How Many Sets Should You Do For Maximum Muscle Growth In 2024

Please checkout the video summary below, if you’d rather read, instead of watch.

Remember, to maximize muscle growth, you MUST increase your testosterone levels. This is true at any age, male or female.

Otherwise, you’ll minimize your results and feel like you’re wasting time with very little muscle growth and fat loss.

Video Summary

Intro

Dr Sam Robbins discusses how many times a week to train a muscle for maximum growth.

What’s The Best Way?

If you're new to it, you should shoot a muscle roughly three times a week, but if you're doing chest, back, shoulders, arms, lower about all this crap, three times a week is gonna be really long.

Arnold did a lot of volume and hit a muscle three times a week.

Total Sets/Week

In the old days, people would do six sets per body part on a daily basis. Later on, everyone started hitting a muscle twice a week.

3 Way Split

In the 80s, people would do chest, back, legs and arms, then chest, shoulders and triceps, back, biceps and traps, and then lower body. In the 90s, people would do everything once a week, but they would do it harder.

I Need Warming Up

If you’re a big guy, you should only hit a muscle twice a week. Keep in mind that you’re hitting your shoulders, triceps, and back indirectly when you bench press.

Hit Muscle 2x Per Week

You should hit each body part twice a week, if you’re doing it correctly.

If you have great genetics and are taking tons of roids, you can hit a muscle once a week. If you aren’t, you can hit a muscle once a week but sometimes you gotta kill it.

1 Muscle/5 Days

You should hit a muscle between five total sets, working sets a week up to 15 for a three-way split, or two on one off, two on one off, two on one off.

1 Muscle 5-15x/Week

Some people say to do 20 sets a week, but if your cortisol levels are in check and your testosterone levels are in check, you can do 20 sets a week without blowing out your nervous system.

Maximum 15 Sets/Week

Go five to 15 sets total a week, and most of those sets should be to failure. If you're going beyond failure, you're cheating the weight up, so stop grinding it and stop cheating the weight up. I saw pro bodybuilders squeezing it up on every rep and I saw that's how you're supposed to do the sets.

Don’t Break Form

Most of your reps should be one or two reps short of failure, and you should only do one or two sets total in each workout for a body part to complete failure. If you do that too much too often, your nervous system will burn out.

Beware Of Injuries!

These guys are taking three to four grams of steroids a day and are doing heavy duty training hit training. This is why they get shoulder pain, knee pain, back pain, torn muscles, and don’t feel like working out anymore.

Chest & Back Need More!

You should do 15 sets for chest, 10 for triceps, and so forth, and most sets should be one or two reps short of complete failure.

1-2 Reps Short Of Failure

You could have probably done one or two extra sets in good form, but you went balls out to failure.

Volume!

Assuming you can grow and you’re doing good sets, you should go by feel and optimize your hormones. Increase testosterone, decrease cortisol, and optimize your sleep to get the best results.

Optimize Your Hormones!

If you don’t recover properly after working out, it’s pointless to go to the gym and push yourself, to get bigger and stronger.

You Need To Recover!

If you can only do 10 good sets and recover and feel good, that’s it. You should leave the gym feeling good, tired but good, and you can kick ass again the next time you come back.

Four to five times a week is all you need in the gym. Hit every muscle group no more than twice a week, and once or twice a week go a little bit beyond failure.