The more you do the same workout each week, the faster you recover and the less sore you get.

Scientific Claim

Progressive exposure to identical resistance training stimuli results in progressive reductions in muscle damage markers and accelerated recovery kinetics.

Original Statement

“As the weeks go by and they continued training, there were progressive reductions in all signs of damage and faster recovery of performance.”

From video:How Many Sets for Muscle Growth? (New Study)byHouse of Hypertrophy

Context Details

Domain

exercise

Population

human

Subject

progressive exposure to identical resistance training stimuli

Action

results in

Target

progressive reductions in muscle damage markers and accelerated recovery kinetics

Intervention Details

Type: exercise

Dosage: repeated identical resistance training sessions

Duration: multi-week (e.g., 10 weeks)

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (0)

No supporting evidence found

Contradicting (1)

Comparison of the recovery response from high-intensity and high-volume resistance exercise in trained men

Randomized Controlled Trial

Human

2017 Jul

This study didn't test if doing the same workout over and over makes your muscles recover faster or get less sore—it just compared two different workouts once, and found the harder one made muscles more damaged and slower to recover.

Similar Assertions

You don’t need to feel sore or have high blood markers to get stronger—your muscles can adapt and grow without damage.

78%

Repeated exposure to resistance training induces the repeated bout effect, leading to reduced muscle damage, inflammation, and swelling over time.

76%

Both heavy lifting with few reps and light lifting with many reps cause muscle damage, but neither does it more than the other.

73%

Even though the guys doing the most workouts looked like they might have grown a little more, the difference wasn’t big enough to say for sure that more sets = more muscle.

72%

Acute muscle swelling responses following a single resistance training session are not representative of swelling responses observed after prolonged, repeated training programs.

72%