More Sets Make You Stronger, But Not Bigger
Effects of Different Weekly Set Progressions on Muscular Adaptations in Trained Males: Is There a Dose–Response Effect?
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
52 sets/week caused no additional hypertrophy compared to 22 sets, despite doubling training time and volume load.
Most prior research suggested higher volumes (>20 sets) yield more growth—this study flips that for trained lifters.
Practical Takeaways
If you're already trained, stick to 20–30 sets/week for quads—adding more won’t make you bigger, but progressive overload (adding sets every 2 weeks) will make you stronger.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
52 sets/week caused no additional hypertrophy compared to 22 sets, despite doubling training time and volume load.
Most prior research suggested higher volumes (>20 sets) yield more growth—this study flips that for trained lifters.
Practical Takeaways
If you're already trained, stick to 20–30 sets/week for quads—adding more won’t make you bigger, but progressive overload (adding sets every 2 weeks) will make you stronger.
Publication
Journal
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
Year
2023
Authors
Alysson Enes, E. D. De Souza, Tácito P. Souza-Junior
Related Content
Claims (10)
In trained individuals, higher resistance training volumes lead to concomitant increases in both muscle hypertrophy and maximal strength.
Even doing a huge number of leg sets—over 50 a week—didn’t make anyone’s muscles shrink, which means there might be a very high limit to how much training your muscles can handle without losing size.
People who did more sets didn’t lift heavier weights—they just did more reps and sets. The weight stayed the same, but the total work went up.
If you slowly add more sets to your leg workouts every two weeks, you’ll get stronger in the squat than if you keep doing the same number of sets the whole time.
Doing a lot more leg workouts—over 50 sets a week—doesn’t make your thigh muscles grow bigger than doing 20–40 sets a week, even if you train for 12 weeks.