How many sets do you really need? The training dose, explained

Should you do 10 sets a week for a muscle, or 25? Gym advice swings between "less is more" and "more is more". A 2026 analysis in Sports Medicine gives one of the clearest answers yet.

What the researchers did

The authors combined 67 training studies with 2,058 participants, most of them young adults, and modelled how weekly volume (the number of hard sets) and weekly frequency (how many sessions train a muscle) related to gains in muscle size and strength. They also tested how to count sets for muscles that work indirectly, such as triceps during a bench press, and found that counting those as half a set fitted the evidence best.

What they found

• More weekly volume, more gains. Both muscle growth and strength improved as weekly sets increased.
• Diminishing returns. Each extra set added less than the one before. This flattening was much stronger for strength than for muscle size.
• Frequency matters more for strength. Training a muscle more often had little clear effect on growth once volume was accounted for, but it did help strength, again with diminishing returns.

What it means for you

• Start with what you can recover from. A moderate number of hard sets per muscle each week is a solid base for most people.
• Add sets slowly if progress stalls and you are recovering well. More isn't automatically better.
• Want to get stronger? Practise your main lifts on more days of the week rather than piling everything into one session.
• Count indirect work. Presses also train triceps and rows also train biceps, so you may need less isolation work than you think.

Source

Pelland JC, Remmert JF, Robinson ZP, Hinson SR, Zourdos MC. The resistance training dose response: meta-regressions exploring the effects of weekly volume and frequency on muscle hypertrophy and strength gains. Sports Medicine, 2026; 56(2): 481–505. Read the open preprint