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.
Number of sets is also dependent on goals. A lifter looking to improve strength may do 4 to 6 sets, while someone who wants to work on muscular endurance may do 2 to 3 sets. For a full-body workout, spend another day focusing on legs and shoulders by doing squats, lunges, and overhead presses.
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.
5×5 routines are commonly used during the mass phases of strength training programs because they allow us to lift fairly heavy (over 80% of 1-rep max) while still getting in enough overall volume to build muscle mass. And they're popular because they work. You can indeed build muscle with 5×5 workouts.
You should be aiming for 10-20 sets per muscle group per week split into two sessions. This will keep you fresh, avoiding potential over-training and should give you better gains. Aim for each workout to consist of 15-25 sets total but with less than 10 sets for a specific muscle group on one day.
Three sets are not enough to build muscle. Increasing the number of sets of each exercise, even while only performing 10 reps, can build muscle because you will be pushing your muscles to fatigue because they are under tension longer. Don't stop at 3 sets but complete 4 or 6 or 8.
The low number of repetitions means you'll be lifting very heavy weights relative to your current strength level and body size. This heavy training teaches your nervous system to maximally recruit each muscle fiber, meaning you can produce more force with the same muscle fibers over time.
Every StrongLifts 5×5 workout starts with 5 sets of squats. Squats are a great lift for building muscle in your quads and glutes, which are the two biggest muscles in your body. By emphasizing those muscles, you can indeed build quite a lot of overall muscle mass.
The 5x5 workout is primarily for hypertrophy, or, muscle growth. For beginning to experienced lifters, 5x5 is appropriate for those who want to increase both upper body and lower body strength, and also muscle mass.
Anything between about 5–40 reps per set (between about 40–85% of 1RM) has been shown to be effective to build muscle. More or fewer reps than that and the muscle-building effect per set decreases somewhat. For practical reasons, it is a good rule of thumb to aim for about 8–15 reps per set for muscle growth.
“Performing 3 sets of 12 reps for the exercises your workout is likely killing your gains. Now, don't get me wrong… I actually like the 10-12 rep range when it comes to building muscle and when the goal is muscle hypertrophy.
Reasoning: A moderate range of 4 sets of 8 reps allows the lifter to handle loads that stress the muscle quickly while facilitating sufficient time under tension.
If your objective is strength or power (think: heavy lifting), the textbook advice is to perform 3 to 5 sets of 2 to 6 reps per exercise. For hypertrophy (building muscle), the sweet spot is 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 12 reps.
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.
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.
If you know what your one-rep max on the big lifts is, start 5x5 with around 65 percent of that max.
Don't neglect your overall fitness
You might be tempted to skip your usual cardio sessions when you're bulking. However, it is important to keep up your overall health and fitness throughout the process. You don't have to do a lot – just aim for about 2 20-30-minute sessions a week.
With all that said, you can expect a workout with two or three exercises done 5×5 style to last anywhere from 30–60 minutes. One popular method of employing 5×5 is to do three exercises in a session, using 5×5 to train the whole body.
StrongLifts 5x5 is a great beginner's program, but may not be a great choice for intermediate and advanced lifters. Simplicity and practice pays off for the less-experienced individual, but lifters already aged with iron need a bit more programming complexity to make continued gains in size and strength.
For me, doing 5x5 at 80% for squat, bench press and deadlift would take about 2–2 1/2 hours, assuming I could finish it at all. The deadlift part at the end would be hell and probably not doable. 5x5 at 70% would take about 1 1/2-2 hours. 5x5 at 60% would take about 30–60 minutes.
Furthermore, in terms of chronic adaptations, resting 3-5 minutes between sets produced greater increases in absolute strength, due to higher intensities and volumes of training. Similarly, higher levels of muscular power were demonstrated over multiple sets with 3 or 5 minutes versus 1 minute of rest between sets.
Failure training shouldn't be used on every set. If you use failure training, do so only on the last set of an exercise, and perhaps only on a hypertrophy day. Individuals using "beyond failure" intensity techniques should factor in additional rest when doing so. Allow your body to recover!
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.