The perpetual question everyone wants to know, but don’t want to hear the ‘it depends’ answer.
There are multiple factors that influence how many sets you need.
Getting into the nuances of each of these would take an entire course. In fact, we spend three days talking about the last two points in the context of muscle growth in our Hypertrophy Camp. So for now we’ll focus on the general principles you’ll need to get a foundational understanding of how these will affect the number of sets you might want to aim for.
The simple truth is that some people respond more or less than others to the same training. Whether that is due to genetics, current conditioning levels, or other reasons. So there will be some variability here that will require you to train, test, track, and assess how you respond to variables. There isn’t much else to say here other than the proverb “F Around & Find Out”. But the following factors can help you get pretty close to start testing, rather than just picking a random number of sets.
For the purpose of this article, ‘goal’ means maximizing hypertrophy, maintaining muscle, or maximizing fat loss. Performance goals (strength, conditioning, etc.) require additional considerations that will not be covered here.
We know from the available evidence that it takes MUCH less volume of stimulus to maintain muscle than it does to maximally stimulate growth. Depending on what papers you look at, muscle mass can be maintained with as little as 6-8 sets per week (HARD sets, not 10 RIR). But even that will be influenced by factors #3 and #4.
The ‘sets’ to maximize muscle growth is still a bit up in the air even with the plethora of publications over the past several years. All we do know is that there is a generally diminishing return per set (meaning you get less ‘growth’ from your 20th set than your 10th).
The general principles we need to know are:
Not all exercises are equivalent, as far as ‘volume’ and stimulus are concerned. Even when looking at exercises for a single body part, the characteristics of those exercises affect the magnitude of stimulus they will contribute and their recovery demand.
Since we’re focusing on “how many sets you need” and not “how many sets can you survive”, we’ll just look at the first four factors.
Here is a guide on how each factor will affect the number of sets you’ll need to accomplish.
Muscle Length: More Lengthened = Fewer Sets
Muscle Length: Less Lengthened = More Sets
Resistance Challenge: More Lengthened Biased = Fewer Sets
Resistance Challenge: Less Lengthened Biased = More Sets
Specificity: More Specific = Fewer Sets
Specificity: Less Specific = More Sets
*Stability challenge is only relevant if it is significant enough to limit load and/or performance.
If it is not a limiter = no effect
If it is a limiter = More sets (or just choose a different option if better ones are available)
If you want to save some time, now that you have the guidelines above you could skip to the Programming section as the sections below are mostly examples of how these factors can influence the number of sets needed.
EXAMPLE 1:
So if you were going to focus on just maintaining your elbow flexors while focusing on specialization for another body part and you were going to use an Incline Arm Supported Curl how many sets might you want to aim for each week?
Muscle Length – Very lengthened
Resistance Challenge – Very lengthened biased (depending on the degree of incline you use)
Specificity – Very specific to elbow flexors
Stability Challenge – Low (not a limiter)
All three of the characteristics for the exercise would indicate we’d require very few sets (at a high effort) to maintain muscle mass. Possibly as little as 3-4 sets per week!
That is not even factoring in any additional volume you might get for the brachialis and brachioradialis in your rows or pulldowns that you may be doing as well.
EXAMPLE 2:
With the same goal as before but changing the exercise selection to a high cable curl
Muscle Length – Shortened
Resistance Challenge – Very shortened biased
Specificity – Very specific to elbow flexors
Even though it’s very specific, we’re now changing to the opposite extreme of muscle length and resistance challenge. So if we again say the “average” minimum is 6-8 sets but 2 of our three factors now indicate we’ll need to be on the higher end, maybe we’re now looking at about 8 sets per week. Nearly DOUBLE the number of sets compared to the first example.
Taking these same examples and now applying them to a goal of hypertrophy, we’ll likely see an even greater difference in the number of sets depending on whether your target is to achieve maximum stimulus across most of the body or specialize for just a select few.
For the sake of illustration, let’s say ~14 sets is the average where we’ll see most (>80%) of our hypertrophy potential using a moderately high average effort (since going past that the incremental gains become extremely small) and using a balanced mix between lengthened and shortened exercises that have a a moderate to high specificity. These are the parameters where most of the volume-focused hypertrophy studies fall.
If we went to the extremes for exercise selection, such as in the examples above, maybe that would push our difference in sets needed to 10-12 and 24-28 (+/- 2 sets in each case for the ‘individual’ factor). That would mean roughly the same growth potential but nearly double the number of sets (and time) to accomplish it. Of course, accomplishing 20+ sets per week for multiple muscle groups will likely become limited by logistics (time) and your ability to systemically recover from that much work.
Now, this is NOT a recommendation to only do the most lengthened everything all the time because it’s “best”. It is to illustrate the drastic effect exercise selection can have on the number of sets you might need for your goal.
For example, if the goal was now to intentionally expend more energy to increase an energy deficit for fat loss, then moving towards more shortened biased exercises would fit right in. This is often an approach we’ll use for fat loss clients. Keep in a few lengthened biased exercises or sets and then shift to 60-80% shortened ones so that they can expend more energy while still being able to recover from the volume of work*.
*The resistance challenge and muscle length have different physiological impacts on recovery due to their utilization of active and passive tension mechanisms (like titin) and calcium ion exchange.
When we start getting into variables like rest, average effort, exercise order, and set/rep schemes there is a lot of additional context and nuance that must be covered to fully understand and practically apply in a program.
The VERY simplified and generalized guidelines look like this:
Shorter Rest (<2 minutes) = More Sets
Longer Rest (>2 minutes) = Fewer Sets
This mostly comes down to how much ‘work’ you are getting done in a given amount of time. If you’re resting less, you can get more sets done in a set timeframe. There’s nothing magical about 3 minutes of rest.
Higher average effort (≤3 RIR, ≥8 RPE) = Fewer Sets
Lower average effort (>3 RIR, <8 RPE) = More Sets
The rep range will affect the stimulus of the set. Just because you can achieve muscle growth with sets between 6-30 reps, doesn’t mean those are equivalent. The oversimplified version is that higher reps have increased metabolic costs and lower reps have higher demands on coordination and stability.
When hitting failure in a higher rep range you are also taking the tissue to a greater degree of fatigue on a per-fiber level.
Once we begin applying these factors with different set and rep schemes, there are additional considerations that will need to be included.
When utilizing programming architectures like same-muscle super sets (pre or post exhaust, shortened-lengthened super sets, etc) estimating the stimulatory volume can get messy and requires a LOT more detail to get into, which we cover more in the online courses.
Understanding these factors does not take away from your ability to train hard. So the “just train hard bro” argument is irrelevant and does not supersede any of the above variables.
If this seems overwhelming, that is ok. You don’t have to master all this knowledge at once and you can still have awesome training sessions and make progress without mastering every single aspect. Pick one thing, learn how to apply it. Then move on to the next one. Just like in training, all the gains don’t come at once. You add a little bit at a time.
If you want all of this knowledge already incorporated into your programming, dive into the N1 Training App and explore the dozens of programs and get access to individualized training plans.
If you are a coach and want to learn more about factors affecting volume and how to estimate it to improve your programming skills, check out the Progressive Overload Course and Program Design Course
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After taking our training analysis quiz, you’ll have a long-term plan constructed for you. Your plan will consist of several Phases. Each Phase will present you with a few suggested programs to pick from. Each time you complete a program, you’ll move on to the next Phase and a new set of programs to select from.
This allows flexibility in the split and type of program you can choose, while we strategically periodize the stimulus you’re getting to keep making consistent progress without neglecting any weak links.
For example, a long-term plan with the goal of muscle gain will still occasionally include systemic conditioning or dedicated local metabolic work to keep your recovery capacity high (so you can grow and perform better during your hypertrophy-focused programs).