Set progression for maximum muscle growth

• Set progression is the most effective way to increase training volume.
• Cyclical adjustment of volume is essential for sustainable muscle building.

Continuous muscle growth through set progression

If you want to continuously achieve good results in muscle building, you should definitely incorporate a well-planned set progression into your training.

In an earlier article, we already discussed the basis for this: optimal training volume.

However, this optimal volume changes over time. In the long run, the body gets used to a given load, which is a constant training volume.

To continue to make good progress, the load must therefore increase over time. Technically speaking, the optimal training volume increases. So if you want to achieve optimal results, you have to increase your training volume every week.

But of course, you can't train harder and with more volume every week ad infinitum. After a few months or years you would be in the gym 24 hours a day and would have no possibility to increase the training volume even further.

Training cycles for sustainable progression

To avoid this situation, the training should be divided into cycles. Within a cycle of about 4-6 weeks, the training volume can be steadily increased. This is followed by a so-called deload. This is a phase of low load, which reduces the fatigue accumulated in the cycle.

The level of training volume during a deload should be low enough to fully dissipate the fatigue accumulated over the cycle. At the same time, it should still be high enough to prevent muscle breakdown.

Therefore, the requirement for optimal muscle growth is that the training volume be increased during a training cycle. Now, of course, this raises the question of how the training volume should be increased in order to achieve the best results.

To quickly reiterate, training volume is defined as the number of sets x reps x weight. However, it is often simply described as the "sum of sets" because the amount of sets has the greatest effect on the total work done and therefore the amount of training stimulus.

The training volume can therefore be increased by increasing the number of sets, number of reps, and/or weight. Many leading experts, such as Dr. James Hoffmann and Dr. Mike Israetel, refer to the number of sets as the most important variable to adjust for muscle building training.

Example of a good set progression for the quadriceps

In this example, the quads are trained over a five-week training cycle with squats, leg presses, and leg extensions.

In week 1, comparatively few sets are used. Per week, the total sets for the muscle group are then increased by two each until week 4, when the peak is reached. This is followed by the deload week, with a volume that is below the first week.

	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5
Squats	3 Sets	4 Sets	4 Sets	5 Sets	2 Sets
Leg Presses	3 Sets	3 Sets	4 Sets	5 Sets	2 Sets
Leg Extensions	2 Sets	3 Sets	4 Sets	4 Sets	1 Set
Total	8 Sets	10 Sets	12 Sets	14 Sets	5 Sets

Combining set progression with weight progression

Thus, the training volume per week, per training session, and mostly per exercise increases and the body is faced with a greater challenge every week.

In addition, however, the volume of each set should also be increased. This can be achieved by increasing the weight every week in addition to the sets. We will explain exactly how this works in more detail in a later blog article.