More lifting builds more muscle — but not stronger legs
Resistance Training Volume Enhances Muscle Hypertrophy, but Not Strength in Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Women who lifted weights more times per workout got bigger leg muscles, but didn’t get stronger than those who lifted fewer times.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 561 / 90
Evidence Score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. Considered the gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Women who lifted weights more times per workout got bigger leg muscles, but didn’t get stronger than those who lifted fewer times.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 561 / 90
Evidence Score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. Considered the gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Publication
Authors
Nascimento de Oliveira-Júnior G, de Sousa JFR, Carneiro MADS, Martins FM, Santagnello SB, Souza MVC, Orsatti FL
Related Content
Claims (8)
People who regularly lift weights with higher total volume over the week tend to experience more muscle growth compared to those who lift with lower volume.
In postmenopausal women, doing more resistance training sessions or sets builds more muscle size but does not improve strength, suggesting that muscle growth and strength gains follow different biological pathways.
Increases in strength are mainly due to changes in how the nervous system activates muscles, while increases in muscle size are mainly due to the total amount of training performed within a repetition range of 4 to 30 reps.
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 produce the maximum possible muscle growth.
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%.