More Sets Make You Stronger and Bigger — But Only Up to a Point
The Resistance Training Dose-Response: Meta-Regressions Exploring the Effects of Weekly Volume and Frequency on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gain
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Doing more resistance training sets each week makes your muscles bigger and stronger, but after a certain amount, you get less extra benefit. Doing workouts more often helps you get stronger, but doesn’t necessarily make your muscles bigger if you’re already doing enough total sets.
Surprising Findings
Training frequency doesn’t reliably increase muscle size when total volume is held constant.
For decades, fitness culture preached that training each muscle 2–3x/week was optimal for growth—this study says if you do the same total sets, spreading them out doesn’t help size.
Practical Takeaways
If your goal is muscle growth, focus on hitting 10–20 direct sets per muscle group per week—don’t stress about splitting them across 2 or 5 days.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Doing more resistance training sets each week makes your muscles bigger and stronger, but after a certain amount, you get less extra benefit. Doing workouts more often helps you get stronger, but doesn’t necessarily make your muscles bigger if you’re already doing enough total sets.
Surprising Findings
Training frequency doesn’t reliably increase muscle size when total volume is held constant.
For decades, fitness culture preached that training each muscle 2–3x/week was optimal for growth—this study says if you do the same total sets, spreading them out doesn’t help size.
Practical Takeaways
If your goal is muscle growth, focus on hitting 10–20 direct sets per muscle group per week—don’t stress about splitting them across 2 or 5 days.
Publication
Authors
Joshua Pelland, Jacob Remmert, Zac Robinson, Seth Hinson, Michael Zourdos
Related Content
Claims (6)
Lifting weights more often each week helps you build bigger muscles and get stronger, but after a certain point, you don’t gain much extra strength—though your muscles can still grow. If you keep the same total amount of lifting, doing it in more frequent, lighter sessions helps strength more than muscle size.
When you're lifting weights, whether you do exercises that target one muscle at a time or ones that work multiple muscles together can change how well we can guess how much muscle you'll build or how much stronger you'll get—and using a special way to measure the workload (called 'fractional') works best for making those guesses.
If you lift weights the same total amount each week, it probably doesn’t matter much whether you do it in 2 big sessions or 5 small ones—your muscles will grow about the same either way.
Lifting weights more often each week helps you build more muscle—but only up to a point. After a certain amount, you don’t get much extra benefit, so there’s a sweet spot for the best results.
If you lift weights more often each week, you’ll likely get stronger faster—but that doesn’t always mean your muscles will get bigger. Strength and muscle growth might not follow the same rules.