How many times a week should you train a muscle group? That depends on your total weekly training volume. A new meta-analysis provides more insight.
WEEKLY TRAINING VOLUME
What truly matters for muscle growth is your total weekly training volume, as is now common knowledge. This is usually expressed in the number of sets, ranging from 10 weekly sets for beginners to 20 sets for advanced users.
VOLUME PER TRAINING
The analysis shows a positive dose-response relationship between sets per session and hypertrophy (muscle growth). However, the relationship also shows diminishing returns. The peak per workout appears to be around 11 sets per muscle group.
Hypertrophy expert Brad Schoenfeld concludes from this analysis:
When training higher volumes for a particular muscle group (more than 10 sets per week), it is better to distribute the volume over the week.
SPREAD VOLUME OVER THE WEEK
So it’s not just about the total number of sets per week, but also how you distribute them throughout the week. For example, if you do 16 sets for your quadriceps, it’s better to train 8 sets twice a week instead of doing all 16 sets in one workout. If you’re used to doing 9 sets of bench presses in one session, spread them out over 3 workouts per week. This improves the quality of each set and ultimately results in more reps.
Coach Menno Henselmans says about this :
When you spread your training over the week, you generally perform better, recover faster and have less muscle soreness.
Moreover:
Research even shows that increasing training frequency can improve recovery, boost hormone balance, and reduce muscle damage.
In short, say goodbye to chest day on Monday and stimulate your pecs several times a week with a small number of sets for optimal muscle growth. And do the same with all other muscle groups.
BEGINNERS
If you’re a beginner and do fewer than 10 sets per week for muscle growth, you can do all those sets in one workout. However, we also recommend that beginners spread their weekly training load over, for example, two or three full-body workouts.
CONCLUSION
Instead of one heavy session per week, train more often with a lower volume per session – it’s smarter, more sustainable and more effective.