How many sets per workout for maximum muscle gain?

How many sets you do per week per muscle group is very important. However, this information alone does not really tell us much about whether your weekly training volume is effective.

This is because in order to more accurately assess the effectiveness of your total training volume, we need to know how that volume is distributed over the week. For example, if you do 20 sets a week for the chest, then that's all well and good....

However, it makes a difference if you do these 20 sets all in one day (e.g. Mondays for International Chest Day) or if you divide the sets over 2, 3, or even more days in the week. How many days you do these sets per week for a given muscle group is called the training frequency.

Scientific findings

The scientific perspective on optimal training frequency has changed over the last years as follows: First it was believed that frequency does not matter at all. The only thing that mattered was how high the WEEKLY training volume was.

Then it was said that you should train with as high a frequency as possible in order to always maintain a consistently high level of muscle protein synthesis throughout the week.

This viewpoint was then revised again because some studies had been misinterpreted, and the opinion shifted again in the direction of "actually it is not so important how high the frequency is."

But now, as of March 2019, we have new, RELIABLE findings from James Krieger that are unlikely to be refuted any time soon.

James Krieger may be familiar to some readers. He has been involved in quite a number of well-designed training and nutrition studies and is the author of the Weightology Research Review. In this research review, James interprets all the major recent studies on muscle building and fat loss.

What's particularly great is that he doesn't just look at the studies in isolation. For example, he wrote a very detailed article on optimal training volume and frequency. "Very detailed" is actually an understatement. He analyzed and evaluated ALL relevant studies and meta-studies on these topics.

We will discuss these results in detail in a moment. But first, 2 important things, so that no misunderstandings arise:

Point 1: His results did not differentiate between the training experience of the study participants. Some studies were done on the untrained, some on beginners, and some on the very advanced. As such, his results refer to the average between these groups.

Point 2: It is important to know what Krieger means by "one set per muscle group". He is counting one set for each of the muscle groups heavily involved in a given exercise.

So 1 set of a squat or leg press variation counts as 1 set for the quads AND 1 set for the glutes, for example. Whereas 1 set of deadlifts, good mornings, or a hip thrusts variation would instead count as 1 set for the hamstrings and the glutes.

For another example, 1 set of a bench press variation would count as 1 set for chest and 1 set for triceps, whereas 1 set of a vertical or horizontal pull exercise would count as 1 set for the back and 1 set for the biceps.

This is not to say that this is the only correct method of quantifying the demands placed on muscle groups during specific exercises, but it is the method that is usually used in studies for the sake of simplicity.

Theoretically, you could also hold the opinion that, for example, the triceps are not used as much as the chest during the bench press and, accordingly, perhaps you should only count a set of the bench press as 0.5 sets for the triceps. Or maybe 0.4 or 0.6 sets? You see... this can obviously become very unclear very quickly...

But what has dear Krieger found out then? He has found that the number of sets per training session for a muscle group has a great influence on how effective the weekly training volume for that muscle group is.

Imagine a graph. The number of sets per training session for a muscle group are on the x-axis, and the resulting muscle gain is on the y-axis. The curve looks like an inverted U.

At first, the muscle growth increases with more sets, but at some point it reaches a maximum, and then if even more sets are done per session the muscle growth actually begins to decrease. In the worst cases, the result actually becomes muscle loss rather than muscle gain.

And when is this maximum reached? This happens at about 10 sets per session for a given muscle group. Anything beyond that is counterproductive. This is a super important insight for training plan design, because we can use it to draw some very interesting conclusions.

This means that for most people a typical bro split is not effective at all. In such a split, the muscles are usually trained only 1x per week - but often with up to 20 sets targeting the muscle in that one workout.

If we assume that 10 sets is already enough to maximize muscle gain in this session, then doing 10 more sets is obviously not optimal. The term for these extra, counterproductive sets is "junk volume." At BEST, these additional 10 sets are just a waste of time and will not give you any more muscle gain than the first 10 sets.

In the WORST case, however, it can mean that you exceed your maximum recovery capacity by doing these 10 additional sets during this session to the point where you build NO muscle at all or even lose muscle. Admittedly, the latter probably won't happen that quickly.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you can't achieve results if you only train each muscle group once a week.

If you decide on a training frequency of only 1x per week for one muscle group, then make sure that you do not exceed 10 sets for this muscle group. That would allow, for example, 4 sets of pull-ups, 3 sets of lat pulldowns, and 3 sets of rows in one training session for the back.

If you are not progressing at this low frequency, then split the sets between 2 sessions OR stick with the 10 sets in that one session and do a few sets for that muscle group on another day IN ADDITION, thus increasing the weekly training volume.

If you don't make any progress with that either and you think that you can handle even more volume, then train that muscle group again on another day.

Krieger sums it up like this: If you train a muscle group only 1x per week, then do no more than 10 sets for that muscle group.

If you train a muscle group 2x per week, do no more than 20 sets in total and no more than 10 sets per session for that muscle group.

If you train one muscle group 3 times a week - you guessed it - do no more than 30 sets in total and no more than 10 sets per session for that muscle group.

Since his analysis did not distinguish between different levels of training advancement and it can be assumed that beginners can handle less volume or at least need less volume than advanced users, as a beginner you should probably take a more conservative approach with fewer sets.

For example, as a beginner you can first try to make progress with only one exercise per muscle group with 3 sets done 2-3 times a week. When that no longer works, then you can always do more and begin to orient yourself towards the numbers Krieger suggests.

Why such a cautious approach? Well, whenever you do more sets, the risk of injury increases.

You are putting extra stress not only on your muscles, but also on your passive musculoskeletal system (i.e. your tendons, ligaments, joints and bones). If you also use less-than-optimal form on these exercises, the risk of injury increases even more as you do more sets.

Therefore, start low and increase the number of sets only when necessary. Do not make the mistake of radically increasing your volume overnight, but rather step by step from week to week. This will give your musculoskeletal system time to get used to the higher training volume.

For those who have been training for a while, Krieger recommends doing about 10-20 weekly sets per muscle group divided into 2 sessions per week. This is the range where most athletes will get pretty good results without risking major injury or having to live in the gym.

If you want a strong focus on one muscle group, Krieger recommends training that muscle group with 20-30 sets per week, split between 2-3 sessions.

Just don't forget that if you put a focus on one muscle group, you'll also have to cut back on training another muscle group so that it doesn't exhaust you too much in the aggregate.

For example, if you go from 15 to 25 sets per week for your quads, then reduce your chest volume from 20 to 10 sets per week.

In this example, you don't have to worry at all about your chest shrinking, because in most cases the maintenance volume per muscle group is much lower than the volume with which you can actually make good progress.

Problems with this conclusion

Surely some of you are wondering now: If the muscle building curve per session as a function of the number of sets really runs like an inverted U, then is it the case that the first sets for a muscle group in a session are the most valuable?

So why don't I just do an exercise for one muscle group in a session and then go straight to an exercise for another muscle group - basically train in a full-body style? That sounds like a logical conclusion.

However, there are 3 problems associated with this conclusion. The first two are quite obvious, while the 3rd is merely speculation.

Problem 1

Problem 1: The ratio of warm-up sets to working sets is very unfavorable, especially at advanced levels, if you always train with a full-body split.

For example, if you do ONLY quad-focused squats in one session, then you will be doing 2 to 3 or even 4 warm-up sets ONLY for that one exercise. When you do the leg press on another day - e.g. 2 days later - you will have to warm up again.

However, if you were to do both exercises one right after the other in the same session, you probably wouldn't need a warm-up set at all for the leg press. The muscle groups used in the leg press are already warmed up because you did the squat beforehand.

The problem with these many warm-up sets is that they rob you of time AND tire you out a bit, thus lowering your performance for your actual working sets.

Warm-up sets 100% meet the definition of junk volume. Of course, this point is not as relevant for beginners who hardly need warm-up sets because they can't move that much weight in the working sets yet.

Problem 2

Problem 2: The mind-muscle connection is not without its importance in muscle building training. And as the number of sets for a muscle group in any one session increases, your mind-muscle connection to the target muscles improves.

If you only do one exercise for that muscle group, you may end up having to move on to an exercise for another muscle group just when you have just built up a really good connection to the target muscles on the last set of the exercise.

For example, if you do lat pulldowns first and then go to the bench press, the good connection to the lats that you've built up in the lat pulldown won't really do you much good on the bench press - and if it does, you'd better check your bench press form!

However, we must not forget that the mind-muscle connection should not be overestimated. It has an influence on muscle building, but this influence is not gigantic.

Problem 3

Problem 3: Now this is the speculative point. It could be that there is a certain volume threshold per unit for a muscle group that must be exceeded for muscle hypertrophy to occur at all. If there is such a threshold, then it likely increases with the more advanced you become as an athlete.

This is what Dr. Mike Israetel suspects. So it might not be enough for a very advanced athlete to do only 3 sets of the bench press in one session for their chest - simply because the stimulus per session is too low. As I said, this is still pure speculation at this point.

So there are 3 problems that might discourage you from organizing your training with a full-body split all of the time. The question is, of course, whether the positive effects of a higher frequency per muscle group manage to outweigh these negative effects.

It probably depends on how advanced you are. If you are very advanced, you will need many warm-up sets and may need more sets for one muscle group per session to create a training stimulus strong enough to get anything done.

So in this case, a full-body split would probably not be the best choice. It is generally better to opt for an Upper/Lower or P/P/L split, for example.

However, if you are still a beginner, you will hardly need any warm-up sets and will probably only need a very few sets to exceed any existing volume per session threshold.

In that case, it may well be that a full-body plan is optimal for you. In fact, this is likely to be the case, since with such a plan you can go through the technique of the major compound exercises more often per week in order to master them faster.

By the way, don't forget that all the recommendations we've discussed so far are just averages. If you know someone who gets good results with other training strategies, it doesn't necessarily mean that they train suboptimally. It may well be that they are simply not the average person, and that what is optimal for them is a little different from what is generally optimal.

We basically assume that we are dealing with a normal distribution when it comes to topics such as the optimal training volume. This means that the vast majority of people will be close to the average.

However, there are always a few outliers who are far from average. For example, there will be people who benefit from even much more than 10 sets per session for one muscle group, as well as people who need or can handle much less.

As such, it can be useful to test out several different training styles to see what works best for you. Maybe your optimal volume is higher or lower than that of the average person, but you won't know that unless you try out these different training styles to compare results.