilders often use the middle of that range, favouring 8–12 reps per set.
The 5×5 is a simple and effective barbell training program that's well suited for beginner and intermediate lifters. The 5×5 focuses on key barbell movements for a full body workout that will build strength and muscle, as well as your athletic performance and a host of other benefits.
Up to 10 sets per muscle and week, there seems to be a dose-response relationship, where more sets mean greater muscle growth and strength increases. Up to about 15–20 sets per muscle and week can possibly lead to even better results for a trained person with good recovery capabilities.
Once you have stimulated a muscle to grow, doing more sets will not stimulate the muscle any further, but will only take away from your ability to recover from your workout.
Sets & Reps: Rules To Follow To Get Ripped
Ideally, you would train each muscle group with both lower and high rep training: Performing 2-5 sets of 5-10 reps per muscle group with heavier loads, per week, may be enough to help retain strength during the diet phase.
It is called 10x10, or German volume training (GVT). Here's what you'll be doing: 10 sets of 10 reps (100 reps total) of a single exercise, along with just a little bit of extra accessory work. Besides being super-simple, GVT is super-effective and has been used for decades to boost muscle growth.
One study suggests the optimal training volume is as high as 45 sets, the next says doing more than 10 sets is counterproductive and reduces your gains.
Be sure to keep your weekly training volume (the total of your working sets) for chest between 12-16 total reps. If you find out you are performing more than 20 sets per week, there is a very good chance you are doing TOO much and are actually diminishing your bodies ability to build new muscle mass.
Repetition-based sets can build both muscular strength and endurance. Generally, low reps (two to six) will build muscle strength. If you want more muscle growth, 6 to 12 repetitions build muscle mass. More than 12 reps build muscular endurance.
Research into muscle hypertrophy tells us that at least 10 sets per muscle and week are necessary to optimize muscle growth. This is based on the results from a meta-analysis of 15 different training studies.