How many sets per muscle per week, and does bench press count for your triceps?

Do about 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle each week. Count a set as 1 for the muscle the exercise targets and ½ for the muscles that help: four sets of bench press are four sets for your chest and two for your triceps. Fewer than 10 still builds muscle, and more than 20 still adds some, but each extra set adds a little less than the one before.

More sets, more muscle, with diminishing returns

How many sets is one of the best-studied questions in hypertrophy research. The first meta-analysis to pool it found a clear dose–response: across 15 studies, each extra weekly set per muscle went with about 0.37 percentage points more growth over the length of a study (Schoenfeld et al. 2017). But the data only reached about 10 sets a week, and only two of the studies used trained lifters.

The largest analysis so far pooled 67 studies and more than 2,000 people (Pelland et al. 2026), and 35 of those studies, with about 1,000 people, measured muscle growth. Growth kept rising with weekly sets, on a square-root curve: every set helps, and each one helps less than the last. To see what that shape means, going from 5 to 10 sets a week adds about as much growth as going from 10 to 17, or from 20 to 29. The analysis found no point where more sets stopped helping, but few studies went past about 25 sets a week, so the top of the curve is less sure than the middle.

Trained lifters fit the same pattern. In one study, men with lifting experience did 1, 3 or 5 sets of each exercise, three days a week, for 8 weeks. The 5-set group grew the most in the thighs and the elbow flexors (the biceps and the muscle under them), while strength rose about the same in all three groups (Schoenfeld et al. 2019).

Not every trial agrees. A recent multi-site trial randomized 120 trained lifters to 9 or 36 sets a week (counting indirect sets as half) for 12 weeks and found the two equivalent (Steele et al. 2026). It is a preprint, and it estimated muscle size from tape measures and skinfolds, a coarse tool. Still, it is a fair reminder that the extra growth from very high volume is small, and costs a lot of gym time.

Compound lifts count, but at half

A bench press trains your chest, but your triceps and the front of your shoulders work too. A row or a pulldown trains your back, and your biceps as well. Should those sets count for the helpers?

Pelland and colleagues tried three ways: ignore the indirect sets, count them as full sets, or count them as half. Counting them as half, which they call the “fractional” method, fit best, both for growth and for strength. They argue that telling direct sets from indirect ones is needed to predict what a program will do. Half is a working rule more than a measured constant, but it beats both alternatives.

The 2019 study points the same way. Its program had no curls and no triceps extensions, only presses, rows, pulldowns and leg work, and the arms still grew. The biceps grew more with more sets.

A worked example, with two upper-body days a week:

Exercise	Sets a week	Chest	Shoulders	Triceps
Bench press	8	8	4	4
Overhead press	6	–	6	3
Triceps pushdown	6	–	–	6
Total		8	10	13

Count the presses in full and your triceps are at 20 sets. Leave them out and they’re at 6. Half gives 13, well inside the range, and the table also shows what this week is short of: the chest, at 8.

A few rules for counting:

• Only hard sets count. The studies counted working sets taken close to failure, so warm-ups and easy sets stay out of the total.
• Isolation exercises credit only their target. A curl is a biceps set, a fly is a chest set, and neither counts for anything else.
• Legs are still an open question. The half rule rests mostly on upper-body lifts, and how much a squat should count for your glutes, or a lunge for your hamstrings, hasn’t been settled.

How you spread the sets matters less

• Training a muscle more days a week, at the same weekly sets, made little difference to growth in Pelland’s analysis (it mattered more for strength). Pick the split that fits your week.
• In one session, more sets stop adding much. A companion analysis by the same group found no detectable extra growth past about 11 fractional sets for one muscle in one session (Remmert et al. 2025). It is a preprint with little data on very long sessions, and the authors say to read the number with caution, since more sets might still help. If you want 20 chest sets a week, two days of 10 is the safer bet than one day of 20.

One more caveat: most people in these studies are young men. Women and older lifters likely follow the same shape, but the numbers are less certain for them.

How long to rest between those sets is its own question: see how long to rest between sets to build muscle.

How Workout Wizard does it

When you finish a workout, the recap shows Sets per muscle group: each muscle’s completed sets from that session, as a bar and a number, counted 1 for direct work and ½ for indirect work. Four sets of bench press show as 4 for the chest, 2 for the shoulders and 2 for the triceps. Chest presses credit the triceps and shoulders, overhead presses credit the triceps, and rows, pulldowns and pull-ups credit the biceps and traps. Push-ups and dips count like presses. Flyes, curls, raises and other isolation exercises, leg exercises and exercises you create yourself credit only their own muscle. If one muscle passes about 11 sets in that session, a small note says more sets add little there and suggests spreading them across days. It doesn’t stop you from adding sets.

After the last workout of a regular week (not a deload week), the recap adds This week: each muscle’s sets for the whole week, counted the same way, on a bar with 10 to 20 shaded as the recommended range. Halves show as halves (“12.5”), and skipped sets don’t count.

This count doesn’t change the sets the app plans for your next workouts, which follow your program.

Crediting push-ups, dips and pull-ups like presses and pulldowns is the app’s own extrapolation (they are the same movements), and the 10–20 band is the app’s reading of the studies above. The app’s science notes say so.

How many sets to aim for

About 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle a week, counting indirect sets as half: a set of bench press is one chest set and half a triceps set. Keep any one muscle to about 11 sets in a session. Past 20 a week, more sets still help, just less each.

References

• Pelland JC et al. 2026. The resistance training dose response: meta-regressions exploring the effects of weekly volume and frequency on muscle hypertrophy and strength gains. Sports Med 56(2):481–505. doi:10.1007/s40279-025-02344-w. PMID 41343037.
• Remmert JF et al. 2025. Is there too much of a good thing? Meta-regressions of the effect of per-session volume on hypertrophy and strength. SportRxiv (preprint). doi:10.51224/SRXIV.537.
• Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. 2017. Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Sports Sci 35(11):1073–1082. doi:10.1080/02640414.2016.1210197. PMID 27433992.
• Schoenfeld BJ et al. 2019. Resistance training volume enhances muscle hypertrophy but not strength in trained men. Med Sci Sports Exerc 51(1):94–103. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000001764. PMID 30153194.
• Steele J et al. 2026. A test of higher and lower fractional volumes of resistance training upon arm and thigh muscle area: a multi-site randomised trial. SportRxiv (preprint). doi:10.51224/SportRxiv.810.