In this video we're gonna go into the latest science on how many sets to build muscle and maximize your results in the gym.
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So the question of how many sets should you do to build muscle often sparks a lot of debate among the fitness crowd and the experts as well.
A lot of people get into arguments on YouTube and social media on what's the best approach:
Some claim that the low volume / heavy lifting approach is the most "optimal". The big idea is that doing 30-45 minute of heavy lifting a few times per week is enough to maximize results.
Often these low volume program are advertised as "You don't have to spend hours in the gym!" etc...
On the other hand we have claims that high volume training is absolutely necessary. Some say you need to spend 2-3 hours in the gym if you want the best results.
So which is more accurate?
Luckily for us we had a recent systematic review / meta-analysis titled "Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: A systematic review and meta-analysis." published on July 19, 2016.
The review was done by Brad Schoenfeld, Dan Ogborn and James Krieger.
I had the honor of meeting Brad and James in the UK. They're doing a fantastic job with exercise and nutrition science.
So what they did in this review is look at all studies that directly compared measured hypertrophy (muscle growth) between higher volume vs. lower volume weight training with all other variables the same between the 2 conditions.
Majority of the training done in these 15 studies was in the rep range of 6 - 15 RM.
Results:
Higher volume training where shown to provide about a 4% greater increase compared to lower volumes.
And when they looked at 5 weekly sets per muscle, 5 to 9 weekly sets per muscle, and 10+ sets per muscle.
They found that gains in muscle mass increased across each category from 5.4% to 6.6% to 9.8%.
What can we learn from this?
#1 - As shown a low volume approach can definitely build a decent amount of muscle.
With only 5 weekly sets per muscle group that's still a nice increase of 5%. So if you're super busy and living a hectic lifestyle or just going through a hard period you can definitely make some good gains without spending a lot of time in the gym.
However keep in mind that these were mainly untrained subjects. I suspect that you'd need to do a bit more to make progress, but you could probably maintain muscle mass on a lower volume approach.
#2 - A higher volume is clearly necessary if you want to maximize muscular gains. Those who performed 10+ sets per week showed almost twice as much muscle gain, and as mentioned above since they were untrained subjects I would recommend doing even more.
So how many sets should you perform to maximize hypertrophy?
My recommendation would be to start at 15 sets per muscle group per week and see how your do.
You'd probably be able to go up to 20 and potentially 25 sets per week per muscle group if you're very advanced.
It's really about finding that sweet spot where you can progress and at the same time recover.
Keep in mind that the "sweet spot" is a moving target.
The more experience you have it's likely that you'll need more volume to disrupt homeostasis and continue growing.
A good training plan will cycle periods where you go higher in volume, and where you go higher intensity and less volume. (with regular periods of de-loads to allow for fatigue to go down and growth to continue.)
Additionally it's important to point that that there's an "volume overlap" with compound movements.
So if you're doing 8 sets for chest pressing movements you can count that as 4 sets for triceps as well as 4 sets for the anterior deltoid.
Hope you enjoyed!
Related videos & articles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zojOIesDM0
https://www.lookgreatnaked.com/blog/how-many-sets-do-you-need-to-perform-to-maximize-muscle-gains/
Talk soon, Mario
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