How Many Sets?

The debate over whether those engaging in resistance training should use one set or multiple sets has been going on for many years.  The results are somewhat conflicting, though my opinion is that one set is normally sufficient to stimulate muscle growth.

This new study may help explain why there are often conflicting results.  Researchers measured muscle growth separately in the upper body and lower body for either a single set or three sets per exercise.  The authors found that for the upper body, there was no difference in strength and mass for either 1 or 3 sets.

For the lower body, the 3 set protocol produced greater strength and muscle mass than the 1 set routine.  Therefore, it may pay to treat the upper and lower body differently in terms of sets.

Comments

[Tobias]

Interesting! The study was for untrained men though... I wonder how the results would be for trained men & women?

Do you have a full copy of the article? I could only access the abstract.

Long-time bodybuilder Clarence Bass (cbass.com) swears by a single set per exercise, both upper and lower body.

[Mike]

I always do multiple sets, but the purpose is to build up to the top weight.
Like, if I want to use 100 on an exercise, I might start with 65, then 80, 90, and finally 100.

If I tried 100 the first time, I wouldn't be able to do it.

(You might call that "warm up" sets, but to me warm up means much lighter, like 50%, not 90% of final weight)

[Tobias]

Yeah, I do a similar thing, Mike, except I start right from the bottom (e.g. 20, 30, 40, 50, 60). I definitely feel like I'm less likely to get injured this way than if went straight to the high weights

I was wondering whether the difference between upper and lower body responses in this study might be because even an "untrained" individual's legs are partly trained from walking around all the time, whereas their upper body really could be more completely untrained?

[Matt Metzgar]

Unfortunately, I don't have access to the full-text of this article.

I also take some sets to build up in weight. It just seems sensible to do it that way.