Do you want to construct a muscular body so succulent, hot girls are mesmerized when they see you?
Yeah? you do?
Ok, awesome. The key is putting in enough work for each muscle to grow.
The amount of work you put into training each muscle is called volume. So if you want big juicy arms and thick powerful legs, volume is going to be your new best friend.
In fact, how often you train a muscle, how heavy you lift, or what fancy overpriced lifting shoes you use are all secondary to training volume.
In the past, lifters would measure volume by calculating reps x sets x weight. Today, this is now referred to as volume load or total tonnage and is no longer the primary way to measure volume in scientific research as this method is extremely flawed.
Simply doing heavier exercises like sumo deadlifts and leg presses will give you a higher volume load than someone doing RDL’s and Front Squats even though the hypertrophy between them would be similar.
Volume load can also misleadingly increase by using smaller percentages of your 1-rep max. This is not a reliable way to track volume as studies show the same hypertrophy occurs with different 1-rep max percentages given the same effort (1).
Furthermore, you could do a bunch of low effort sets that boost volume load, but don’t trigger much muscle growth because only relatively hard sets taken near failure trigger hypertrophy (2).
Fortunately, scientists have dialed in their ways of measuring volume. Instead of using volume load to determine volume, volume is now defined as the number of hard weekly sets you do per muscle group (10).
The literature defines a hard set as one where you have at most 3 reps in reserve meaning if you end a set knowing you could only do an additional 3 or fewer repetitions (3).
This is an important distinction as not all sets are equal. For example, your warm up sets do not count as training volume.
But now that we understand what volume is, how many sets should you do to get more jacked? And how much is too much?
Volume research shows volume isn’t super important for strength gains and has a pretty early limit before seeing no additional benefit when compared to optimal volume for hypertrophy (4, 8).
Moreover, additional volume seems to only produce marginal benefits for strength gains, so if you’re solely looking to build strength, doing a ton of hard sets might help, but isn’t necessary to get significantly strong (5).
Lifting heavy loads and actually practicing the specific movements is more important for strength then doing a ton of work (1).
For hypertrophy, volume is much more important, but diminishing returns still occur with each additional set (6).
For starters, weekly volume per muscle group must be distributed in multiple sessions because research shows a pretty clear limit for the number of muscle growing sets in a workout (12,13,17,18). Even in advanced lifters, this per-session limit is around 5-10 sets per muscle depending on proximity to failure.
Beginners on the other hand, don’t even need much total volume to maximize growth anyways, so not much to worry about there (9,24). In fact, just under 20 weekly sets per muscle seems to be a surefire limit for beginners (11).
For advanced individuals, the hypertrophy volume recommendations become trickier. While we have some volume studies in advanced lifters, most of their designs don’t study above 20 weekly sets nor do they account for optimal frequency (14). Optimal frequency meaning the volume is spread across multiple workouts to prevent shooting pass the per session limit (5).
Radelli et al 2015 did a 6 month study using optimal frequency with volumes as high as 45 sets, but it was done in military personal untrained to weight lifting (19). Still they found higher training volumes were better.
Schoenfeld et al 2018 replicated this study using trained lifters (7). This study found muscle growth continued as high as 45 sets.
Brigatto et al 2019 compared 16 vs 24 vs 32 failure sets per week in trained individuals without optimizing frequency (20). Still they found 32 sets per week grew more muscle.
Does this mean higher volume is the way to go? Not quite.
Although these studies look promising and relatively accounted for the per session volume limit, these studies used suboptimal rest periods (<2 min.) indicating extreme volumes were only needed because the rest periods suck.
Aube et al 2020 slightly optimized for frequency and rest periods (21). They also made sure that not all sets were to failure and used highly trained subjects. This study actually found the lowest volume group doing 12 sets split into 2 sessions grew more muscle than 18 or 24.
Dellatolla et al 2020 gives us more insight(28). They compared highly trained lifters training low vs high volume for the lower body. By the end of the study, the low volume group did 14 sets of quad exercises while the high volume group did 28 sets of quad exercises. Frequency and rest periods were accounted for. The high volume group grew significantly more muscle and gained more strength. The only drawback is there were only 9 total subjects.
When considering the body of research as a whole, after accounting for optimal rest periods, frequency, and proximity to failure, I’m willing to bet 25 sets per muscle group is almost always the upper limit in practice (9).
The theoretical recommendations appear to be 8-20 weekly sets per body part for a beginner and 10-25 weekly sets per body part for an advanced lifter.
However, science also clearly shows us some people will individually do better with low or high volume training (22,23). Finding your individual optimal volume will grow you the most muscle (25). Here are some general tips:
So the age old question of how much volume you should do is answered.
And I know the answer wasn’t as clear cut as you may have wanted, but hey, that’s fitness. Every single answer relies heavily on too many factors to give one absolute answer for everybody.
Even with the massive amount of modern research, you still have to adjust the scientific recommendations towards your individual needs and goals, but I hope this article gets you training closer towards your ideal volume. Once that sweet spot for volume is dialed in, epically jacked muscles will follow.
Talk to you in the next one my friend.
Bagley JR;Burghardt KJ;McManus R;Howlett B;Costa PB;Coburn JW;Arevalo JA;Malek MH;Galpin AJ; “Epigenetic Responses to Acute Resistance Exercise in Trained vs. Sedentary Men.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, U.S. National Library of Medicine, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32459413/.
1MUSCULAB—Laboratory of Neuromuscular Adaptations to Resistance Training. “Muscle Hypertrophy Response Is Affected by Previous… : The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research.” LWW, journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abstract/9000/Muscle_Hypertrophy_Response_Is_Affected_by.94488.aspx.
Scarpelli MC;Nóbrega SR;Santanielo N;Alvarez IF;Otoboni GB;Ugrinowitsch C;Libardi CA; “Muscle Hypertrophy Response Is Affected by Previous Resistance Training Volume in Trained Individuals.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, U.S. National Library of Medicine, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32108724/.
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