If you're a beginner, you can start with 3 full-body workouts per week, doing 3–6 sets per muscle each workout. As an intermediate, you might want to use a workout split that trains your muscles twice per week, doing 6–8 sets per muscle per workout.
Research suggests more than 5 sets/muscle group/session yield no further improvement (and there may be a decrease in improvement above 8 sets), and there are even diminishing returns demonstrated when increasing from 3 to 4 to 5 sets/muscle group/session. With optimal frequency being about 2x/week/muscle group.
The rough rule of thumb is at least 10 sets per week, near to failure. There's a nearly linear response in this range, where going from 5 sets to 10 sets will almost double your muscle growth.
Best Rep Range for Muscle Growth
One thing that we do know based on research and decades of anecdotal reports from bodybuilders is that rep ranges of about 8-12 reps per set seem to be the sweet spot for building muscle. Reps of 6 or less also seem to be best for building strength.
Yes, 4 sets of 8 reps is the best routine for gaining muscle mass. This type of training allows you to go heavy without fatiguing your muscles, which helps to increase your muscle growth and strength over time. Additionally, this routine works the entire body equally and requires relatively little equipment or space.
Train like a bodybuilder: If you're looking to maximize muscle size, target 8-12 reps per set (on average) and choose multijoint movements like the bench press, squat, overhead press, bent-over row, and deadlift, which recruit more total muscle mass than single-joint moves, thus allowing you to lift heavier weights.
This holds that regardless of whether you're trying to build muscle, strength, power, or endurance, performing three sets of 10 reps per exercise is a good place to start. The scheme mostly works, especially if you're just starting out with strength training—because everything works in the beginning.
4 to 8 sets per muscle per week is now your minimum. If that's what you were doing as a beginner, you'll want to aim for 8 to 15 sets per muscle per week. At this point, your weekly volume will be much more manageable if you train three to five days a week, working each muscle at least twice.
Rest between set durations should be based on sets/exercise (volume), and not load or training goal. General recommendations include moderate (2 min) rest between sets if performing 2 sets/exercise, long rest (3 min) if performing 3 sets/exercise, and very long rest (> 4 min) if performing 4 sets or more/exercise.
On the other hand, Sheridan says that beginners just looking to tone up might aim for a maximum of 20 reps per set. “If you can implement above 20 reps, there is a chance that you are practicing with light or easy weights, which will not help you improve or grow,” he warns.
The Minimum Effective Volume (MEV) for biceps requires you to perform at least eight sets of direct bicep workouts per week. It means that you need to complete eight sets of biceps throughout the week.
Referring to a more recent systematic review, it found: The best hypertrophy results came from 30-40 sets per muscle per week. A minimum effective dose of 4 sets per muscle group per week. Somewhere around 10-20 sets per week still delivered good hypertrophy results.
Training to failure for one set per exercise elicits twice the strength gains as not training to failure. Increasing the number of sets taken to failure from one set to two, three or four provides no more benefit than doing just one set to failure.
Sure, you could do a full-focused chest day every week, but there are a few reasons why we wouldn't recommend this. Firstly, we know that the sweet spot for gains is training each muscle group twice a week. If you're only doing one chest workout a week, that's some serious gains you're missing out on.
The Ideal Ab Workout Frequency
For someone who is new to working out (or at least working out their abs), a goal of completing 12-16 challenging sets (of 8-12 repetitions) in their ab workouts per week may be sufficient to produce gains in strength and muscle volume.
A moderate repetition scheme with moderate loads (from 8 to 12 repetitions per set with 60% to 80% of 1RM) optimizes hypertrophic gains. A high repetition scheme with light loads (15+ repetitions per set with loads below 60% of 1RM) optimizes local muscular endurance improvements.
Downtime between workouts (whether you're lifting, doing cardio or training for a sport) is when our bodies have a chance to actually build muscle. Strenuous workouts cause muscle breakdown, while rest allows our bodies to build it back up.
WHAT IS HYPERTROPHY? Muscle hypertrophy (known simply as hypertrophy) is an increase in the size of a muscle, or its cross- sectional area attributed to an increase in the size and/ or number of myofibrils (actin and myosin) within a given muscle fiber.
For example, you might perform heavy squats and leg presses in the 4-6 rep range to build strength and size, then follow up with higher-rep sets of lunges, step-ups, or leg curls in the 10-15 rep range for muscular endurance and shaping.
Somewhere between 3-6 sets of 7-12 reps is a good rule of thumb. However, there are a number of different approaches to hypertrophy training that will diverge from this. For example, performing 8 sets of 3 reps rather than 3 sets of 8 reps, with less rest time, has been shown to be an effective technique.
Maintaining muscle mass at the gym. A recent study looked at 34 regular training male lifters and amazingly discovered that just 1 set per muscle group (with more for back and legs) was enough to maintain muscle mass. And obviously, the researchers noted that for significant muscle gains, a longer duration is better.
TO RECAP, aim for 3-5 sets in the following rep rangers per exercise based on your goals: Endurance: 12+ reps per set. Hypertrophy (bigger muscles): 6-12 reps per set. Strength (dense, powerful muscle): 1-5 reps per set.
Do 3 sets of 10 reps 2 or 3 times per week. The benefit of this approach is you are working the muscles more frequently, increasing the stress on the muscle to cause muscle burn and stimulate growth. This is not a conventional approach to muscle growth, but we have found it does work.
Best Rep Ranges to Build Muscle Mass: Key Takeaways
The "low-rep range" is usually between 1 and 5 reps per set with 80+% of your one-rep max. A "moderate-rep range" is 6-12 reps per set using loads between 60% and 80% of your one-rep max.