Does it matter how you do your sets at the gym?

In young men who have not trained before, 8 weeks of weight training at moderate intensity increases power in the legs but not in the arms, no matter how the sets are arranged.

Untrained young men who perform resistance training twice a week for eight weeks at moderate intensity show measurable increases in maximal strength for the bench press, bent-over row, and back squat, with strength gains ranging from 20% to 40%, regardless of how the sets are organized.

In untrained young men, doing resistance training for eight weeks with consistent effort and workload leads to a reduction in body fat by about 5–8%, no matter how the exercises are grouped into sets.

When lifting weights to exhaustion with only one minute of rest between sets, doing six sets instead of four does not lead to more muscle growth.

In untrained young men, two different ways of organizing resistance training workouts—either doing four sets of ten reps or eight sets of five reps, with the same total workload and rest time—lead to the same gains in muscle size, strength, and endurance after eight weeks.