How Many Sets And Reps To Build Muscle And Lose Fat?
As a fitness coach, one of the most common questions I get is “How many sets and reps to build muscle and lose fat?”
You’re probably thinking…
“I want to do enough sets to maximize muscle growth.”
“But I also don’t want to overdo it and overtrain.”
“I’ve always done 3 sets of 10, but then I came across something on social media telling me that is killing my gains.”
“Should I be lifting heavy for low reps or lighter for high reps? I want to get strong, but I don’t want to get too bulky.”
“I’ve heard high reps are better for fat loss and low reps are better for muscle building. What’s the truth?”
Lucky for you, I’m going to talk about all this (and more!) in this article.
So buckle up and make sure to read the entire article from beginning to end, I want to make sure you don’t miss anything 😉
In this article, you can expect to read about:
- The Difference Between Muscle Building vs Fat Loss
- More Sets vs Less Sets
- High vs Low Reps
- How Many Sets & Reps to Build Muscle and Lose Fat
By the end of this article, you will know exactly how many sets and reps you need to do to build muscle and lose fat.
So without further ado, let’s dive in.
How Many Sets and Reps To Build Muscle and Lose Fat – The Basics
The Difference Between Muscle Building vs Fat Loss
Now, let’s discuss what causes muscle building and fat loss.
You’ll often hear gurus say stupid shit like “Do this one exercise for 15 minutes a day to replace your belly fat with rock hard abs!” or “Tone inner thighs by flapping your legs like you’re airing out your crotch!”
However, they are two very different things.
Although it may seem like they “replace” each other when we workout and work on our diets, they actually happen as a result of different mechanisms in the body.
Muscle building happens when you place challenging resistance stress on your body (like lifting weights).
Your body perceives any sort of stress as a threat to its survival.
So your body goes a little something this…”Oh, that was tough, we need to create more muscle cells so that our muscles get bigger and stronger so that it doesn’t possibly kill us next time!”
So the muscles get stimulated and that combined with sufficient protein and other nutrients from our diet cause our muscles to get stronger and bigger.
While fat loss isn’t as dependent on what your training looks like.
This mainly because body fat is stored in completely different cells through completely different bodily processes.
It’s more dependent on energy balance (how much energy you have coming in vs going out of your body). You are going to lose fat by getting into a calorie deficit (having fewer calories coming in than your body burns).
You can do this by either decreasing your calorie intake, increasing your calorie expenditure, or using a combination of both, but it is going to be done most efficiently by addressing your diet and nutrition.
Fat is simply just stored energy in your body waiting to be used.
However, I won’t go too much into this since I’ve already covered this in a lot more detail in one of my other articles, HERE.
This is obviously an oversimplified explanation but put simply, muscle is built and fat is lost through different bodily processes. Even though they can happen simultaneously and it appears that way, they do not “replace” each other.
More Sets vs Less Sets
If you poke around on the internet, the general consensus is anywhere between 3-5 sets per exercise.
This isn’t a bad recommendation by any means as many of the online coaching clients I have worked with over the years have gotten phenomenal results doing this many number of sets per exercise during their workouts.
However, unlike a piece of clothing, there is no one size fits all answer, this is all going to depend on the individual’s goals, preferences, experience levels, and ability to recover from their training.
However, in my personal experience, I like to be as efficient as possible and err on the side of doing less and strive for the minimal effective dose.
I would actually recommend doing 1-3 hard sets (not including your warm up sets) per exercise per workout.
Why?
Because if we think about training volume (the amount of effective work done during your workouts), more isn’t necessarily always better.
Volume works in an “inverse U” fashion.
If you don’t get enough effective training volume, you won’t see gains.
However, if you do too much effective training volume, you won’t see gains either because your body isn’t able to recover and adapt to that stimulus.
Think about it, if a topic you’re studying is too easy, you’re going to lose interest because it’s not stimulating enough, but if a topic is too difficult, then you’re also going to lose interest because you can’t fully understand the concept.
Also, the number sets don’t matter so much as how hard those sets were.
You could do 50 sets of 10 reps of squat with the 5 lb pink dumbbells in your hands, but if you’re someone who normally squats 100+ pounds for reps, none of those sets are going to be stimulating enough.
Intensity matters, too.
Furthermore, for many, this might sound really surprising, but this well-known study showed that even people who were experienced lifters saw similar muscle gains despite the difference of 3 sets vs 6 sets vs 12 sets per muscle group per week while all other training variables were held constant.
So if you can get the same results doing 3 sets vs 12 sets, why would you choose to do more?
Doing more simply results in creating more fatigue your body has to recover from without additional benefits.
So rather than asking the question, “How many sets do I need to do to build muscle?”
Instead ask, “Are the number of sets that I am doing right now at a proper intensity that allows me to make gains and also recover from said training?”
Because here’s the thing…
Making Gains Isn’t Just About Working Out
Look, I know this might sound crazy, but while yes, the working out part is required to make gains, people often forget that muscle isn’t built while working out.
It’s built when we are resting and recovering.
Here’s a cool graphic of how it works by Fytt.io.
You stress your muscles in the gym by training hard enough and do enough sets.
Then you need to make sure you recover enough by the time your next session occurs so that you allow those adaptations to take place to make progress.
THIS is how muscle building works.
It’s a game of managing a balancing act between stress and recovery.
So how do we play this game and win at it?
How Many Sets And Reps To Build Muscle And Lose Fat – How Do I Know If I’m Training Hard Enough?
The surefire way to know is if progressive overload (the capacity for your body to do more work over time) is occurring.
If you’re able to consistently add weight to your lifts over the span of weeks, months, and years, then you are doing enough.
No need to go adding more for the sake of adding more. Again, why are you doing more work than is required? With training, you’re not overachieving, you’re overreaching which is going to be counterproductive.
As long as you’re training at a proper intensity and do enough sets, you’re going to be training hard enough.
Let’s discuss each of these in further detail.
What Is A Proper Intensity?
To gauge intensity, I like to use this RPE/RIR (Rate of Perceived Exertion/Repetitions In Reserve) scale:
Why does this matter?
The number of sets you do functions inversely to how hard those sets were.
This means that the harder your sets are on the intensity scale, the less of them you need to do.
Think about running as a comparison, you could either sprint really hard and fast for a short period of time, or you could pace yourself at a slower pace, but you can’t run your fastest and longest simultaneously.
However, with lifting you can’t expect to lift very light and make gains. Your sets still have to meet a baseline of difficulty. I recommend that your difficulty should be at least a 7/10 on any training day.
That said, there are some more considerations to keep in mind depending on your training experience.
Now, that we’ve established the intensity, let’s talk about practicing safe sets (pun intended).
How Many Sets Are “Enough”?
If You Are A Beginner
If you are a beginner, I generally recommend more sets on the side closer to that 3 to 4 sets range.
This is because as you are new to weight lifting, you need more practice with movements so having more sets gives you more chances to practice movements and nail down the setup and execution before ramping up the intensity and weights.
Also, because your body is new to lifting weights, any sort of lifting will lead to progress so you don’t need to push yourself too hard.
So if you are a beginner, I would recommend 3-4 sets (not including your warm-up sets) at an intensity of anywhere between 7 to 9 out of 10.
If You Are Intermediate/Advanced
If you are intermediate/advanced, this is where training needs to be a bit more dialed in.
This is because your body is now used to the stimulus of lifting weights so we need to start being a bit more intelligent about your approach.
After about 1-2 years of following a real training program, you need to start dialing in your intensity and number of sets.
For most intermediate/advanced individuals, I actually start taking down their working sets to 1-3 really hard sets per exercise per workout.
This is because as you get more training experience, you just need to push yourself harder to see the same amount of progress and the balance between stimulus and recovery needs to be more dialed in since you are now lifting heavier weights which will create more fatigue on the body.
So if you are an intermediate or advanced trainee, I would recommend 1-3 sets (not including your warm-up sets) at an intensity between 8 to 10 out of 10.
Final Note On RPE
One last thing I want to talk about in regards to RPE is that after having worked with hundreds of people, there is a 99% chance that you aren’t training as hard as you could be.
For most people, even when they rate the difficulty of their set as a 9 or 10 out of 10, I can guarantee that they can push way more reps or weight.
In fact, this study was done and showed just exactly how inaccurate our own RPE scales can be.
A sample size of 160 men was asked to do a standard barbell bench press and load on a weight they usually did for 10 reps.
They were then asked to do as many reps as they possibly could until muscular failure.
The result?
(Group 1) 22% of them actually nailed it and ended up getting 10-12 reps (0-2 RIR).
(Group 2) 31% of them got close and got 13-15 reps (3-5 RIR).
(Group 3) But a whopping 47% of them ended up getting 16-20+ reps (6-10+ RIR)!
This means that almost half of the people only got about 50% or less of the way to muscular failure.
And if we want to be in the range of seeing muscle growth, you must be in at least the first groups of training intensity.
The takeaway?
Most of you simply aren’t training hard enough or as hard as you could be to see progress.
So one of the best ways to know if you’re training hard enough is to actually take your sets to muscle failure and see what you’re truly capable of.
Stop selling yourself short of all of the progress you could be making.
There are literally gains waiting to be made by you.
High vs Low Reps
The age-old question…”What is the best rep range to build muscle?”
Firstly, I have an entire YouTube video on this which you can watch here if you are more of a visual learner.
But if you’d rather continue reading than watching, then continue on (don’t worry, I’m more of a reader too).
No, rep range doesn’t matter when your goal is to build muscle.
This is supported in a well-established meta-analysis by Brad Schoenfeld and colleagues.
However, from personal experience and coaching others, the most efficient rep range is going to be…you guessed it, exactly as old-school bodybuilders always said, the 6-12 rep range.
This is because anything lower than 6 starts to become really grindy and tough to do every session without excessively loading your joints.
Whereas anything over 12 starts to take a lot of time to complete and creates a lot of CNS fatigue (especially training to failure with high reps).
But this doesn’t necessarily mean that you should never touch anything below 6 or anything above 12.
Anything below 6 can be great for a strength-focused training program and anything above 12 can be great for an endurance-focused training program.
I personally also program 12+ reps for isolation movements as it can get pretty tough and risky to do super heavy, low rep isolation movements whereas a compound movement is easier to load.
Another FAQ I get regarding this topic is…
“Is it really true that low rep is better for bulk and size whereas high rep is better for tone and definition?”
Whether you want to build size or definition. Muscle is muscle. It either grows from progressive training or shrinks from lack of training.
So now comes the $1 million question…
How Many Sets And Reps To Build Muscle And Lose Fat?
As per the previous sections, with muscle building, we now know that we want to keep sets minimal enough to drive muscle growth and not risk overtraining so we want anywhere between 1-4 sets with an efficient rep range of 6-12.
So what about fat loss?
You’ll generally hear a lot of people say things like, “You gotta do high reps to burn fat because more reps = more calories burned!!”
Technically, they’re not wrong. The more “work” you’re doing, the more calories you will burn (i.e. you will burn more calories walking 2 miles than 1 mile).
However, when lifting weights our goal shouldn’t be to burn as many calories as possible during the session.
That would be inefficient and not thinking long term.
The goal of lifting weights should be to maximize muscle building so that you can increase your calorie burn forever through increased muscle mass.
So what does this mean?
This means that regardless of whether your goals are to build muscle, lose fat, or both simultaneously, your training program should always be based on stimulating muscle growth.
This is because the same program that helped you build your muscle is going to be the same training program that helps you retain it.
The only thing that should really change from a gaining or losing phase is your nutrition.
Otherwise, your training should remain relatively the same.
Besides, doing higher rep work is more fatiguing and stressful on the body, which doesn’t sound like it meshes well with being in a calorie deficit where you’re literally taking less energy than is required by your body to maintain everything.
One more thing I will add is that you can totally add a bit more volume (hard sets) when you’re in a gaining phase versus a losing phase because ideally, you’ll be in a calorie surplus which means you’ll have a bit more energy to bit harder and handle more work.
But I still wouldn’t go overkill on this. I would only add one or two more working sets per exercise. Your bread and butter should still be training with enough intensity (close enough to failure) and trying to progressively overload week to week, month to month, etc. with the minimal effective dose before considering adding more.
Final Thoughts On How Many Sets And Reps To Build Muscle And Lose Fat
To wrap up, here are a few key points from this article you can take away and apply to your own training program immediately:
- Muscle building and fat loss are two completely different processes. Your training should always be programmed for building/maintaining muscle meanwhile your diet should always be adjusted to help you either minimize fat gain while putting on lean muscle or lose fat while maintaining muscle. (I have an entire article that teaches you about The Best Diet Plan To Build Lean Muscle)
- More sets isn’t always more results. Too little and you won’t see progress. Too much and you won’t see progress either. There is an optimal amount of volume and recovery is just as important as the stimulus of working out. Instead of asking, “how many sets do I need to build muscle?”, ask “am I training hard enough to stimulate muscle growth and am I able to recover from my current training to further progress?”
- That said, in my coaching experience, beginners may need more sets just to simply practice the movements in their program and can get away with more volume since they won’t need to train as close to failure to see progress.
- On the other hand, intermediates/advanced lifters may need to dial back on their number of sets (sounds counterintuitive, I know) and work on the quality & intensity of their sets rather than falling down the rabbit hole of more is better.
- Rep range is irrelevant for muscle building. Whether you do a heavy set of 6 reps or lighter set of 20 reps to failure, the bottom line is intensity and effort. Your body doesn’t know the difference. However, the most efficient rep range is going to be 6-12 as said for ages.
Sample Programming Scheme For How Many Sets And Reps To Build Muscle And Lose Fat
Beginners (sets don’t include warm-up sets):
Exercise A: 3-4 sets of 6-12 reps @ RPE 7-9
Exercise B: 3-4 sets of 6-12 reps @ RPE 7-9
Exercise C: 3-4 sets of 6-12 reps @ RPE 7-9
Exercise D: 3-4 sets of 6-12 reps @ RPE 7-9
Intermediate/Advanced (sets don’t include warm-up sets):
Exericse A: 1-3 sets of 6-12 reps @ RPE 8-10
Exercise B: 1-3 sets of 6-12 reps @ RPE 8-10
Exercise C: 1-3 sets of 6-12 reps @ RPE 8-10
Exercise D: 1-3 sets of 6-12 reps @ RPE 8-10
And that’s it! This was a lot of information to digest and I hope by now you have a clear cut idea on how to coach yourself to design your own workout program.
Now, maybe you’re wondering about, “What exercisess should I do?” then check out my other article where I tell you exactly that HERE.
Or if you want me to remove all of the guesswork and tell you exactly what to do, then you may be a good fit for my online coaching program, which you can read more about HERE.
Otherwise, I’m always an email away if you need anything!
Until next time,
-Aus
