Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Schoenfeld, Ogborn, Krieger · 2017 · Journal of Sports Sciences 35(11):1073–1082

What this work gives Aellic

34 treatment groups from 15 studies: “Each additional set was associated with an increase in effect size (ES) of 0.023 corresponding to an increase in the percentage gain by 0.37%” (p = 0.002). The dose is coded as total sets per muscle group per week.

Correction of 26 July 2026

Two claims previously hung on this paper that it does not carry. (1) “Hard sets”: the paper has no effort or RIR criterion at all — its inclusion threshold is a load of at least 65 % 1RM. Whether a set was taken close to failure is not part of the dose. (2) “No paper uses tonnage as the dose”: the opposite is stated in its own introduction, which defines volume as “sets × reps × load”. That sentence was a generalisation about the literature, not a result of this work, and it is not citable here.

The entry on the register was wrong. It was not replaced but kept, with what holds instead standing next to it.

Where this sits in the engine

1 declared site: constants and thresholds in the code that point at this entry.

Training Muscle growth — sets per muscle 1 site

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