What Are The Key Training Variables For Building Muscle?

Breaking down what is and isn’t worth fussing over.

By: Dylan Dacosta
12 min read

“How do I get jacked as hell?”

Perhaps the defining philosophical question of every lifter’s journey. That or, “how do I get strong as hell?” But in all honesty, they really go hand in hand.

If you’ve been lifting for a long time, you’ve probably asked several different folks this question. You’ve also probably gotten diverging answers. Sometimes generally good advice like: “Focus on progressive overload over time and eat enough calories and protein”.

Or, you may have received a remarkably specific strategy with zero evidence to back it up, yet delivered with a hilarious amount of confidence. Seriously, I once heard two Dudes in the change room go over the most peculiar nutrition strategy that they were sure would have them looking like mass monsters come beach season. In case you’re wondering, the special sauce was eating a table spoon of peanut butter and cottage cheese before bed. So there’s that.

Regardless, you may still be confused as to where you to put your attention when it comes to maximizing muscle growth. This is totally understandable.

Fortunately, a new umbrella review just came out breaking down several meta-analysis on the topic of training variables that can optimize muscle growth and I thought it would be helpful to briefly go over.

I’m going to over the key variables they outlined in the paper that I think are worth mentioning and try to offer some practical ways you can implement them into your training in order to make those sweet, sweet gains.

1. Set Volume

This is something I’ve covered before. If you read my previous article, you may remember the very general range based on the research tends to be around 10–20 sets per muscle group per week to maximize muscle growth.

I do want to remind you how generalized this is — if you’re more of a beginner or novice, I really doubt you need to be hammering that much volume.

One meta-analysis from Kreiger et al. 2010 did demonstrate that multiple sets per exercise in a session elicited better muscle growth than only one set. This really shouldn’t be surprising though. The multiple set group did more volume and that generally does seem to lead to more muscle growth to a point.

This paper demonstrated that both 2–3 sets per exercise and 4–6 sets per exercise elicited better gains than doing only one set. 4–6 sets per exercise didn’t have produce significantly more gains than 2–3 sets, but it did trend in the direction of being producing better gains.

Another meta-analysis I previously covered, showed a dose-response relationship between volume and hypertrophy. Where weekly set volume of less than 5 sets elicited the least amount of gains, 5–9 sets produced more than less than 5 and 10+ produced more than both other groups.

Lastly, the most recent meta-analysis by Baz-Valle et al. 2022, showed that the upper limit of the 10–20 weekly set range might be ideal for more advanced lifters. This review was only done on trained lifters who had been lifting for at least one year.

• Low volume was less than 12 sets per week.

• Moderate volume was 12–20 sets per week.

• High Volume was 20+ sets per week.

For Biceps, there was no real difference between moderate and high volume.

For Quadriceps, there wasn’t a significant difference, but it was trending in the direction of favouring high volume over moderate volume with small effect size of 0.2 that didn't cross the significance threshold.

For Triceps, high volume was significantly greater than moderate volume with a more moderate effect size of 0.5 that did cross significance. One caveat was that triceps sets did include pressing exercises which aren’t isolating the triceps. So you might need less volume to maximize triceps growth if you were training them in isolation more (press downs, skull crushers etc.)

Takeaway: Total volume is a key variable to maximzing hypertrophy. Since one of the main drivers of growing muscle is mechanical tension, higher training volumes will expose your muscles to more mechanical tension and should lead to more growth up to a point.

10–20 weekly sets per muscle is likely a decent range to aim for if you’re trying to maximize muscle growth. If you’re more of a beginner, start lower and vice versa. Regardless, your training volume still needs to be at a dose you can recover from. So even if you think you need 20 sets per week, if you can’t recover from that much, you should lower the volume. These are only ranges based on our best available data. It can’t tell you exactly what you need.

2. Proximity To Failure & Intensity.

When it comes to this topic, the old school mentality was “no pain, no gains!”. Which basically meant, if you aren’t flirting with death, the set didn’t count.

Now, I’ve talked about this before and I still think experiencing what actual failure feels like is valuable when it comes to understanding this concept. A lot of folks train way farther from failure then they realize — which can lead to some frustrating results.

My take on this is that you don’t need to train to failure in order to maximize muscle growth, but you better be flirting with it.

Another caveat is that the lower intensity you’re lifting at, the more likely you’ll need to train to failure.

It is true that as long as volume is equated, you’ll gain a similar amount of muscle whether you’re training with lighter loads (<60% of 1RM) or heavier loads (>60% 1RM). The caveat there, is that all sets were taken to momentary muscular failure.

Some research has shown that with heavier loads, you don’t need to train to failure as long as volume is equated in order to gain similar amounts of muscle.

In fact, one more recent paper showed similar gains in muscle between high load to failure, high load not to failure and low load to failure when volume was equated. While the low load not to failure group was the only one to not gain any real amount of muscle. In this context, high load = 80% of 1RM and low load = 30% of 1RM.

With this in mind, it’s important to highlight that if you decide to train with lighter loads, you might need to train to failure in order to maximize muscle growth. The same can’t be said when training with heavier loads — around 80ish % of 1RM being the example above. This would approximately be around whatever load you could do for sets of 7–8 reps.

This umbrella review did highlight that while low loads can be just as effective for building muscle, there is some data to indicate a trend towards favouring higher loads being more effective. I think if we compound that by the fact it’s generally more efficient to train with heavier loads for a moderate amount of reps, than to train with light loads for high reps, I give a slight nod to training with heavier loads.

Takeaway: If you’re training to failure and volume is equal, intensity at 30% of 1RM and higher seem to elicit similar gains in muscle. When you train at higher loads (around 80% of 1RM) it does appear you don’t need to train to failure in order to maximize building muscle. For that reason, it’s likely more efficient to train close to failure (generally within 5 reps, although there is debate on this topic) with moderate to heavy loads. This will often look like doing sets of about 6–12 reps. Doing more or less can still elicit similar gains and playing with different rep ranges is still something I recommend.

3. Training Frequency

Should you train a muscle once a week and just demolish it? Or should you train five times a week, avoid getting sore and make even better gains?

I’ve been on both sides of this camp during different phases in my training career. I’d say right now I’m kind of in the middle. I prefer higher frequencies for practical reasons, but I don’t believe they’re inherently superior.

This review covered a meta-analysis on this topic by Schoenfeld et al 2019. The results from this meta did indicate that as long as volume is equal, higher frequencies don’t seem to elicit more gains.

As you’ll see above, there was no meaningful or statistically significantly different gains between various training frequencies of a given muscle as long as volume was equated. The mean increase was absolutely highest in the 3/d per week group, but the confidence intervals for all groups were quite large which led to no real difference in the findings.

When volume wasn’t equated, a slightly different story emerged.

As you’ll see above, there was some significant differences in gains for higher frequencies when volume wasn’t equal between groups. This is most likely because the higher frequency groups just did more volume. So as I mentioned, from a practical perspective, I’d rather spread more volume out.

Imagine you were aiming to train your quads for 15 sets per week based on being in the middle of that set target mentioned at the start of this article. I would way rather do five sets per workout, three times per week than have one workout containing 15 sets. If you’re a masochist and want to just obliterate your quads, then perhaps training them once per week is great for you.

This is why I think preference and practicality matters the most here.

Takeaway: As long as volume is equated within a given week, training frequency doesn’t seem to matter too much. Higher training frequencies may allow you to spread out your volume and perhaps train those sets harder. If that’s the case for you, 2–3 times per week may bet better than only once. If not, once per week seems to be equal as long as volume is.

4. Periodization

The last variable I think that’s worth mentioning in this review is periodization. Periodization is simply the organization of your training over a period of time in order to achieve a certain goal.

It can be broken down in your macrocycle (big picture), mesocyclone (current block/program) and microcycle (current week or workout within meso.)

The idea of periodization is not a new one and has been studied extensively in the realm of training for sport performance such as olympic lifting and powerlifting.

What is less understood, is whether it can help with maximizing building muscle.

Generally in my experience, it can be more helpful than not in the context of building muscle, but I don’t think it’s a key variable — especially not as crucial as training volume or proximity to failure.

Two traditional models of periodization are linear and non linear periodization (also known as DUP). As the umbrella review mentions, linear periodization might not be the best way to periodize for building muscle because it tends to get lower in volume and higher in intensity (% of 1RM) as time goes on. It’s more suited for maximizing strength than hypertrophy.

Non-linear periodization may be a better suitor for hypertrophy since you sustain training volume more throughout the macrocycle and there could be a benefit to exposing your muscles to differing stimulus throughout even each mesocycle and microcycle

But the meta-analysis from Grgic et al. 2017 showed no difference between the two models in terms for eliciting muscle gain. The average study involved was 12 weeks and it was also mostly on untrained subjects. So it’s hard to say definitively it doesn’t matter, because a macrocycle is generally longer than 12 weeks and it’s arguable that more advanced trainees would benefit the most from soundly structured programming compared to untrained folks.

I think all in all, periodizing your training can be quite helpful, but isn’t cruical. It can help you stay motivated and manage fatigue. Which can allow you to continue to train harder and thus apply progressive overload overtime. And that is the variable that matters most in this equation.

Lastly, you don’t need to be rigid within old periodization models either. You can just plan out your long term training plan (macro), write out your blocks that make up the macro (meso) and then the specific workouts that make up the weeks/programs that fill your blocks (micro). You can keep it that simple and see some awesome gains.

Takeaway: While periodization is not a cruical variable to maximizing muscle gain, it can help organize your training overtime so that you can stay motivated, manage fatigue and continue to apply progressive overload to your training. If you don’t care to periodize, you’re also totally fine. Just remember to focus on applying progressive overload to your training sessions over time in order to achieve a stimulus your body must adapt to.

Summary

In terms of the umbrella review, these were the variables I thought were most valuable to mention and break down a bit more.

Obviously the key variable when it comes to building muscle is applying progressive overload in your strength training workouts over time.

These are all just variables that you can use in order to ensure that that’s actually happening. So here is a brief breakdown of the variables mentioned.

• Set Volume: 10–20 weekly sets for a muscle is likely a great range to aim for to maximize muscle growth. Within this, it’s crucial that you can actually recover from whatever training volume you’re aiming for. Use this target if you don’t know where to start and adjust based on how you respond and recover. If you’re a beginner, you can hang on the lower end of the range or even under and vice versa.

• Proximity to Failure/Intensity: You can train with a wide range of intensities (as low as 30% of 1RM) and still likely achieve the same amount of gains as long as you train to failure. Training with heavier loads (around 80% of 1RM) you don’t seem to need to train to failure, so moderate to heavy loads might be more efficient and a less excruciating way to maximize gains. In terms of training to failure, an oversimplified target is to train within 5 reps of failure. Avoid training too far away from failure and also training to failure all the time as that’s just going to be unsustainable and unnecessary for you.

• Training Frequency: As long as volume is equated, training frequency doesn’t seem to matter much. If you need to train at high volumes in order to maximize gains, spreading it out through 2–3 sessions could be a helpful practical strategy. Apply this based on your preferences and what’s most practical.

• Periodization: Certain types of periodization don’t seem to be inherently superior for building muscle. As long as progressive overload is being achieved overtime, you’ll be fine. Use periodization if you want to organize your long term workout plans to keep you motivated and help manage fatigue. If you don’t want to, that’s totally cool! Just don’t forget to apply progressive overload over time regardless.

Cheers,
Coach Dylan🍻

References:

1. Resistance Training Variables for Optimization of Muscle Hypertrophy: An Umbrella Review
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2022.949021/full

2. How Many Sets Should You Do Per Week to Maximize Muscle Growth?
https://www.five-elements.ca/blog-2/how-many-sets-should-you-do-per-week-to-maximize-muscle-growth

3. Single vs. multiple sets of resistance exercise for muscle hypertrophy: a meta-analysis
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20300012/

4. Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: A systematic review and meta-analysishttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27433992/

5. A Systematic Review of The Effects of Different Resistance Training Volumes on Muscle Hypertrophy
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8884877/

6. The Mechanisms of Muscle Hypertrophy and Their Application to Resistance Training
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2010/10000/the_mechanisms_of_muscle_hypertrophy_and_their.40.aspx

7. Strength and Hypertrophy Adaptations Between Low- vs. High-Load Resistance Training: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28834797/

8.Muscle Failure Promotes Greater Muscle Hypertrophy in Low-Load but Not in High-Load Resistance Training
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31895290/

9. How many times per week should a muscle be trained to maximize muscle hypertrophy? A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the effects of resistance training frequency
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30558493/

10. Effects of linear and daily undulating periodized resistance training programs on measures of muscle hypertrophy: a systematic review and meta-analysis
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5571788/