How many sets per week to build muscle?

If you want a muscle to grow, the number that matters most is how many hard sets it gets in a week. Not total reps, not minutes in the gym: sets taken reasonably close to failure, counted per muscle.

The short answer

• Beginners: about 8 to 12 hard sets per muscle per week.
• A few years in: about 10 to 16.
• Experienced lifters: 12 to 20 for the muscles they care about most.

A 2017 meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger found a clear dose-response: 10 or more weekly sets per muscle produced more growth than fewer than 5. More helps, up to the point where you can't recover from it.

What counts as a hard set

A set counts when it ends within about 1 to 3 reps of failure. Warm-up sets don't count, and neither do sets you could have done 10 more reps of. See reps in reserve for how to judge it.

Compound lifts count for more than one muscle. A bench press is a full set for the chest and roughly half a set for the triceps and front delts. A Romanian deadlift trains hamstrings and glutes together.

Spread it across the week

Sixteen sets for the chest in one session is mostly junk by the end. Splitting the same sets across two or three sessions keeps each set higher quality. A good rule: no more than about 8 to 10 hard sets for one muscle in a single workout, and train each muscle at least twice a week.

Signs you're doing too much or too little

• Too little: you're never sore, your lifts go up easily but the muscle doesn't change, and sessions feel short.
• Too much: reps drop session to session, soreness lasts into the next workout for that muscle, joints ache and you dread the gym.

If you're unsure, start at the low end and add two sets a week to a lagging muscle each block while your lifts keep moving.

Tip: Volume for a muscle you want to bring up should go up first. Keep everything else at a level you can recover from.

How Liftsmith counts it

Liftsmith counts weekly sets for every muscle, with secondary muscles at half a set, and aims each one at a target for your experience. Up to three priority muscles get a third more. A coach's note tells you when a big muscle has been short of its sets for two weeks, and offers to make it a priority in one tap.