How many sets should you do for each muscle every week?
The simple answer is: we don’t really know.
You’ll see recommendations ranging from 5 sets to 20 or more. But there’s no magic number that works for everyone, because it depends on your experience, how hard you train, your exercises, and how well you recover.
Fortunately, you don’t need to find the perfect number to get stronger.
Start out with around 5 sets
If you’re completely new to strength training, around 5 good sets per muscle per week is a reasonable place to start.
As you get stronger and your body gets used to training, you eventually need more. Gradually increasing towards 10 sets per muscle per week can help you keep progressing. Going beyond that may give you some additional benefit, but the improvements tend to get smaller while the extra time and effort keep increasing.
A simple rule is:
Start with 5. If you’re making progress, keep going. If progress slows and you’re recovering well, add a little more.
What counts as a set?
This is where counting gets a little tricky.
Three sets of bench press obviously train your chest, but they also train your triceps and shoulders. Three sets of rows train your back, but your biceps are working too.
You don’t need to calculate all of this yourself.
Track your weekly training with Get Strong
Get Strong’s muscle map tracks how much you’ve trained each muscle during the week, including the contribution from both primary and secondary muscles.
You can choose your own weekly goal, for example 5, 8 or 10 sets per muscle, and the muscle map shows your progress towards it.
This makes it easy to see which muscles could use more attention and which have already had plenty of work.
Start with something reasonable, see how your body responds, and adjust it as you get stronger.
Simply put, the right number of sets is pretty simple:
Enough to keep making progress.
