More weekly sets, more muscle, up to a point
A graded dose-response between weekly set volume and hypertrophy.
What they studied
- Design
- Systematic review and meta-regression
- Data
- 15 studies, 34 training groups
- Exposure
- Weekly sets per muscle group
- Outcome
- Change in muscle size
What they found
- Every extra weekly set added about 0.37 percentage points to muscle growth.
- Higher-volume groups gained about 3.9 percentage points more than lower-volume groups in the same study.
- Split into <5, 5–9 and 10+ sets per muscle, the trend favoured 10+ sets but was not statistically significant (p = 0.074).
How strong is the evidence
Meta-analysis
What this design cannot tell us:
- Only 15 studies, most of them short and in young adults.
- The data cannot show where the benefit of extra sets levels off.
What it means for your training
- Aim for 10+ hard sets per muscle per week and build up gradually.
- Add sets when progress stalls, as long as you still recover between sessions.
Our summary of the published abstract. Read the original paper for full details.