How many sets should we have per muscle group each week to make the most progress in the gym? There is significant scientific data suggesting that at least 10 sets per muscle group per week is sufficient to make significant progress with weight training. What we do not currently know is the extent to which increasing this number beyond 10 has on our progress parameters – and requires further scientific investigation. This does not however, mean we should only do 10 sets per muscle group per week.
If we are truly aiming to maximize the results we see from our training sessions, we can start a training phase at 10 sets per muscle group and add 1 or possibly 2 sets each week until we find what it is we can still recover from. It is easy for us to think that muscle soreness is indicative of recovery but unfortunately this is not the case. Muscle soreness resembles disruption to the muscle cell – once this disruption has passed and has been recovered from, we no longer feel muscle soreness. At this point, our muscles are recovered but full recovery comes from our whole body, not just our muscles.
Our central nervous system accumulates fatigue every rep of every set. This is why our level of soreness may make us feel like we have recovered but are unable to progress in the gym week to week. Our muscles are actually continuing to make progress with strength and size, we just can’t see it in our performance because our central nervous system is too fatigued for our performance to improve.
What we should do to combat this as briefly mentioned above, is add 1-2 sets per muscle group per week until we find our maximum recoverable volume (MRV) – in other words, finding the absolute maximum amount of training volume (sets and reps) we can handle in one week, while still being able to be fully recovered by the next time we train that muscle group. Taking a full training program (4-6 weeks) to increase sets each week until we find our MRV can be incredibly useful to prevent ourselves from overtraining and getting injured in the future.
The intensity of each set we perform heavily influences the amount of fatigue we accumulate throughout a training program. We discussed relative intensity in detail in our “How to Train for Muscle Growth” but will briefly discuss how we can manipulate intensity so we can still recover week to week.
We want to have at least one set per exercise where we are within 5 reps until failure (5 reps in reserve or RIR) 5 RIR has been shown to be about 90% as effective for muscle building as going all the way until technical failure (0 RIR) but with significantly less fatigue accumulation.
We can start a new training program with 10 sets per muscle group per week, with our last set of every exercise done within 5 RIR. The next week we can increase from 10 sets to 11 and now get our last 2 sets done within 5 RIR and so on. When calculating sets per muscle group per week it’s very important we first have a good understanding of what muscles are used throughout various movement patterns.
A quick example is body weight dips: this may seem like it as an exclusive chest exercise but we must remember that sets of dips also count towards our weekly totals for tricep and front deltoid involvement. Even if the chest is the primary mover, we will still factor these in as full tricep, shoulder, AND chest sets in our weekly totals. If this is done incorrectly, it can be very easy to miscalculate our weekly totals and begin overtraining.
If you want more information on what you can do if you think or know you are overtraining, give our article titled: “What to do When you Stop Making Progress in the Gym ” a read as it goes into detail with various strategies you can take to overcome this.
If you or anyone you know is interested in taking their training or athletic performance to the next level, give us a call (312-666-7147) or send us an email (info@performancetrainingsystems.com) and one of our many qualified professionals will be eager to help in any way we can!
References:
- Helms, 2015
- McNaughten, 2016
- Schoenfeld, 2016
- Tang, 2009