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Strong Support
causal
Analysis v2
History

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...

47
Pro
0
Against

Mechanism

Synthesis from 1 study

How it works

When trained women slowly add more leg press sets each week, the front part of their thigh gets worked harder than the rest, causing its muscle fibers to grow bigger and stronger — but the other parts of the thigh don’t change much, so the whole thigh doesn’t get thicker. This pattern was observed...

Most probable mechanism

In Simple Terms

When trained women slowly add more sets each week, their leg muscles — especially the front part of the thigh — get worked harder and longer over time, which signals the muscle cells to build more protein and grow bigger. This doesn’t happen as much in the rest of the thigh, so the overall thickness doesn’t change much. This pattern is seen in the study that compared progressive volume to constant volume (10.1080/02640414.2025.2459003).

Causal chain
1

Progressive increases in weekly resistance training volume elevate mechanical tension and metabolic stress specifically during leg press exercises, preferentially activating vastus lateralis muscle fibers over other lateral thigh muscles (10.1080/02640414.2025.2459003)

Supported by evidence
which leads to
2

Elevated mechanical tension and metabolic stress in vastus lateralis increase intracellular signaling through mTORC1 and MAPK pathways, stimulating greater rates of myofibrillar protein synthesis in this muscle compared to others in the lateral thigh (10.1080/02640414.2025.2459003)

Supported by evidence
which leads to
3

Sustained increases in protein synthesis over 12 weeks lead to greater hypertrophy of vastus lateralis cross-sectional area and improved neural drive, enhancing leg press one-repetition maximum strength (10.1080/02640414.2025.2459003)

Supported by evidence

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (1)

47

Community contributions welcome

47

Does increasing the resistance-training volume lead to greater gains? The effects of weekly set progressions on muscular adaptations in females

Randomized Controlled Trial
Human
2025 Feb

Contradicting (0)

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.

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Source Study

Does increasing the resistance-training volume lead to greater gains? The effects of weekly set progressions on muscular adaptations in females

Score: 47
DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2025.2459003

Similar Assertions

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.

47
0
99%

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.

47
0
92%

For women who already train regularly, increasing leg workouts from 22 to 34 sets per week for 12 weeks does not lead to greater strength gains in the leg press compared to 22 sets, suggesting that there is a point beyond which more volume does not improve strength.

0
47
91%

If women who already lift weights increase their workout volume every couple of weeks, they’ll get stronger on the leg press faster than if they stick to the same number of sets the whole time.

47
0
91%

For women who already lift weights, slowly increasing how many sets they do every couple of weeks doesn’t help them build thicker thigh muscles any more than just keeping their workout the same over 12 weeks.

47
0
89%