Weekly sets per muscle
The weekly dose split across the days you train, using the range the evidence gives and not anyone's gym folklore.
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How it is worked out
It starts from the useful range: 10-20 hard sets per muscle per week, placed by your training age (10 starting out, 14 with experience, 18 if you have years behind you and recover well). That gets divided across the days that muscle appears in, which at frequency two means two sessions. Small muscles (biceps, triceps, calves, forearms) get slightly less because they already work in the compounds. Mark a priority and it gains four sets while another loses four: the total volume you can recover does not grow because you want more chest.
What it does not tell you
These are **hard** sets (one or two reps from failure) on exercises that load that muscle: warm-ups do not count and neither do ramp-up sets. The range is an average across studies of people who are not you; the right number is the most you can repeat week after week without the weights going down.
Where it comes from
Schoenfeld et al. (2017)
Dose-response between weekly volume and hypertrophy.
Baz-Valle et al. (2022)
Volume review: more sets help up to a point, then they do not.
Schoenfeld et al. (2016)
Frequency: twice a week per muscle beats once.
To read slowly
Free on Get NovastraThis is general training information, not medical or personalised nutrition advice. If you have a health condition, are pregnant or take medication, the person who decides is your doctor.