In the original guide, I mentionedthe German Volume study that I reviewed in a past research review. In this study on trained subjects, 24 weekly sets was not more effective than 14 weekly sets for quadriceps, and 28 weekly sets was not more effective than 18 weekly sets for biceps and triceps. However, it should be noted that many of these sets were not to failure. German Volume Training involves doing 10 sets of 10 with 1 minute rest, and you use the same weight for all sets.
In many cases, people can do around 20 reps with 60% 1-RM . In fact, it's difficult to ascertain how many hard sets the subjects did. Also, it likely varied from one person to the next since it was based on % 1-RM, rather than doing sets to a specific Reps In Reserve . In other words, one person might be able to do a lot more reps than another person with 60% 1-RM, so their initial sets will be much easier. Thus, this study is not a reliable data point for determining where an upper limit may lie. The same holds true for another 2018 German Volume Study; the methodology was nearly identical, and it again is not reliable for determining an upper limit for volume.
It should also be noted that the training frequency was twice per week for upper body, and once per week for lower body in this study. Thus, the highest volume condition was doing 24 sets per session for lower body, greatly exceeding the theoretical 10-set limit. This group was doing 14 sets per session for upper body, again exceeding the theoretical 10-set limit.
Thus, the training frequency and per-session volume may also be contributors to the lack of volume effect observed in this study. In a study of which I was a coauthor, Brad Schoenfeld and colleagues replicated the design of the Radaelli study, but with trained subjects. The subjects performed 1, 3, or 5 sets per exercise, for 8-12 reps to failure and 1.5 minute rests. Total weekly sets were 6, 18, and 30 for biceps and triceps, and 9, 27, and 45 for quadriceps.
A significant dose-response effect was observed in the biceps, rectus femoris , and vastus lateralis . There was not a significant effect for triceps, although the overall pattern had similarities to the other muscles. In the study by Ostrowski and colleagueson trained subjects, the triceps were subjected to either 7, 14, or 28 weekly sets. Gains nearly doubled moving from 7 to 14 weekly sets, but there was no further increase with 28 weekly sets.
Also, bench press performance dropped off with that level of volume. This suggested that perhaps weekly volumes in the high 20's may be more than necessary. However, one limitation of this study, which I did not address in the original version of the guide, is that the researchers did not assess bicep gains.
They also did not do anything beyond 12 weekly sets for quadriceps. Thus, this study is insufficient for determining where an upper limit may lie, as only one muscle group was trained for more than 20 weekly sets. It's also important to note that the training frequency for triceps in this study was two times per week. Thus, the 28 weekly set condition involved 14 sets per session, exceeding the approximate 10-set per session threshold that we established earlier.
Thus, the observed plateau in this study may be due to the frequency. Well, that about does it for the most thorough review on training volume and hypertrophy that you'll find anywhere. You can be sure that this will be updated as new research becomes available. Conclusions in science are always tentative, and based on the best available evidence at the moment.
In the case of set volume and hypertrophy, more is better up to around 6-8 hard sets per training session with long rests and twice as much with short rests. High weekly volumes (20+ weekly sets) give best results when split into frequencies of at least 3 days per week. Of course, this is based on averages, and individuals may respond very differently to changes in volume compared to the average. It's also important to point out that12-18 weekly sets probably gives you the best bang for your buck in terms of hypertrophy relative to the time investment when hitting each muscle 2-3 days per week. If you're looking to do some very high volume training, specialization is the most realistic method of achieving high weekly volumes for a particular muscle group. Also, regardless of how you program volume,the needs of the individual must be considered.
How Much Volume Is Too Much Volume So how might you apply this information to structuring a training program for maximizing hypertrophy? Here's one example of how you might structure a program that uses the best "bang for your buck" range of weekly sets per muscle group. This particular example is a 4-day upper/lower split; most muscle groups are trained via combination of compound and isolation movements. Sets are stopped around 1-2 reps short of failure to allow for better recovery, and repetitions and exercises are varied to help reduce joint stress. Ostrowski and colleagues examined the effects of 1, 2, or 4 sets per exercise on hypertrophy in trained subjects.
Subjects did 7-12 reps to failure per set, with 3 minute rests between sets. Triceps were trained twice per week, as pressing movements were performed on one day, and isolation movements were performed on another day. Quadriceps training volume did not exceed 12 total weekly sets since they were only trained once per week. However, triceps weekly volume, when counting pressing movements, was 7, 14, and 28 for the low, moderate, and high volume groups, respectively. There were no significant differences in changes in triceps thickness between the groups, although the percentage gains and effect sizes favored the groups doing 14 and 28 weekly sets. In fact, percentage gains and effect sizes for weekly sets were about twice that of 7 weekly sets.
By selecting 2-4 chest exercises per workout you can add 4-8 different chest exercises per training program, which is plenty of variation in a month's time. Instead, stay within those ranges and work to perform quality repetitions with a hyper-focus mindset of feeling the chest muscles stretch throughout the full range of motion. There was a clear dose-response effect in terms of volume in this study, especially in the biceps.
In fact, the gains in muscle thickness observed with weekly sets were 3-4 times what is typically seen in studies (most studies show around a 5% increase in muscle thickness). Now, one odd result of this study was that there was hardly any increase in tricep muscle thickness for a volume of 27 weekly sets. This is at complete odds with other studies that show significant gains in tricep thickness with much lower volumes in untrained subjects. The sudden jump to nearly a 21% gain at the highest volume is also very strange. However, this does not invalidate the study; as I've written elsewhere, you can get odd results like this from random chance alone.
Overall, the study did support an effect of volume, and no plateau was observed for weekly set volumes of more than 20. It should also be noted that the researchers examined fat-free mass gains. The majority of research has found that the total amount of work you do for a muscle over the course of a training week matters more than how you do the work. A 2016 study in the International Journal of Exercise Science compared subjects doing a body-part split to a group that followed full-body workouts. The body-part guys did nine sets per muscle group once per week while the full-body team trained each area three times per week with three sets each—so the total training volume was the same.
After eight weeks, the muscle and strength gains the two groups made were roughly equivalent. One limitation of this study was that subjects were allowed to train outside of the study. Another limitation is the short duration of the study ; it is the shortest study among all the dose-response studies on volume. A third limitation is that the groups used different frequencies; the low volume group trained biceps once per week, while the other two groups trained biceps twice per week. While frequency does not appear to impact hypertrophy much on a volume equated basis, it may impact hypertrophy when weekly training volumes become high as I pointed out earlier in this article. In this article, a set is going to be defined as a set of moderate to high repetitions to muscular failure or near failure.
I use this definition because high load, low rep sets do not produce as much hypertrophy as more moderate 8-12 rep sets, despite an equivalent number of hard sets. However, moderate-rep and high-rep sets to failure are similar in their impacts on muscle hypertrophy. Also, a set should be to near muscular failure, because stopping well short of failure will impair muscle hypertrophy. Finally, a set counts towards a particular muscle group if that muscle group can be considered a prime mover in the exercise that is being used. For example, 3 sets of bench press will count as 3 sets for triceps, since the triceps are active prime movers in a bench press. Three sets of bench press, and 3 sets of tricep pushdowns, would count as 6 total sets.
There is a study by Baker and colleagues that examined strength, not hypertrophy. In this study, weekly sets did not improve strength over weekly sets in trained subjects. However, gains in strength may not be a good proxy for hypertrophy, even in trained subjects.
This might be particularly true in a study like this, where the cumulative fatigue from the very high training volume (36-45 weekly sets) might mask any hypertrophy-related strength gains. Thus, this study may not be a reliable data point for determining an upper limit for set volume. Finally, a study performed was performed on high volume training by Haun and colleagues. Subjects started 10 sets per exercise per week , with approximately one compound exercise per muscle group . Subjects did 10 reps per set at approximately 60% 1-RM; the average Reps In Reserve was around 4. Set volume was progressed each week, so that subjects were doing 32 sets by week 6.
Lean mass significantly increased by 2.2 kg by the end of the study. Now, are these lower training volumes totally ideal for building muscle? For optimal muscle growth, we'd want to be doing 2–5 workouts per week, each containing somewhere between 3–8 sets per muscle group. But are these lower training volumes enough to gain muscle and strength? But if you know you're going to train shoulders, for example, two more times that week, it's easier to be responsible and train within your limits.
Full-body workouts also control your volume automatically, reducing your risk of overtraining. You simply won't have the time or energy to get carried away with bench pressing when you know you have to work back, legs, core, etc. in the same session. If you did three sets for chest, you'll probably realize that you ought to do three sets for back before you leave the gym—you won't favor one body part over another anymore.
The below workout program is a 4-week chest training routine that is geared for all levels. This program is designed to increase chest strength and size. The overall training volume is 16 total work sets per week, at varying intensities to maximize muscle growth. In this study by Bickel et al., untrained subjects did 27 weekly sets to near failure on legs . This was followed by two different reduced training periods that lasted for 32 weeks. One group reduced volume by 1/3 , where training was reduced to only once per week.
The other group reduced volume to 1/9 , where frequency was reduced to only once per week and set volume was reduced to one per exercise. The 1/9 volume condition maintained size in the young but not old subjects. Muscle size continued to increase in the young, but not old, subjects of the 1/3 volume group for 16 weeks, and then remained steady for another 16 weeks. Both conditions resulted in a maintenance of strength, if not slight improvement during the reduced volume phase. Now, there were a number of limitations to this analysis. First, there were only 8 studies that met my inclusion criteria.
There were only 2 studies that involved 4-6 sets per exercise. There wasn't enough data to determine if there were differences due to factors such as training status (i.e., trained versus untrained subjects). I was the sole author on this paper, so there was no one available to double check my work, and thus it's always possible some bias or error could sneak in. This analysis only tells us about volume in a single session, and not overall weekly volume. Finally, sets per exercise is not the same thing as sets per muscle group. For example, you could do 1 set of incline press, 1 set of flat press, and 1 set of decline press, and that's 3 sets for your chest, but in this analysis it would be categorized as 1 set.
Still, more sets per exercise will still mean more sets per muscle group, so this meta-analysis clearly showed that your gains increase as your volume increases. There have been some studies that have examined the impact of set volume on p70S6K phosphorylation. One study showed 10 sets of 10 RM resulted in greater p70S6K phosphorylation compared to 5 sets of 10 RM when measured 30 minutes after the session. In the protein synthesis study out of Stu Phillips's lab that was mentioned earlier, p70S6K phosphorylation was significantly elevated at 29 hours after 3 sets of leg extensions, but not 1 set. In a third study, 3 sets of 6 RM of a leg press resulted in a threefold elevation of p70S6k phosphorylation, and 5 sets of 6 RM resulted in a sixfold elevation (i.e., double the response). In the rodent study mentioned earlier, p70S6K phosphorylation continued to increase with increasing "set" volume up to 20, although "sets" here cannot be considered equivalent to human sets.
In a fifth study, phosphorylated S6K were 19% greater with 6 sets per muscle group performed in a training session versus 2 sets. Also, in the older subjects, 6 sets of 14 reps at 40% 1-RM caused a greater muscle protein synthesis response compared to 3 sets. First, subjects did not train to failure...8 reps at 75% 1-RM, and 14 reps at 40% 1-RM, can be far short of failure for some individuals on a leg extension. Second, the researchers only measured protein synthesis out to 4 hours. Thus, this study might suggest that 6 sets per muscle group is better than 3 for muscle protein synthesis, but there are a lot of limitations to the study. One study that examined the impact of set volume on muscle protein synthesis came out of the lab of Stu Phillips.
The researchers compared 3 sets of leg extensions to 1 set of leg extensions. Fed-state muscle protein synthesis was elevated by almost twice the amount in the 3-set group compared to the 1-set group. Protein synthesis was still elevated by 130% at 29 hours after the training session in the 3-set group, but was back to normal in the 1 set group. In other words, muscles were not only making more protein soon after the workout with 3 sets to failure, but they were still making more protein 29 hours later compared to 1 set.
Since muscle protein synthesis correlates with gains in muscle size once you get past the initial muscle damage, this would imply that 3 sets is better than 1 set for putting on muscle. The ideal training volume for building muscle is around 9–18 sets per muscle per week. And if you're choosing good lifts, doing 6–20 reps per set, and bringing those sets within 1–2 reps of failure, the bottom end of that range is often enough to maximize muscle growth. What's interesting is that when doing this research, Krieger noticed that with shorter rest times we can benefit from extremely high training volume—as much as 45 sets per muscle per week. However, he also discovered that if we use longer rest times (3–5 minutes of rest between sets), that effect disappears, and we build just as much muscle with moderate training volumes. Overall, assuming we rest long enough between sets, Krieger found that muscle growth is maximized with six challenging sets per muscle per workout.
Yesterday Schoenfeld et al. published a very similar study. Strength-trained men performed 1, 3 or 5 sets per exercise during an 8-week study. This led to a total weekly number of sets per muscle group of 6 and 9 sets for the 1-set group, 18 and 27 sets for the 3-set group and 30 and 45 sets for the 5-set group in the upper and lower limbs, respectively. So training volume was 50% higher for the quads than for the triceps and biceps.
I noted that the claim of the authors that this is the highest volume ever studied isn't strictly true. Radaelli et al. had participants perform 1, 3 or 5 sets per exercise with 2 exercises for the biceps and 3 for the triceps in a 3x per week full-body training program. So for the biceps the set volumes per week were 6, 18 and 30; for the triceps they were 9, 27 and 45. This is probably my favorite study on training volume to date, because they studied such a wide range of volumes, the study lasted 6 full months and the participants were military personnel. Many study populations don't battle much other than sarcopenia. In the high volume training study performed by Schoenfeld, me, and others, the average training time per session for the highest volume group was 68 minutes.
The subjects performed 7 exercises, for 5 sets each, for a total of 35 sets per session. However, it's important to note that this time frame of 68 minutes may not be realistic when applied to someone training in a regular gym. In a resistance training study, you have research assistants pushing you along, and also helping to get weights set up for you.
