How Many Sets Does It Take to Build Muscle? The Answer May Surprise You

If you’re looking to make gym gains this summer, new research suggests shorter, more intense workouts might be the way to go.

The new findings come from a study preprint posted in SportRxiv—an open-access preprint server where researchers can share work before it’s been peer-reviewed. In a review of 67 studies, researchers pinpointed which exercise behaviors resulted in more or less effective muscle and strength gains.

They found that increasing the volume of sets in a resistance training session was helpful for both muscle strength and muscle growth, but only up to a certain point.

In other words, “quality and intensity of effort matter more than sheer quantity of training,” Jeremy Swisher, MD, a member of the Sports Medicine Fellowship Program at UCLA, told Health.

Though there’s been plenty of research on the most effective training frequency and set volume, few studies have investigated how people should actually divide up their activity into different workouts, said lead study author Jacob Remmert, a PhD candidate at Florida Atlantic University.

To answer that question, Remmert and his colleagues looked at 67 studies including over 2,000 participants. They defined strength sets in each as either:

• Direct sets, which refer to exercises that train a specific muscle (it’s the primary one working). This might be a bench press to build chest strength, for example.
• Fractional sets, which include “indirect sets”—or those in which a muscle is working, but it’s not the one being primarily targeted. These are counted as a “half” set. This means a tricep extension, which indirectly works chest strength, would be added to this total value.

After analyzing all the research, Remmert and his colleagues found that, as one might expect, people saw muscle and strength increase as they added more sets per workout session.

However, the data also showed that:

• After about 11 fractional sets in any given session, muscle growth plateaued.
• After about two direct sets in any given session, strength gains plateaued.

This means that “for both strength and muscle growth, the first few sets you do in a workout offer the greatest return on your investment,” Remmert said. “More sets do seem to bring greater outcomes—but only up to a point.”

The results of this study may be helpful for people looking to make their workouts more efficient or for those looking to build an optimized weight training plan, Remmert said.

“For strength, it makes sense to adopt a higher frequency approach—on average, around two to three times per week—with fairly low per-session [set] volume,” he explained.

That approach would work for muscle growth too, Remmert added, or someone could try going to the gym fewer times per week, but doing a slightly higher number of sets.

Even for those who aren’t super detailed about their resistance training routine, “rest assured that even moderate consistent bouts of strength exercise can make a great impact on our health,” Jordan Boreman, MS, CES, exercise physiologist at Cleveland Clinic and owner of Boreman Performance Training, told Health.

This new study may help people craft their strength routine, but importantly, there are some limitations.

For one, the study is not yet peer-reviewed, so the results are considered preliminary.

Beyond this, the study was a meta-analysis, so “the results are fully dependent upon the included studies it is analyzing,” said Remmert. The quality and quantity of the data included could be leaving some stones unturned.

For example, if there had been “more specific training, such as low repetition sets using heavy loads,” included in the analysis, the results could have been different, he explained.

There was also lots of variation between the different types of workouts included, added Boreman, from equipment type to level of instruction.

The study participants were also predominantly young and healthy, and the studies being featured looked at “short-term outcomes,” Swisher added.

Future studies should investigate how these strength routines impact people long term, particularly those in more diverse demographic groups, and should look at how recovery and injuries factor in as well, he said.

It may seem counterintuitive that fewer sets may be better for building strength, but these results are in line with previous research, Boreman said.

Fewer sets with greater loads have long been shown to increase strength over time, he said, as it helps you “[improve] force production.”

Swisher added that fewer and more intense reps may be effective due to the fact that initial challenging sets help “recruit a maximal number of muscle fibers and stimulate most of the strength-building processes.”

Essentially, once you’ve done one or two hard sets, additional ones add minimal extra stimulus, “but pile on significantly more fatigue and lengthen recover time,” he said.

“If you overload your training too much over time, you will experience increased fatigue and lack of performance when it comes to pure strength,” Boreman added, though the issue isn’t as significant when it comes to muscle growth.

Regardless of whether you’re an experienced fitness fanatic or you’re thinking about crafting a strength routine for the first time, experts agree research like this can offer a guidepost for how to make the most of your resistance training workout—try focusing on just a few sets, repeated about three times throughout the week.

For beginners in particular, Remmert suggested starting with a lower number of sets, and adding more when your results start to plateau.

When it comes to the ideal number of reps in each set, Boreman said it depends on your fitness goals:

• Fewer reps, about one to five, are recommended for strength and power.
• About six to 12 reps would be best for building muscle.
• Doing between 13 and 20 reps is recommended for muscular endurance.

However, Boreman and Remmert agreed that people shouldn’t get too hung up on the numbers. The ideal workout volume is different for every person.

But this framework, along with other strategies, can help you meet your strength goals, Swisher said.

“Allow adequate rest between workouts for the same muscle groups, typically at least 48 hours, so your muscles can recover and grow,” he advised. “[And] it helps to track your workouts—for instance, note how many sets, reps, and what weight you lifted—and adjust based on your personal response. Seeing your progress written down is motivating, and it allows you to make informed, incremental changes to your routine.”