Masheen

Planning a week

Volume

Also called training volume, weekly volume, sets per week

Volume is how much training you do, counted either as the number of hard sets for a muscle in a week or as weight × reps added up across sets.

100× 5100× 5100× 5
Set 3: 100 kg for 5. Volume so far: 1,500 kg. Squat, 3 sets of 5 at 100 kg: 3 sets, 15 reps, 1,500 kg of volume load.

In plain words

There are two counts, and lifters mix them up. One counts hard sets for a muscle in a week: "my chest volume is 12" means twelve sets. The other adds up weight × reps across every set, which is also called volume load or tonnage: "my volume today was 1,500 kg". Masheen uses sets per muscle per week when planning a week, and says volume load or shows kilograms when it means weight × reps. A 2017 meta-analysis of 15 studies found more weekly sets went with more growth, about 0.37% more per extra set, and its top group was ten or more sets a week per muscle.

An example

You squat 3 sets of 5 reps at 100 kg. Counted as sets, that is 3. Counted as reps, 15. Counted as volume load, 100 × 5 × 3 = 1,500 kg. The three numbers describe the same session. A 2021 review concluded that counting sets taken to failure or near it is an adequate way to measure volume for growth when reps sit between 6 and 20 or more.

Often confused with

Intensity Intensity is how heavy the weight is; volume is how much work you do with it. Tonnage Tonnage is one way of counting volume, in kilograms; volume can also be a plain count of sets.
Tonnage Tonnage is the total weight moved in a session: weight times reps for each set, added up.
Volume landmarks Volume landmarks are named marks on the scale of weekly sets for one muscle: how few still do something, and how many is too many.
MEV MEV stands for minimum effective volume: the weekly sets for a muscle below which you only maintain.
MRV MRV stands for maximum recoverable volume: the most weekly sets for a muscle you can do and still recover from.
Frequency Frequency is how often you train in a week: either how many sessions you do, or how many times each muscle gets trained.
Intensity Intensity, in lifting, usually means how heavy the weight is next to the most you could lift once: the load as a percentage of your one-rep max.
Working set A working set is a set done at the weight and reps the program asks for: the sets that count.

Go deeper

Progressive overload, explained with a log What progressive overload is, five ways to add load ranked by how easy they are to write down, and one month of squats in a log with the sums done. Updated

Sources

  1. Baz-Valle et al. 2021. Total number of sets as a training volume quantification method for muscle hypertrophy. J Strength Cond Res 35(3):870–878 Read
  2. Schoenfeld, Ogborn, Krieger 2017. Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass. J Sports Sci 35(11):1073–1082 Read

Updated . How these pages are researched and corrected: editorial policy. Every term in the glossary.