How many sets per muscle group per week?

Not every set in a session is a working set. The ones that count are hard: taken to failure or within one to three reps of it, with a weight that makes the last reps slow. Warm-up sets do not count, however many you do. A set you stopped at six because the phone rang does not count either.

Drop sets, rest-pause chunks and the exercises in a superset do count, because each one is hard work with its own reps and weight; see drop sets, supersets and rest-pause. A set logged with no reps and no weight is skipped by IronBuddy, which is the easy way to keep warm-ups out of the count.

Reviews of the training research point the same way: more weekly sets grow more muscle, up to a point. A 2017 review by Schoenfeld and colleagues found that ten or more hard sets per muscle per week produced clearly more growth than fewer than five, and later work suggests the useful range for most trained people runs from about ten to twenty, with smaller returns and a bigger recovery cost beyond that. The exact number depends on the person, the muscle, sleep and food, so treat these as a map, not a prescription.

Big muscles (legs, back) tolerate the top of the range; small ones that get indirect work from everything else (biceps, triceps, rear delts) need less direct work than the table suggests. If in doubt, start at the bottom of your range and add a set every few weeks while the numbers keep climbing.

A bench press works the chest, the front delts and the triceps. Does it count as a set for all three? Different coaches count differently: some give the main muscle a full set and the helpers half a set, some count everything, some count only the main muscle. IronBuddy uses the last rule: every set counts once, for the exercise's main muscle. A bench press is a Chest set, a row is a Back set, a squat is a Legs set.

That keeps the totals honest and comparable from week to week, but it means the numbers are direct sets. Arms and shoulders in particular get a lot of indirect work from presses and pulls that the count does not show. If your plan has eight direct arm sets and a lot of pressing, your triceps are getting plenty; don't add more just because the number looks small.

Muscle Balance groups the detailed muscles into six body areas so the chart stays readable. Legs is the biggest group by far, so expect its number to run well above the others.

The Volume per muscle widget on Home lists the detailed muscles instead (quads, hamstrings, glutes and so on), for when the area total hides a gap, such as plenty of quads and no hamstrings.

The same weekly sets work better in two or three sessions than in one. Quality falls after about eight to ten hard sets for a muscle in one session: the last sets of a sixteen-set chest day are done tired, with less weight and worse form, and add more fatigue than growth. Two days of eight get sixteen good sets.

That is the case for twice-a-week splits. An Upper Lower split or Push Pull Legs hits every muscle twice; a bro split once, with all the sets in one session. Both can work; the twice-a-week version is easier to do well.

Counting IronBuddy's Upper / Lower preset the app's way (each exercise for its main muscle) gives roughly: Chest 8, Back 12, Shoulders 6, Arms 8, Core 4, Legs 28. Legs looks huge because it holds quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves together: per muscle it is about 6 to 8 each. Chest at 8 direct sets plus the indirect work from shoulder presses sits at the low end of the intermediate range, which is where a beginner-friendly preset should be. The obvious upgrade after a few months is a third chest set on each upper day.

• Muscle Balance on Home: this week's sets for the six areas against last week's, and a line naming any area not trained yet. Tap ⓘ for how it counts.
• Volume per muscle on Home: the same sets per detailed muscle, as bars.
• Workout summary: after each session, the sets per muscle for that workout, so you can see what the day added.
• What to do with it: an area at zero in the second half of the week means a missed session or a plan with a hole in it; an area far above the others for weeks, with sore joints, means trim a set. Change one thing, then watch the next two weeks.

The Muscle Balance feature page has screenshots; how to track progressive overload covers what to do with the sets once the count is right.