How Many Sets To Do In Your Workout | How Many Sets Per Exercise To Build Muscle
In this instructional video Eric Roberts explains how to determine the optimal number of sets for each exercise based on overall weekly volume goals. He first establishes weekly set targets for muscle groups – 10‑20 working sets for large muscles (quads, glutes, back, chest) and 4‑8 for smaller muscles (biceps, triceps, rear delts, lateral raises). He emphasizes that these numbers refer only to working sets performed within 1‑3 reps of failure, not warm‑up sets. He then shows how those weekly targets translate into per‑exercise set ranges, recommending 2‑4 sets per exercise (most often 2‑3, with 3 for compound/major accessory movements and 2‑3 for isolation work). The video outlines typical training frequencies (3‑day full‑body or lower/upper splits, and 4‑day lower/upper alternating splits) and suggests appropriate numbers of exercises per workout (4‑6 for lower‑body, 6‑10 for upper‑body, 6‑12 for full‑body). Eric illustrates how to balance exercise selection across muscle groups, using glute‑focused examples to show how to distribute sets across multiple exercises and avoid exceeding ~9‑10 sets per muscle in a single session, since research shows diminishing returns beyond that point. He stresses that intensity (working close to failure) matters far more than sheer volume, and that a well‑structured program with fewer, high‑quality sets can outperform higher‑volume, low‑intensity work. Finally, he promotes his ERF Clubhouse app, which contains pre‑built programs, exercise demos, and detailed set/rep schemes for users who prefer a ready‑made plan.
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YouTube, what's going on? Welcome back to the channel. Hope you're doing well. Welcome to this video where we're going to be talking about how many sets should you be doing for your exercises. And so again, if you're doing squats, if you're doing bench press, if you're doing hip thrust, if you're doing bicep curls, any single exercise, how many sets should you be doing for that exercise? And I'm going to be honest with you, if you're somebody who just like, you just want the most simple basic answer of exactly what it is, I'm going to tell you at the end of the video. If you don't want to learn anything, you don't care about anything, you just want to know the 6-second answer, you can scroll ahead to the end and probably just catch it. It's not going to make nearly as much sense and it's not going to— you won't understand why you're going to do that, which is probably going to then impact your results. If that's you, then feel free to go ahead. But if you actually do want to learn and it If you want to understand why that is the answer, you should probably just watch the whole video. I promise you, it will be worth it if you watch the whole video. Because it's a complex answer that's not just one or the other. There are some nuance that goes into— there is some nuance. Grammar police would have got me. There is some nuance that goes into answering this question. So let's start off by talking about something I've chatted before on this channel a couple of times. And so for those of you who are not new, To the channel and you watched a few of my videos, you'll probably remember me saying this, but I'll just lay it out briefly really quickly. The first thing this question is actually going to come down to is the amount of sets per muscle group per week that you are trying to get in throughout the course of a week, because the amount of sets per muscle group per week is one of the most important things you should be shooting for in your workouts. And so obviously if you need to figure out how many sets per muscle group per week you're doing, that's going to obviously then bleed into how How many sets you should be doing for each given exercise. So for the most part, for your bigger muscle groups, things like your quads, things like your hamstrings, your glutes, your back, your chest, if you are trying to focus on like, you know, building a bigger chest or whatever it is, or, and that's the second part, or if you're really trying to like focus on a specific muscle group. So like, again, if you are really trying to focus on growing your glutes or whatever it is, You should be getting roughly around 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week. So for example, let's just say you do 3 sets of a hip thrust. That is going to be 3 sets towards your 10 to 20 sets, if that makes sense. Okay? So that goes for bigger muscle groups. The other one is 4 to 8 sets per muscle group per week. This is going to be for muscle groups that aren't as big. So like, for example, and nothing— this is not a knock on you, but like your biceps, for example. Your biceps and your quad, like no offense, but your bicep is not a big muscle compared to your quad. Don't worry, it's not a big muscle for any of us compared to our quad. But like biceps, triceps, side lateral raises, rear delts, things of that nature, you don't need to be doing 20 sets of bicep per week and you don't need to be doing 20 sets of rear delt So for those smaller muscle groups, generally speaking, you want to be somewhere around that 4 to 8, maybe up to 10 rep range because you have to also remember, let's just take your biceps for example. When you are doing rows, when you are doing like a chin-up or a lat pulldown, your bicep has to be getting worked in those movements. And again, your back is a bigger muscle group than your biceps, right? So your back's probably going to fall in that 10 to 20 sets per week range. per muscle group per week. And so if you're already doing 15 sets of back where rows, pulldowns, all of these things, you're not going to need as many sets for your biceps because your biceps are already getting worked and you just kind of want to put a little bit extra on those to be able to, you know, have them see progress and gains and so on and so forth. So that's why for your smaller muscle groups you might not need as many direct sets per muscle group per week. Or if just like, you know, again, maybe you want to grow your glutes. And you're not super focused on like getting a bigger chest at the moment. Like maybe you just have like 4 sets per muscle group per week for your chest to like maintain where you currently are. And then, you know, you can put more volume towards the muscle groups that you want to kind of like prioritize. So this is important again, because you're gonna see throughout the flow of this video, all of this stuff kind of plays into each other. But for the most part, that is 10 to 20 for bigger muscle groups or muscle groups you're focusing on, 4 to 8 for your smaller muscle groups or just muscle You're really not that concerned with growing or improving at the specific moment in time. Now, I want to also make this very clear as well. When I say these numbers, I mean 10 to 20 working sets per muscle group per week, or 4 to 8 working sets. I'm not talking about warm-up sets. And this is going to be— remember this nugget of information because this is going to be important as we go on later in the video. But I'm talking about working sets and the difference between a working set and a warm-up set. A working set, you are taking that set within 1 to 3 reps shy of failure. So it's a very hard, a very challenging set. A warm-up set is where you do not take it close to failure. It doesn't really challenge you. We will include those in this conversation later. In the video. But like for this specific thing, I'm not talking about warmup sets. I'm only talking about working sets. So just keep that in mind. Again, we'll talk about that a little bit later. Now that we know, you know, how many sets per muscle group per week and stuff like that you're trying to shoot for, I'm also going to talk about how many exercises are you doing per workout. And also, you know, kind of on top of here, I will put how many workout days are you having per week. Me personally, in the way I program workouts inside of my clubhouse or with any of my clients or whatever, We do either a 3-day-a-week program or a 4-day-a-week program. 3 days a week is lower body, upper body, full body. 4 days a week is going to be lower body, upper body, lower body, upper body. The reason this is important is, again, you want to figure out how many exercises you should be doing for those specific workouts. So I talked earlier about up here, it's sets per muscle group per week, right? This would somewhat depend on again, maybe if you're trying to focus on a specific muscle group first versus not focus on a specific muscle group, or you know, maybe you're going through a phase that's a bit more balanced. This somewhat depends on the program that you are following. But what I can tell you is how many exercises per workout you should probably be aiming for. So I know this is a little bit small to see. That's what she said. But it says lower body is. exercises per workout is going to be 4 to 6 total exercises. For upper body, it's going to be 6 to 10 total exercises for that workout. And then a full body workout is again going to be 6 to 12 exercises. I really would not go past 12 exercises in a full body day. I almost put 6 to 10, but in some scenarios you may add on a little bit more at the end. But that's how many— Exercises per workout you should be doing. Now again, there's a lot that goes into this and this could be an entire like 12-hour course, but I'm going to stick with, let's just say as an example, you are trying to really focus on your glutes, right? Let's say on a lower body day you are doing either 2 or 3 exercises for your glutes, because again, in total you're having 4 to 6 exercises. And I get asked this question a lot too. People will ask me, hey Eric, if I have 2 leg days, Per week, which again, with the splits that I told you, lower body, upper body, full body, or lower body, upper body, lower body, upper body, both of those things, you're hitting your muscle groups 2 times a week, right? So they'll ask me, well, should one day be more quad-focused and should one day be more hamstring and glute-focused? Yes, but also not really, because you should be doing both quads, or I guess all quads, hamstrings, glutes on The same day. Now again, for example, let's say your first lower body day you have barbell back squats, right? And that really hits both quads and glutes, but let's just say that's a more quad dominant movement for the point of this thing, right? So let's say you start with that and then you finish off with, um, you know, you have Romanian deadlift, more of a glute focus. Let's say you have a hip thrust variation, glute focused. And then let's say you have some sort of, uh, you know, walking lunge that can be glute focused. You had 1 quad exercise and then 3 glute exercises. And then let's say, for example, you have the other day where, you know, if you are still trying to focus on like your glutes, let's say your first exercise is a, again, some sort of Romanian deadlift variation. The second exercise is going to be, let's say, a quad-biased leg press. So you're like hitting your quads. Third exercise is some sort of hip thrust. And then fourth exercise is some sort of, um, Bulgarian split squat, right? So again, you are doing hamstrings, quads, and glutes all on the same day. But again, you can maybe bias it a little bit more towards which muscle group you are trying to focus on the most. So that was kind of a side note to the video right here, but I want to make sure I cover that because I get asked that a lot. But let's go back to talking about like the 2 times per week, right? If you are doing 2 to 3 exercises for your glutes and you know you need to have, let's just say, 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week for your glutes, if that's what you're really trying to focus on, well then cool. Let's say one day again you have a back squat and you also have Romanian deadlift, hip thrust, and walking lunge. That's glute bias. You have 3 glute exercises on that day, right? If you have 3 sets for each of those, that's already 9 sets putting towards your glutes. For that week. By the way, I usually would not go over 9 to 10 sets per muscle group in a given workout. This is why it's also important to make sure you hit your muscle groups 2 times per week. Normally the research shows, and I can link some of the research here below if you want to check it out, but the research shows after you get past that like 10 sets per muscle group per workout, you start to see diminishing returns. And so that leg day, very glute focused, very glute heavy. You've already done 9 sets. Let's say the next leg day, again, you add in 2 exercises where, you know, you do again a hip thrust variation and then some sort of a Romanian deadlift variation. Let's say you do 3 sets for each of those as well. Well, now you have 9 and you have 6, you have 15 sets of glutes for that entire week. You would be perfect if you were able to do that in your workouts. Because again, you know, this kind of ties into the next question. So I hope you're— hopefully I'm, I'm not like losing you, and hopefully you're sticking with me. If I am, I apologize. But because you had 3 exercises on your first day for your glutes and 2 exercises on your other day for your glutes, you would probably be around that like 3 sets per exercise because it would all, like I said, add up to what you're trying to do right here. But let's say for example, you were only doing 2 dedicated glute exercises for that workout. So let's just say you did 2 and let's say you did 3 sets, right? So that would be 6 sets and 6 sets, right? Because you're doing 2 exercises each day. Cool. That still puts you at 12 working sets of glutes for the entire week. Again, if they're actually working sets where you're Pushing them very close to failure, 12 sets of glutes per week is a really good amount of sets. But let's just say, for example, you wanted to add a little bit more. Cool. Maybe you did 4 sets and 4 sets and then 4 sets and 4 sets on the other day as well, still doing 2 exercises per day. You would then bump up to 16 sets of glutes per week without necessarily having to add extra exercises. Into your workouts. So again, how many sets per exercise you should be doing somewhat depends on how many sets you're going for for the week, and it also somewhat depends on how many exercises you're doing. Now I'll give you my 2 cents, and this is where I'm going to kind of just give you my knowledge and 2 cents of what I personally believe. So the amount of sets per exercise I would kind of personally recommend you doing is going to be anywhere in between that 2 to 4 sets per exercise. And generally speaking, I like to stay in that 2 to 3. Really, the only time I'm going to perform 4 sets in a row of a given exercise is if somebody has to. 2 to 3 sets is usually where you can still push yourself how you need to without worrying about like having to do more sets because consciously or subconsciously, when you do 4 sets of an exercise, for you to keep up the level of intensity that you need in order to elicit an adaptation response and to be able to push yourself very close to failure for 4 full sets in a row, not that it's impossible because it's not impossible, but it does just get a little bit challenging. It does challenge you mentally and physically, but mentally because like you almost want to like save reps or save sets or save the weight you use to be able to make sure you finish all 4 of your sets. And so this is why I personally like doing 2 to 3 sets where you push very close to failure. Like, like the last couple of reps are like barely getting up on a shoulder press or a squat or whatever. Because that way you also don't have to do as many X— do as many sets in order to still elicit the adaptation response. Like for example, you can do 20 sets of glutes per week, but if they're all taken like not anywhere near close to failure, it's not fucking worth it. You would be much better off doing 12 sets of glutes per week where you push those sets all the way very close to failure. You'll see way better results that way. So I've talked about this in other videos, but that whole concept of pushing close to failure, that's what matters the most. You can do all the reps, all the sets, all the exercises. It's not going to get you to where you want to be unless you push yourself very close to failure. So for the most part, I like doing 2 to 3 sets. Usually 3 sets is where I like to end up. I will definitely do 3 sets for more of like the compound or accessory-based movements. So movements like hip thrusts, movements like RDLs, movements like lunges or rows or pulldowns. I'm usually doing 3 sets on those. For the more isolation-based exercises, you know, doing things like leg extensions, leg curls, bicep curls, triceps, I will do a lot of like 2 sets that are again very close to, if not all the way to failure. I'll do up to 3 sets on those as well. And again, it just depends on the program, but definitely for the more bigger compound movements, I'm doing 3 sets. And for the more isolation-based movements where you're just like working one joint, maybe in that 2 to 3 set range. And remember, this is working sets. And so you have to make sure, let's say you're doing a hip thrust and let's say on set 1 you do just the barbell for 5 reps because you're just like getting the form down. And then you do 135 for like 5 reps just to get the form down. And then you do 225 for 5 reps just to get the form down. And then like your working set weight is 275, and then you do 3 sets at 275. The bar, 135 and 225, those were warm-up sets, not working sets, warm-up sets. So in total you would do 6 sets for the exercise because you had 3 warmup and 3 working. But remember those warmup sets, they're not meant to be taken anywhere near close to failure. So you shouldn't be spending much time on them. And you also shouldn't be like exerting a lot of energy during those warmup sets. It's just to make sure you get your form down. It's just to make sure you, you feel good about the movement and then be able to take things from there. So 4 exercises, that's what I'd say. And then again, 1 to 3 exercises per workout. Remember, That's for like a specific muscle group. So again, if we just stick on the glutes, for example, 1 to 3 exercises of glutes per workout. Again, if you're doing only 1 exercise for your glutes that day, I mean, if you're really trying to like grow your glutes, I wouldn't probably recommend that. That's the other part to this. And so people will say, oh, if I just do 8 sets of hip thrust, isn't that like, okay, cool, I'm getting my 8 sets. Yeah, you are, but you're only working your muscle in 1 range of motion and 1 resistance profile in a specific position. So A hip thrust that challenges your glutes in the shortened position. If you're just doing 8 sets of that, that's all you're getting done. As opposed to, let's say you do 3 sets of a hip thrust where you challenge your glutes in the shortened position. Then you do 3 sets of a Romanian deadlift where you really get a big stretch on your glutes and you can challenge your glutes in that like lengthened to mid position. And then let's say you do 2 sets of a walking lunge Where again, it's a single leg unilateral movement and you're working your glutes. Now you now have 3 different ways you're hitting your glutes from different angles, from different resistance profiles, challenging the muscle in different ways. You can now see way better results that way than just doing like 8 sets of a hip thrust, for example. This is why I like to include like throughout the course of your workouts here, usually 2 to 3 exercises per per muscle group. If you are really trying to, you know, again, like, uh, focus on those. Again, we'll stick on the glutes. Let's say you're not really trying to like grow your quads, for example, but you are trying to grow your glutes. You might just do one exercise of quads at 3 sets. And on your next leg day, you might do one exercise of quads at 3 sets. So you have 6 total sets. And remember, if you're trying to just like maintain your progress in a specific muscle group, You don't need to do a ton for it, right? But if you are trying to really focus on a specific muscle group, you would probably stick to that 2 to 3 exercises per workout, 2 to 3 sets, maybe up to 4 sets for a given exercise. And then again, just remember if you are focusing on like your triceps, for example, right? Because some people might say, how do I hit all my muscle groups on upper body? Well, okay, if you have 2 upper body days, You know, whether it's your 4-day split or a 3-day split, if you're doing upper body and, you know, day 1 you do 3 sets of a tricep extension, and then day 2 you do 3 sets of an overhead tricep extension, you've done 6 sets of triceps for the week. And again, you should already be doing chest press, you should already be doing your shoulder press, push-ups. You should be doing these movements that are already working your triceps. So again, you don't need as many exercises Or sets for like your arms or your side lateral raises, for example, or your rear delts, like your rear, the back of your shoulder. It's getting worked in pulldowns and rows. I don't need you doing 4 exercises for your rear delts in one workout. That just wouldn't, it wouldn't make any sense. And so if you're focusing on your rear delts, for example, you can do one exercise for 3 sets, 2 times a week. That's going to fall you right in the 4 to 8 sets per week. per muscle group per week range, which on top of all the other work you're doing for your back and shoulders already, that's going to be enough to see change. And again, just one last time, all of this is these working sets that are taken very close to failure. The reason people try to do so many exercises and so many sets is because they're not pushing close to failure. What you have to understand is more isn't better. Better is better. And so if you can just actually get on a proper program and you can make sure you have everything laid out for you and you just take those sets very close to failure, you won't need to do as many exercises or as many sets because the sets you are doing, you're pushing them farther. And that's what makes you see progress anyway. Again, you can do all the sets and all the reps and every, all the exercises in the world. If you don't take them close to failure, it's not going to matter. So just keep that in mind as well. And I will say this, if you watch this video and you're a little bit confused and you're just like, please just take the guesswork out of it for me, what you can do is head to the link in the description of this or just type in erfclubhouse.com. It's my personal app that I made that has all of my workout programs right inside. So when you join, you will get access to all of my workout programs, all of, you know, and I lay everything out for you. How many sets, how many reps. We have videos of every single exercise covering exactly what you should be doing, right form, wrong form, what muscles to work, how many days per week. The splits are set up. Everything is inside of the app. And so if you're interested in that, again, just head to erfclubhouse.com. Other than that, I hope this video was helpful for you. If it was, please feel free to give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and I will see you next time. All right. Bye.
