Full body or split: which should you choose?
Your whole body every session, or one muscle group a day? The right call mostly depends on how many sessions you can fit in.
How many sets and reps should you do?
Strength, muscle size, endurance: the number of reps changes what you're training. Simple guidelines to make sense of it.
It's the most common question in the gym, and the answer depends on your goal. Reps per set, load and rest go together: you don't lift the same weight for 3 reps as for 15.
The main ranges
- 3 to 6 reps: heavy loads, long rest (2 to 3 minutes). Best for building strength.
- 8 to 12 reps: moderate loads, one to two minutes of rest. The classic range for building muscle.
- 15 reps or more: light loads, short rest. More muscular endurance.
These ranges overlap. You can build muscle with sets of 6 or sets of 15, as long as the set is genuinely hard by the end.
How many sets
For a beginner, three sets per exercise and two or three exercises per muscle group are enough. What matters is the weekly total: spreading the work over two sessions beats cramming it into one day.
Leave two reps in the tank
A good set ends when you could still do about one or two clean reps. Going to failure every time costs a lot of fatigue for little extra benefit, especially when you also run or do conditioning during the week.
In Volta, strength workouts show the sets, the rep range and the rest. Rest starts on its own after each set, and the 1 to 5 level adjusts the number of sets.
Let Volta plan your week.