Setvio Español

Setvio guide

How Many Sets per Muscle per Week? Volume for Hypertrophy

By Qjason Mobile · Updated:

For muscle growth, about 10 hard sets per muscle per week is a sound starting point, and many trained lifters do 12 to 20. More sets tend to bring more growth, but each extra set adds less than the one before, and only sets that end reasonably close to failure should count.

What the research says

  • A meta-analysis found a graded dose–response: each additional weekly set was associated with a 0.37% larger gain in muscle size, and 10 or more weekly sets per muscle tended to beat fewer than 5 (Schoenfeld et al., 2017).
  • A review of young, trained men proposed 12 to 20 weekly sets per muscle as a standard recommendation; going past 20 only helped the triceps (Baz-Valle et al., 2022).
  • The largest analysis so far, of 67 studies, found that muscle growth keeps increasing with weekly sets but with diminishing returns, and that strength levels off sooner (Pelland et al., 2026).

Which sets count

Count working sets that end within a few reps of failure: muscle growth improves as sets end closer to failure (Robinson et al., 2024). Warm-up sets don't count. The RIR guide explains how to judge how close you were.

Exercises also work muscles other than the main one: a bench press trains the triceps too. In the analysis of 67 studies, the count that best predicted results gave those indirect sets half the value of a direct set (Pelland et al., 2026). Ten sets of bench press and five of triceps extensions add up to 10 sets for the chest and 10 for the triceps.

Sets per session and training frequency

For the same weekly volume, training a muscle once or several times a week builds similar muscle (Schoenfeld et al., 2019). Frequency is mostly a way to fit the volume in: 16 sets for a muscle are easier to do well as two sessions of 8 than as one session of 16. Strength is different: it did increase with frequency (Pelland et al., 2026).

How to find your volume

  1. Start with about 10 hard sets per muscle per week.
  2. Keep that volume while your reps or weights keep going up.
  3. When progress stalls and you recover well, add one or two sets per muscle and give it a few weeks.
  4. If your performance drops from week to week or you can't recover between sessions, go back to the volume that worked.

How Setvio estimates your weekly stimulus

Setvio's net stimulus of the last 7 days by muscle: glutes, abs, chest, triceps, front delts, biceps and more.

Setvio goes a step beyond counting sets. On Home, in Next-session prediction, tap View full analysis and switch to Hypertrophy:

  • Last 7 Days / Actual Weekly Net Stimulus estimates the net stimulus of each muscle group from the sets you logged in the last 7 days. A set counts in full for the exercise's main muscles and as 0.4 of a set for secondary ones; more sets bring diminishing returns and, when you log RIR or RPE, sets far from failure count less.
  • Planner / Simulator lets you test a week before you train it: choose exercises, sets per session and weekly frequency, and see how the stimulus of each muscle changes.

The model builds on Chris Beardsley's Weekly Net Stimulus: the stimulus of the week minus an estimate of what is lost between sessions (WNS Calculator). Setvio's volume curve follows the assumption WNS Calculator uses for Schoenfeld's meta-analysis: 6 sets give about twice the stimulus of 1 (Schoenfeld et al., 2017). The result is in arbitrary units, for comparing muscles and weeks; it isn't a measurement of real growth.

Published by Qjason Mobile, the developer of Setvio. Sources are listed below; app examples use demonstration data.

Sources

  1. Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Sports Sci. 2017;35(11):1073-1082. doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2016.1210197
  2. Baz-Valle E, Balsalobre-Fernández C, Alix-Fages C, Santos-Concejero J. A Systematic Review of The Effects of Different Resistance Training Volumes on Muscle Hypertrophy. J Hum Kinet. 2022;81:199-210. doi.org/10.2478/hukin-2022-0017
  3. Pelland JC, Remmert JF, Robinson ZP, Hinson SR, Zourdos MC. The Resistance Training Dose Response: Meta-Regressions Exploring the Effects of Weekly Volume and Frequency on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gains. Sports Med. 2026;56(2):481-505. doi.org/10.1007/s40279-025-02344-w
  4. Robinson ZP, Pelland JC, Remmert JF, Refalo MC, Jukic I, Steele J, et al. Exploring the Dose-Response Relationship Between Estimated Resistance Training Proximity to Failure, Strength Gain, and Muscle Hypertrophy: A Series of Meta-Regressions. Sports Med. 2024;54(9):2209-2231. doi.org/10.1007/s40279-024-02069-2
  5. Schoenfeld BJ, Grgic J, Krieger J. How many times per week should a muscle be trained to maximize muscle hypertrophy? A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the effects of resistance training frequency. J Sports Sci. 2019;37(11):1286-1295. doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2018.1555906
  6. WNS Calculator. About: the Weekly Net Stimulus, the model developed by Chris Beardsley. wnscalculator.com/about