The Study
Resistance Training Volume Enhances Muscle Hypertrophy, but Not Strength in Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial
This study is like a fair test where women were randomly picked to do either 3 sets or 6 sets of leg exercises. It found that doing more sets made their legs a little bigger, but didn't make them stronger than doing fewer sets. But we can't say this will work the same for everyone—just for women like the ones in the study.
Analysis score
Maximum 90 for a randomized controlled trial.
Where the score came from
Women who lifted weights more times per workout got bigger leg muscles, but didn’t get stronger than those who lifted fewer times.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 561 / 100
Quality score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. The gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1Yes — adding more sets doubled muscle growth, but didn’t help strength, meaning you can build muscle without getting stronger if volume is the only change.
- 26 sets per exercise: +6.1% leg muscle; 3 sets per exercise: +2.3% leg muscle; both groups improved leg strength equally.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research
Year
2020
Authors
Gersiel Nascimento de Oliveira-Júnior, Jairo F. R. de Sousa, Marcelo A. S. Carneiro, F. Martins, S. B. Santagnello, M. Souza, F. Orsatti
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%.
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.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.