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. 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. 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.
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. Regarding the effects of antioxidant supplementation on strength gains, six studies reported data and the results of four of them indicate that vitamin supplementation has no influence on strength gain. Within these six studies, meta-analysis was done with the three studies that employed isokinetic assessment of muscle strength [33–35]. Results of the meta-analysis confirmed that supplementation is innocuous regarding this outcome .
Is Too Much Volume Bad In other words, vitamin supplementation was neither positive nor negative. Importantly, the studies evaluated strength in the elderly after traditional or an undulating model of periodization or used isokinetic eccentric training in adult men . Overall, these findings indicate that beyond ineffective, vitamin C and E supplementation could even be detrimental to strength gains in a long-term basis. This is the opposite of what could be inferred from acute design studies, as well as from the logic "conclusion" that neutralizing exercise ROS production would be beneficial to performance. 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. 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. I turned 50 this year and four months before my birthday iI decided it was time to lose fat and get back into shape. The goal when training for increased muscle mass and size is to use a "heavy-ish" load that elicits a "muscle pump", or feeling fullness in the muscle belly. The easiest way to describe "the pump" is when your muscles are full, hard, and you have a sense that the muscle is larger creating a tight, tone feeling]. This is most often done with a combination of higher repetitions sets (8-12 reps, or sometimes more) and moderate to heavy loads.
This, paired with timed rest periods of seconds has been shown to increase muscle hypertrophy and increase hormonal response of growth hormone and testosterone. This 9-week strength-hypertrophy cycle is a perfect combination of power, strength, and muscle hypertrophy movements. 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. 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, 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. 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.
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. 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. 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? When training for muscle hypertrophy, be sure to always monitor overall training volume so that you can maximize muscle growth, allow for recovery, and still train strength.
Adding too much can certainly be counterproductive, but by following the tips above you should be able to navigate those waters. This is often done, and then transitioned into a more strength-focused period. 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. 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. Another study examined the effect in trained women doing 5, 10, 15, or 20 sets to failure for one muscle during only one workout per week, and the training program lasted a full 24 weeks. Again, not a statistically significant result, and it may be due to chance. 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. While lifting in the moderate rep range is highly beneficial for muscle growth, there are times when adding more weight and dropping the number of repetitions to between 2 and 5 should occur. For starters, adding more weight will increase strength, which over time will increase the amount of weight you can move for moderate rep ranges, as your top-end goes up.
This equates to more training volume , a significant factor in muscle growth. Without compound movements as a basic component, most programs will fall short of offering training muscle strength, bone health and density, increased testosterone, and results. This is not to say it cannot be done, however it is much more difficult to add sufficient muscle mass without them. In 1999, Taaffeet al studied strength training frequency in a few dozen healthy older adults, aged 65 to 79 years13 — remember, strength training is not just for bodybuilders!
They were divided into groups training 1, 2, or 3 days per week. The issue with training to absolute failure with respect to building maximal strength is that it causes neural fatigue and disruptions in resting hormonal concentrations. In a phase where one is seeking to gain strength, they will find that they are gradually becoming weaker and more fatigued as they continue to consistently push to failure. Thus, they're simply incapable of regularly moving the weights needed to sustainably enhance max strength. If your main goal is muscle growth, then you are most likely to face the debate on whether volume or intensity is more effective for hypertrophy. In strength training specifically, "volume" indicates the number of reps and sets, while "intensity" refers to how much weight you're lifting.
Because of this, the relationship between volume and intensity is "inverse", meaning that the more repetitions you perform, the lighter the weight you lift is, and vice-versa. But this is all based on extrapolation from data derived from muscle biopsies. Ultimately, we need to look at what happens to changes in muscle size when you put people on training programs with different set volumes.
To make up for this low training volume they train to failure and sometimes even beyond failure with things like rest-pause sets, forced reps and isometric holds. Guys like Greg Doucette, David Henry, Dorian Yates and Dusty Hanshaw are huge believers in high-intensity bodybuilding training programs. Two studies analyzed muscle mass adaptations in young men and women, and they found no effects of supplementation.
