How Many Sets Per Muscle Group For Optimal Growth?

Ever wonder how many sets per muscle you should do? Some say 5-10 sets is enough, while others swear by 20 or even 30+ sets for optimal results.

But what does the research say? More importantly, how do we interpret the results, and what’s the consensus? Read on because we’ve broken down everything you need to know.

Key Takeaways

1. The most practical way to track your training volume is to count the weekly sets you do per muscle group.
   
   
2. The consensus is to do 10 to 20 weekly sets per muscle group to optimize muscle growth.
   
   
3. You should count indirect and direct sets when tracking volume for smaller muscles like the biceps, triceps, and shoulders.
   
   
4. Factors influencing how many sets you should do include your experience level, recovery capacity, how long you recover between sets, and what exercises you do.
   
   
5. Research recommends training each muscle twice per week and splitting the weekly 10-20 sets instead of doing them all in one workout.
   
   
6. Higher volumes (45+ sets per muscle) can bring more growth. However, that only works when study subjects focus on just a few muscles and don’t do that much training. High volumes across the board are more likely to lead to overtraining and injuries.
   
   
7. Drop sets, rest-pause, supersets, and tightly controlled rest periods can be helpful if you want to do higher volumes but don’t have as much time.
   
   
8. Log your workouts in Hevy to track your sets per muscle on a customizable graph, access 25+ free training plans for all levels, and enjoy cool features like RPE logging, automatic rest timers, and supersets.

What Is Training Volume and How Do We Measure It?

Resistance training volume measures the total work you do at the gym. Volume load is a common approach to monitor the amount of training you do on individual exercises. It works by multiplying the number of sets by the number of reps by the weight used. For instance, let’s say you lift 135 lbs for four sets of ten reps:

135 x 10 x 4 = 5,400 lbs of volume

Monitoring volume load can work, but you need to be purposeful about changing any of these details to get reliable data in the long run. Volume load is biased toward lower loads for more reps and can make it hard to tell if you’re progressively overloading.

For example, if you used to do sets of 8-12 reps for four sets with 135 lbs and suddenly lower the weight to 115 to do more reps, the total volume would be far higher.

135 x 10 x 4 = 5,400 lbs of volume
115 x 15 x 4 = 6,900 lbs of volume

You may lift 1,500 lbs more, but that doesn’t mean you’ve made a huge jump from one week to the next or that the latter rep/set scheme is superior in any way.

So, when using volume load to measure progress, stay consistent with the weight you use. That way, if you do more reps or add extra sets in the future, you can reliably track overload:

Doing more reps	Adding additional sets
Week 1: 135 x 10 x 4 = 5,400 lbs	Week 1: 135 x 10 x 3 = 4,050 lbs
Week 2: 135 x 11 x 4 = 5,940 lbs	Week 2: 135 x 10 x 4 = 5,400 lbs
Week 3: 135 x 12 x 4 = 6,480 lbs	Week 3: 135 x 10 x 5 = 6,750 lbs
Week 4: 135 x 13 x 4 = 7,020 lbs	Week 4: 135 x 10 x 6 = 8,100 lbs

I log my workouts in Hevy and use volume load to track my progress on some exercises, where I don’t change the set/weight scheme but simply try to do more reps over time. I can display my session volume load on a graph.

A more practical option, particularly when tracking weekly volume, is to count the number of working sets for the major muscle groups. This is a simple way to ensure you do enough productive work without worrying that changing the weight/rep target or number of sets will throw the data off.

What’s The Optimal Number of Sets Per Muscle Group Per Week?

• Studies show that 10 weekly sets can lead to twice the muscle hypertrophy compared to five or fewer sets.
  
  
• Increasing the volume beyond 10 sets continues to improve muscle growth, but the gains start to diminish, with 20 weekly sets being the upper limit for most people.
  
  
• Beyond 20 sets per muscle, you may experience recovery issues, leading to performance and muscle loss. (More on this debate toward the end of the article.)

These ideas align with the minimum effective volume (MEV) and maximum recoverable volume (MRV) concepts popularized by Dr. Mike Israetel, a sports science Ph.D. and competitive bodybuilder.

• MEV is the smallest amount of training a person can do and still make progress – this should be around ten weekly sets.
  
  
• MRV is the maximum training you can do and still recover, or approximately 20 sets.

Given the dose-dependent relationship between volume and growth, most experts agree that those who can should train above their MEV. So, every trainee serious about making progress should find their sweet spot between MEV and MRV. 

For example, 10 weekly sets for the chest would likely be the minimum you should do to see decent results, up to 20 sets should lead to incrementally more growth, and over 20 sets will likely lead to recovery issues and may affect your performance.

One reason why I love logging my workouts in Hevy is that it tracks my volume per muscle and displays the number of sets on a customizable graph.

I can show data for the muscles I want, organize it weekly or month to month, and look back at my volume from the last 30 days, three months, year, or all-time (the latter two options are only available with Hevy Pro).

Technically, you can get some results from fewer than ten sets per muscle, but this will be below MEV for most people and unlikely to bring noticeable results. Given how clear the research is, it makes more sense to push a bit harder to cover the minimum. We’ll discuss some time-saving tactics below.

What is Overlapping Training Volume?

The above recommendations of 10 to 20 sets per muscle are not all direct sets––for example, you don’t need to do 20 sets of different curls to optimize bicep growth. Some of the volume will be overlapping or indirect. This is when one exercise trains a primary muscle (say, the quadriceps) but also works secondary muscles like the glutes. 

While you may not think about training your glutes, they will inevitably get some stimulation from exercises like the back squat, Bulgarian split squat, lunge, and even leg press. The more exercises you do that also work the glutes, the less direct work you need to do for that area to optimize its development.

There are different ways to count secondary muscle sets, but one approach that works well is to count the primary muscle as one set and the secondary muscles as half a set. For example, you do a lat pulldown set and count it as one set for the lats/upper back and 0.5 for the biceps.

This approach is not ideal because some exercises target secondary muscles better than others, offering more stimulus. However, it’s a good rule of thumb to follow on average to get reliable set per muscle numbers.

If you do ten sets of rows for your back, you can count that as five sets for your biceps. The same goes for pressing exercises that train the chest: ten sets of those can count as five sets for the triceps and front deltoids.

Let’s now look at a whole workout:

Exercise	Sets
Pull Up	4 (*2)
Dumbbell Row	4 (*2)
Lat Pulldown	4 (*2)
EZ Bar Bicep Curl	3
Dumbbell Preacher Curl	3
Total upper back/lat sets: 12
Direct & *indirect bicep sets: 12

Now, you might wonder how overlapping volume would count when doing back exercises that don’t involve elbow flexion (arm bending), like the deadlift, rack pull, shrug, and pullover. In such a case, you wouldn’t count those sets toward your bicep work since there isn’t any elbow flexion.

This is where nuance comes in, and it’s important to consider what primary and secondary muscles each exercise targets.

If the stuff about overlapping volume and calculating sets for secondary muscles seems unnecessarily complicated, do the following:

• 10 to 20 sets for the major muscle groups: the back, chest, and quadriceps
• 6 to 10 sets for smaller muscles: shoulders, biceps, triceps, hamstrings, and calves

So long as you do at least a couple of exercises per major muscle group, you will get enough indirect stimulation for the secondary muscles, and adding 6-10 direct sets should cover your volume needs.

I got a slightly modified 4-day upper/lower split from our 4-day split article to show you how it works on a larger scale.

Upper 1	Lower 1	Upper 2	Lower 2
Bench Press (Barbell)** – 4 sets	Squat (Barbell)* – 4 sets	Pull Up* – 3 sets	Hip Thrust (Barbell)** – 4 sets
Bent Over Barbell Row* – 4 sets	Glute Ham Raise*** – 4 sets	Incline Bench Press (Dumbbell)** – 4 sets	Leg Press (Machine)* – 4 sets
Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press** – 4 sets	Leg Extension – 4 sets	Barbell Shoulder Press** – 4 sets	Lying Hamstring Curl* – 4 sets
Chest Fly (Machine)* – 4 sets	Seated Calf Raise – 4 sets	Chest Press (Machine)** – 4 sets	Standing Calf Raise (Machine) – 4 sets
Lat Pulldown (Cable)* – 4 sets		Tricep Pressdown – 4 sets
Dumbbell Hammer Curl – 4 sets		Bicep Curl (Dumbbell) – 4 sets

The number of asterisk symbols (*) next to individual exercises represents how many secondary muscles it counts toward.

Direct & Indirect sets for major muscles
Chest	20
Back	13
Shoulders	16
Biceps	13.5
Triceps	14
Quadriceps	14
Hamstrings	10
Glutes	12
Calves	12

By looking at your splits this way, you can see how many sets each muscle would get and if some areas need more or less volume.

Factors That Affect How Many Sets You Should Do

We’ve covered a lot of information regarding the optimal training volume for muscle mass, but remember that everyone is different. Multiple factors affect how much training a person can do, recover from, and adapt positively. So, let’s look at them:

1. Experience

Beginners can build muscle and see strength gains from a low-volume approach. This is simply because newbies are not used to training stress, which means they are more likely to respond to less.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that beginners start with 1-3 sets per exercise, which equals 6-9 sets if trainees aim for a standard structure of 2-3 exercises per muscle for three working sets each.

Also, research by Schoenfeld et al. (2018) suggests that 5-9 weekly sets can still promote muscle growth in beginners.

Hevy’s routine library has eight beginner programs, each having you train two or three times per week and covering these volume targets.

However, higher training volumes will bring better results as you become more advanced.

2. Recovery

Your ability to handle and adapt to a given weekly training volume largely depends on your recovery. Factors that play a role include:

• Sleep – adequate sleep is one of the best ways to improve your recovery capacity. Most of the tissue repair and muscle growth happens during sleep, and research links sleep deprivation to muscle loss, a performance decline, and body fat gains.
  
  Plus, poor sleep is linked to impaired cognition, loss of motivation, irritability, and other not-so-fun things, all affecting your willingness and desire to go to the gym and push yourself hard.
  
  So, aim for at least seven hours of sleep per night, preferably eight.
  
  
• Stress – stress directly impacts your body’s ability to recover from and adapt to difficult workouts. The more stressed you are outside the gym (e.g., demanding job, long commute, family obligations, newborn baby, etc.), the more your ability and desire to train diminish.
  
  Some stress is unavoidable, so adjust your training temporarily if you feel particularly drained. For example, let’s say you’ve had a brutal week but have a heavy leg day scheduled for Saturday.
  
  In this case, you can a) reduce the number of sets, lower the weight, or train at a lower RPE, b) do an easier workout on Saturday and leave your heavy leg day for a time when you feel better, or c) take the day off and do that workout on Sunday or Monday.
  
  You can side-step short-term stress with basic tweaks to your training plan. However, if you’re dealing with something long-term (for example, starting a more demanding job farther from home), you may need to reduce the number of sets you do across the board to stay within your recovery limits.
  
  
• Diet – what and how much you eat also affects where your training volume’s upper limit lies.
  
  Most notably, you must eat enough total calories to at least maintain your weight over time. Being in a calorie deficit limits your body’s recovery capacity, especially as you do it for an extended period, such as when losing fat.
  
  Similarly, you must eat enough protein (research recommends 1.6-2.2 grams of protein/kg or 0.7-1 gram/lb) to provide your muscles with the amino acids they need for repair and growth.
  
  Carbohydrates also help replenish glycogen (the complex carb form stored in your muscles), which also supports muscle protein synthesis.
  
  Lastly, dietary fats support hormone production, including maintaining healthy testosterone levels. A good intake to aim for is 0.35-0.45 grams per lb; someone who weighs 160 lbs should aim for 56 to 72 grams of fats daily.

3. Training Quality

Most people focus on the number of sets because that’s specific and easy to track. But, how you approach each workout, exercise, set, and even rep can play a role in how stimulative and fatiguing your training plan is and, thus, how many sets you can handle. 

Things that fall under the ‘training quality’ umbrella include:

• Effort (typically tracked through RPE) – the harder you train, the more stimulative each set is and the more fatiguing. Research finds that training close to failure is far less taxing than going all out and doesn’t affect post-training recovery to the same degree.
  
  According to data and expert opinion, we should aim to train to an RPE 7-8 (leaving two to three reps in the tank) most of the time.
  
  The Hevy app allows you to log your RPE on any set. Simply log your reps and RPE, mark the set as complete, and the app will record your effort so you can review it later and more effectively track your progress.

• Tempo – rep quality is another major factor to consider. It takes tremendous discipline and mindfulness to keep your reps identical and good throughout each workout.
  
  A good rep consists of a controlled eccentric (negative; muscle lengthening under load), an explosive concentric (muscle shortening), and a stable isometric (pause) contraction to maximize muscle activation.
  
  Here’s 6-time Olympia winner Chris Bumstead demonstrating what that looks like:

• Notice how he does his best to keep the reps looking identical even as his legs get tired.
  
  The more attention you pay to each phase of every rep, the more effectively you will train the target muscles and the fewer total sets you will need to provide an adequate stimulus.
  
  In contrast, the more you go through the motions and only move the weight from point A to B, the less effective each set will be, and the more sets you will need to train the muscle well to optimize growth.
  
  
• Range of motion – the range of motion you use will also significantly impact the stimulative effect of each set. A longer range of motion will stretch the target muscles better and require more effort.
  
  We also know that the eccentric contraction is more fatiguing because it places the muscle under greater mechanical tension and creates more muscle damage (Proske & Morgan, 2001).
  
  For example, during a deep squat, the quads and glutes are stretched more and experience higher tension at the bottom. In contrast, a partial squat doesn’t require as much energy, doesn’t stretch the target muscles as much, and doesn’t create the same amount of tension.
  
  So, while you could log part of your workout as “Barbell Squats – 5 sets x 10 reps w/ 100 kg,” the range of motion can affect the overall stimulus and effectiveness.

Many people who say that 20 sets per muscle per week don’t seem like enough are probably not paying attention to the quality of each set and could stand to train harder.

4. Exercise Selection & Loading

Each exercise comes with a fatigue cost––that is, how much it tires you out. Another way to classify is through the stimulus-to-fatigue ratio, which is the muscle-building effect a movement has versus the fatigue it generates.

Fatigue comes from the effort it takes to do the exercise as well as to set up for it and clean up after yourself. 

It’s one thing to do barbell squats, another to do leg presses, and yet another to do seated leg extensions. All three exercises target the same muscle, but each tires you out differently because of its impact on your body and the time it takes to set up.

To do a barbell squat, you need to load weight plates on the bar, brace your entire body, and pay careful attention to your technique. In contrast, to do a leg extension, you simply need to sit down, use the pins to select the weight, adjust the back support and shin pad, and do your reps.

This isn’t to say you should only do simple machine exercises, but it’s important to consider the cost of each movement and build your workouts in a way where some exercises are less challenging than others.

Loading also plays a huge role. The heavier the weight, the more effort it takes to complete each set, and the more mindful you need to be of the total number of sets you do. We’ve discussed this at length in our strength vs. hypertrophy training article. 

As a rule, the more free-weight exercises you do with heavier weights in lower rep ranges (say, 3-6, 6-8), the more tiring your workouts are likely to feel. In contrast, the more machine and isolation exercises you do with moderately heavy weights for more reps (say, 8-12, 12-15+), the less demanding each set will feel.

5. Rest Between Sets

Adequate rest between sets leads to higher quality training, muscle growth, strength gains, and improved capacity to handle more sets. 

First, by resting long enough between sets, your target muscles recover better, allowing you to do more reps from set to set and maintain better form. Second, while fatigue builds up, it’s more manageable than taking shorter breaks between sets. 

As such, you can do more sets in each workout without feeling overly exerted. There are ways to shorten your workouts – we’ll discuss them below.

6. Prioritizing Weak Points

You can structure your training to emphasize a lagging muscle group for a while. To do that, you can increase the number of sets to 20+ (so long as the area recovers in time for each workout and isn’t excessively sore) while keeping the number of sets for other muscles lower––say, around 10-15/week.

This helps control overall fatigue and allows you to prioritize some muscles you want to bring up to par with the rest of your body.

For example, let’s say your arms have always been a weak point compared to the rest of your upper body. You can run a specialization phase for a couple of months, gradually increasing your total sets (direct and indirect) for the biceps and triceps while keeping the volume for all other muscle groups lower.

How Training Frequency Relates to Optimal Volume

Training each muscle twice weekly is generally considered better because it allows for better volume allocation. 

Instead of doing 10 to 20 sets for each muscle in one workout, which can be exhausting, you can split the volume into two sessions and make it more manageable. This helps you train harder across all sets and potentially build more muscle. 

Plus, research shows that protein synthesis rates return to almost to baseline within 36 hours of training. So, by training a muscle twice weekly, protein synthesis rates increase more frequently.

Let’s look at how that might look in practice for someone doing 15 weekly sets for their chest. First, we have a classic 4-day upper/lower split:

Upper A	Lower A	Upper B	Lower B
Bench Press (Barbell) – 4 sets Cable Fly Crossover – 4 sets	–	Incline Dumbbell Press – 4 sets Chest Press (Machine) – 3 sets	–

Next up, we have a more advanced 6-day push/pull/legs split:

Push 1	Pull 1	Legs 1	Push 2	Pull 2	Legs 2
Chest Dip (Weighted – 4 sets Push Up – 4 sets	–	–	Bench Press (Dumbbell) – 4 sets Butterfly (Pec Deck) – 3 sets	–	–

As you can see, this is identical to the 4-day split. But since we have six weekly workouts instead of four, we can do fewer total sets in each session. 

Now, let’s look at the final example: a 3-day full-body program.

Full Body 1	Full Body 2	Full Body 3
Bench Press (Barbell) – 5 sets	Incline Dumbbell Press – 5 sets	Cable Fly Crossover – 5 sets

Training each muscle three times per week instead of two is likely not better, but it can work because it naturally fits into the typical full-body workout.

Download the Hevy app and explore the 25+ complete training plans in the library (Workout tab > Explore). Access push/pull/legs and upper/lower splits, as well as full-body 5×5 and PHUL programs.

How About Training Muscles Once Per Week?

Training muscles once per week can also work and can even be the better option for people who prefer a bro split. The advantage is that you would do many sets for each muscle, which can help with the mind-muscle connection and lead to better pumps. 

As one Reddit user noted, “I get amazing pumps from bro splits and feel way more motivated to go to the gym when I’m only hitting a single muscle group.”

Plus, even if you follow a traditional bro split, your frequency per muscle would still not be precisely once per week. For example, if you train your chest, shoulders, and triceps on separate days, you’d hit the triceps, shoulders, and possibly even the chest two or three times, thanks to the indirect sets we discussed above.

That said, there are trade-offs to this approach. Most notably:

• Your muscles should be fully healed within two to four days, but you’d only train them once every seven days
  
• Set quality will decrease as you get tired, so your latter sets won’t be as productive or stimulative as the first ones
  
• Given the high concentration of training coupled with a low frequency, you may experience more pronounced soreness

More advanced trainees are almost always better off splitting their total weekly volume into two sessions.

How to Tell If You’re Doing Enough Sets

These are some of the signs to look for:

• Your workouts feel hard enough, and the muscles you’ve trained are weaker at the end of each session. However, you’re recovering well for each upcoming session.
  
  
• You experience some soreness, but it doesn’t take longer than two to three days to clear up and doesn’t affect the quality of your subsequent workouts.
  
  
• You’re getting stronger across the board. You see yourself adding weight on some exercises and reps on others. But when you look back at your volume, the weight you use, and your performance on specific lifts, there is a clear upward trend.
  
  
• You’re steadily gaining weight. Newbie = 1-1.5% body weight/month; Intermediate = 0.5-1% body weight/month; Advanced = 0.25-0.5% body weight/month.
  
  
• Circumference measurements are improving in all the right places: arms, chest, and thighs.
  
  
• You’re visually more muscular. You look better in the mirror, and monthly progress photos show modest improvements.

Download Hevy and start logging your workouts. The app keeps track of your performance (including on individual lifts), allows you to record your weight and circumference measurements, and upload progress photos (as well as compare them).

Signs You May Need or Can Benefit From More Sets

Some signs to look for include:

• Your workouts feel too easy. Sure, there is some challenge from set to set but you don’t feel tired at the end of a session.
  
  
• You rarely feel sore. Soreness doesn’t equal or predict muscle growth, but it can indicate that you’ve caused a disruption that can contribute to hypertrophy. Never feeling sore likely means you could do more sets or train harder.
  
  
• Your muscles recover within a day, and you feel like you can do the same workout.
  
  
• Your performance doesn’t improve meaningfully across the board. When looking back at workouts from three, four, or even five months ago, you see the same numbers as you do now.
  
  
• Your body composition isn’t improving. The mirror and progress photos don’t show visual improvements, and circumference measurements in key areas like the upper arms, chest, and thighs don’t increase.

How to Tell If You’re Doing too Much

Doing too much in the short term will not likely create any issues. However, if you’ve been on a high-volume plan for at least a few weeks, look for these signs:

• You feel tired, but you can’t sleep well at night. It’s hard to fall asleep in the evening, or you wake up frequently.
  
  
• You don’t feel as motivated to train. The thought of going to the gym doesn’t excite you anymore.
  
  
• Your grip weakens, and you struggle to hold on to heavier weights.
  
  
• Your warm-up sets feel heavier than usual. As you add weight to the bar, you often ask yourself if you can lift the same weight you did last week.
  
  
• Your performance overall is trending downward. For example, when looking at specific exercises in Hevy, you notice that you’re lifting less weight than before, and your total set/session volume is trending downward.

• You pick up more aches than before, and they impact your workouts.
  
  
• Muscle soreness is more intense and persists longer. If soreness used to clear up within a couple of days before, it now takes three, four, or even five days to go away.
  
  
• You feel more tired in your daily life. Everyday tasks feel more taxing, and it’s harder to stay concentrated.

“45 Sets Per Muscle” – Why Some Studies Show Crazy High Volume Works

If you look at a study like the one by Schoenfeld et al. from 2019, you might conclude that 20 weekly sets per muscle are not the upper limit and that we can and should do a lot more to grow optimally.

In that paper, 45 lifters were split into three groups: low, moderate, and high volume. The 11 trained lifters in the high-volume group did three weekly workouts, each including three quad and four upper body exercises for five sets each (35 total sets per session). The subjects did 8-12 reps per set to failure and rested for 90 seconds.

Their total weekly volume was 45 sets for the quadriceps and 30 for the biceps and triceps.

Compared to low and moderate-volume approaches, the 45-set group saw significantly more growth (12 to 13.7% increase in quad size). 

There was a clear dose-dependent relationship where more volume led to more growth. The most significant jump was seen when comparing the low and moderate-volume groups––6 and 9 sets versus 18 and 27 sets for the arms and quads, respectively. 

Results showed diminishing returns from moderate to high volumes, meaning that per-set growth goes down but can still add up if a muscle is hammered with enough training.

So, what does this mean? Should we all jack up the volume to 30, 40, or 50 weekly sets per muscle since it seems to work? 

No, because the goal of this paper was to look at individual muscles’ response to different training volumes in isolation, not as part of a well-balanced training plan that includes enough sets for all major muscle groups. 

The subjects did 45 direct sets to failure for the quadriceps, which is intense. But they didn’t do much else, and their workouts lasted around 68 minutes. That’s around 3.5 hours of weekly training.

If anything, the paper highlights the difference between total and local recovery capacity. You can subject a single body part to a lot of training and see it grow. But doing that across the board would generate too much systemic fatigue and push you into overtraining territory fast.

Now, let’s say you’re unhappy with a particular body part. In this case, you can gradually increase the number of weekly sets for that muscle while reducing the number of sets for other body parts to compensate for it and avoid recovery issues.

Time-Saving Strategies for High-Volume Training

Here are some strategies to do more work in less time:

1. Do Supersets

Supersets are a popular method for doing more work in less time by pairing exercises and doing them one after the other with little to no rest in between. 

Standard superset options include:

• Pairing isolation exercises (e.g., tricep pushdowns with bicep curls)
• Pairing a compound with an isolation exercise (e.g., a bench press with face pulls)

It’s best to pair exercises that train agonist-antagonist muscles (e.g., the biceps and triceps) or unrelated muscles (e.g., the chest and hamstrings). Pairing two exercises for the same muscle into a superset is generally not the best idea because the first movement exhausts the muscle and affects your performance on the second.

In contrast, by doing exercises for different muscles, you can perform better and do more high-quality sets.

To create a superset in Hevy, tap the three dots next to an exercise, select + Add To Superset, and tap the movement you want to pair it with.

2. Do Drop Sets

Drop sets are a technique where you lift a weight close to failure, immediately decrease the weight by 10-30%, and do as many additional reps as possible. You can stop here or reduce the load several times within the same drop set. 

For example, let’s say you’re doing leg extensions with 175 lbs. Do the set close to failure, reduce the weight to 150 lbs, do as many sets as you can, reduce the weight to 125 lbs, train to failure, drop to 100 lbs, and do one final set. 

That way, instead of four straight sets that take you 6+ minutes with the rest in between, you can do more volume in half or even a third of the time. 

Is that as effective as traditional sets? A 2022 meta-analysis suggests so.

That said, it’s best to do drop sets on exercises where it’s easy to reduce the weight and fatigue doesn’t put you at risk of hurting yourself. So, leg extensions and other machine exercises are fine, but back squats and many other barbell exercises are not.

By the way, you can label sets as drop sets in Hevy for effortless workout logging and to review your progress later.

3. Do Rest-Pause

Rest pause is similar to drop sets in that it allows you to do more work in less time. Instead of reducing the weight to push a muscle beyond failure, you take multiple mini-breaks throughout a long set. 

For example, you do 12 reps to failure, rest for 10-15 seconds, do 4-5 reps to failure, rest for 10-15 seconds, do 2-3 reps to failure, and then take a longer break. The load, tempo, and range of motion stay the same.

The advantage of rest-pause is that you don’t have to reduce the weight multiple times and can use the same setup throughout. This makes rest pause more applicable to a broader range of exercises, including compound lifts like the bent-over row and machine chest press. 

As with drop sets, it’s not recommended to do rest-pause on exercises where failing to complete a rep could get you hurt. The bench, squat, and shoulder press are exercises where you should not do rest-pause.

4. Control Your Rest Periods

Keeping track of your rest periods and adhering to them might not seem significant, but 10 seconds here and 30 seconds there can add up to several minutes within a single workout.

In Hevy, you can set a default rest timer in the settings and adjust it for any exercise you add to any workout. When you mark a set as complete, the timer starts, and you’re notified when it’s time to do the next set.

Additionally, to be as productive with your time as possible, plan your workouts ahead of time to know what you’ll be doing from the moment you step into the gym. You’d be surprised how much time you could save by going in with a plan versus trying to figure it out on the go.

Conclusion

There is a clear relationship between training volume and growth. More sets tend to work better, but up to a point. Beyond that, the stimulus provided is negligible compared to the additional fatigue extra sets generate.

So, it’s essential to find your sweet spot, typically between 10 and 20 direct and indirect sets per muscle, where workouts feel challenging, you’re making steady progress, and recovery isn’t an issue. 

Since you’ve made it to the end, download Hevy to log your workouts. Easily create reusable workout templates, log your sessions, monitor your set count per muscle group, and take advantage of cool features like automatic rest timers, RPE logging, the ability to create supersets, and more.

FAQ

1. What’s the difference between “minimum effective volume” and “maximum recoverable volume”?

Minimum effective volume (MEV) is the smallest amount of training you can do to build muscle and get stronger. Maximum recoverable volume (MRV) is the most amount of training you can do, recover from, and adapt to. You should find the sweet spot between the two for the best results.

2. Do smaller and larger muscle groups require different numbers of sets?

Regardless of size, all muscles will generally benefit from the same number of sets. However, you can do fewer direct sets for smaller muscles like the biceps and triceps because they receive plenty of indirect stimulation from compound exercises like the bench press and barbell row.