For postmenopausal women, doing three sets of supervised leg exercises twice a week for 12 weeks can increase muscle mass and strength in the legs compared to not exercising at all, but it does not...

Pro

Against

Mechanism

Synthesis from 1 study

How it works

Lifting weights pulls on your muscles, which tells them to build more of the proteins that make them strong and big. Doing three sets is enough to make you noticeably stronger because your nerves learn to fire better, but doing more sets keeps making your muscles bigger — so three sets aren't...

Most probable mechanism

In Simple Terms

When you lift weights, the pulling and stretching of muscle fibers sends signals inside the cells that tell them to build more of the proteins that make muscles contract. More sets mean more of this signal, so muscles grow bigger over time. At the same time, lifting weights also trains the nerves to fire more strongly and efficiently to the muscles, which makes you stronger — but this improvement plateaus after a certain amount of lifting, even if you keep doing more.

Causal chain

Mechanical tension generated during concentric and eccentric muscle contractions activates mechanosensitive proteins embedded in muscle cell membranes and cytoskeletal structures

Supported by evidence

which leads to

Activated mechanosensors trigger intracellular signaling cascades that upregulate the machinery responsible for assembling contractile proteins, including actin and myosin

Supported by evidence

which leads to

Increased synthesis of contractile proteins leads to net accumulation within muscle fibers, resulting in greater muscle cross-sectional area and lean mass

Verified by multiple studies

which leads to

Repeated muscle contractions enhance the efficiency of neural signals from the spinal cord to muscle fibers, increasing the number and synchronization of motor units recruited during effort

Supported by evidence

which leads to

Neural adaptations reach a plateau at moderate training volumes, so further increases in set number do not produce additional strength gains

Supported by evidence

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (1)

Community contributions welcome

Resistance Training Volume Enhances Muscle Hypertrophy, but Not Strength in Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Randomized Controlled Trial

Human

2022 May 1

Contradicting (0)

Community contributions welcome

No contradicting evidence found

Gold Standard Evidence Needed

According to GRADE and EBM methodology, here is what ideal scientific evidence would look like to definitively prove or disprove this specific claim, ordered from strongest to weakest evidence.

Source Study

Resistance Training Volume Enhances Muscle Hypertrophy, but Not Strength in Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Score: 61

DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000003601

Similar Assertions

For postmenopausal women, doing six sets of resistance exercises per movement instead of three sets over 12 weeks leads to a greater increase in leg muscle mass, with a 6.1% gain compared to 2.3%.

89%

For postmenopausal women, doing three sets or six sets of leg exercises during strength training leads to about the same improvement in leg strength after 12 weeks.

88%

Over 12 weeks, adding more sets to weekly resistance training sessions leads to larger gains in leg strength and muscle size in the vastus lateralis of trained women, but does not significantly change the overall thickness of the lateral thigh muscles.

79%

For women who already train with weights, doing more sets per week—up to 38—does not lead to noticeably bigger thigh muscles after 12 weeks compared to doing 22 sets per week.

79%

In women with about two years of weight training experience, gradually increasing the number of sets per week over 12 weeks leads to bigger gains in leg strength and muscle thickness in the front thigh muscle, but not in the overall thickness of the side thigh muscles, compared to doing the same number of sets every week.

79%