When it comes to weight training, more is better if that’s what you need. Likewise, less is better if that’s what you need. The tricky part about all this is that different people respond best to different amounts of training. In other words, some lifters respond better to high volume training and need to do a lot of sets. In contrast, others need to cut back in order to improve. It’s possible that you are already doing the right amount of training, but if you aren’t, how do you know whether you need to do more training or less training?
Guidelines For How Much Training
When it comes to how much training you should do, results are always the bottom line. I am of the opinion that the majority of lifters will experience the best results by doing 2 to 4 warm up sets for a muscle group followed by 2 to 4 work sets for the same muscle group. Each muscle group should be trained 2 to 3 times per week, and I also believe that most lifters are best off if they stop 2 to 3 reps short of failure on their work sets. By failure, I mean that you can’t do another rep without assistance from a spotter no matter how hard you try. Stop 2 to 3 reps short of that point. These numbers are not unchangeable rules that apply perfectly to everyone, they are simply guidelines that will work for most lifters.
Moving Outside of the Guidelines
Not everyone fits perfectly into the guidelines just listed. There are lifters who benefit from high volume training by doing 10 or more sets for each muscle group. How do you know if you are responsive to high volume training? The only way is to try it and check the results. Some lifters will also find that they do better with high frequency training, or high intensity training. The only way to know if this may be true of you is to try it and see what type of results you experience.
While some lifters may benefit from doing more training than normal, others benefit from doing less than normal. Some lifters do best when they work up to just one work set for each muscle group once per week. The only way to find out if this is true of you is to try it out.
If It Ain’t Broke
If you are already using a specific amount of sets, frequency, and intensity, the only reason to change what you are doing now is because your current training isn’t working. If your current training is leading to steady improvement, don’t mess with it too much. I agree with the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” People get into trouble when they insist on changing what’s already working while failing to change the things that are not working.
Be Aware of Whether You are at Full Strength
If you are looking for a starting place in terms of how many sets to perform for a muscle group, start by being aware of when a muscle group is at full strength, and when it is not. If you can do more sets for a muscle group while remaining at full strength, then you can probably benefit from doing more sets. In contrast, if you repeat sets to the point where a muscle group begins to weaken, and continue to do several more sets for the same muscle group, there is a good chance you would benefit from cutting back. I suggest stopping after the first set where a muscle group begins to weaken.
The major lesson here is that there is no specific number of sets that is the perfect number of sets for every single lifter. The number of sets that a lifter should do will depend on his or her own capacity. Above all, a lifter must evaluate how many sets he should do based on what he finds works best.
Don’t Be Fooled by Short Term Gains
One of the trickiest parts about tapping into the right amount of sets is that doing more or less might be a good short-term strategy, but a bad long-term strategy. Doing more can often shock your body into short term improvement. Likewise, doing less will often allow your body to improve by over-recovering for a week or two. Both strategies can lead you to believe that the quick improvements that you experienced will keep on occurring, but what you will eventually find is that both overtraining and undertraining are poor long-term strategies. Finding the right amount of sets often results in slow, but consistent progress over the long term, which is better than a rapid burst of strength that quickly transitions into a sticking point. You must think long term when trying to find the right amount of sets.
If you are not improving, and you are already doing a lot of sets, it’s probably not a good idea to keep adding more. You would be better off by experimenting with doing less sets. On the other hand, If you are only doing one or two sets per muscle group, and it is not leading to any improvement, I would suggest experimenting with more sets. Limiting yourself to a predetermined number of sets that you think you must always do will probably limit your results. You must be willing to experiment at times in order to develop a feel for the type of training that triggers the greatest response from your body. If you are sincere about your progress, keep these concepts in mind and apply them as needed. Best of training to you.
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