How Many Exercises Per Workout – What You Need to Know

Overview

Most people are aware of the great benefits of exercising and how it could optimize their health and lower the risk of disease.

In general, we can divide exercising into two major categories:

• Strength training
• Cardiovascular training

When you start your fitness journey, you are bound to get confused about the logistics of working out. For instance, how many times should you work out per week? How many exercises per workout? How many repetitions and sets should you complete?

Depending on where you look, you will undoubtedly find conflicting points of view.

In this article, we will address all these questions and more, according to credible, unbiased scientific research.

What is the short answer?

Unfortunately, there is no short answer to these questions. There are several factors in play, including your fitness level, health condition, and ultimate goals.

According to one study, including more sets in your workout per week leads to muscle hypertrophy. Generally speaking, you can aim for 1 to 3 sets per exercise to gain muscle mass.

If you are after strength, however, you should focus on full-body workouts rather than isolating specific muscle groups.

As you can see, the answer to each question can be very divisive and takes into consideration several factors.

How many exercises per workout

Before we answer this question, let us first get our terminology straight.

Workout routine – it refers to a complete training plan. For instance, if you go to the gym for 45 minutes, that is a workout routine.

Exercise – it refers to one specific movement that engages one or more muscle groups. For instance, bicep curls are one exercise.

Repetition – it refers to the number of times you perform a certain exercise. For instance, doing bicep curls 12 times translate into a repetition of 12.

Set – if we continue with our example, one set consists of 12 repetitions of bicep curls. Each set has a specific number of repetitions.

How many sets and reps per muscle group

When it comes to working out, the number of sets you do can have a big impact on your results. For example, if you’re trying to increase your bench press, you’ll need to do more sets than if you’re just trying to stay in shape. The same goes for squats and deadlifts. If you’re new to lifting, it’s best to start with three sets of eight reps. As you get stronger, you can increase the number of sets and reps. Ultimately, the best workout is the one that challenges you and helps you reach your goals.

When working a particular muscle group it’s important to get the right amount of volume of sets and reps. Training volume is one of the major factors when it comes to muscle gain and muscle mass. If your goal is size it might be best to do a chest workout or one day of the week. How many reps per muscle group will be dependent on the goal you’re trying to achieve. This is called a training split. Full body workouts works various muscle groups rather than individual muscle groups.

Rep ranges

Muscle mass:

Hypertrophy training is a type of strength training that is designed to build muscle mass. The goal of hypertrophy training is to increase the size of the muscles, as opposed to focusing on strength or power. Sets and reps are typically higher in hypertrophy training, as this helps to stimulate muscle growth. In addition, hypertrophy training often uses lighter weights and focuses on time under tension, rather than maximal force. As a result, hypertrophy training can be an effective way to build muscle mass and improve physical appearance. However, it is important to note that hypertrophy training will not necessarily lead to increased strength or power. For athletes who are looking to improve their performance, other types of strength training may be more effective.

If your goal is muscle growth you should focus on 6-8 reps with 3-5 sets. Excess training volume has a rate of diminishing return around 6 sets. Muscle growth doesn’t require a ton of stimulus.

Muscular strength:

Muscular strength is the amount of force a muscle can generate. It’s determined by the cross-sectional area of a muscle and the number of motor units that are activated when the muscle contracts. Sets and reps are two common ways to measure muscular strength. Sets refer to the number of times an exercise is performed, while reps refer to the number of times a particular muscle group is worked. For example, if you’re performing a set of bicep curls with 10-pound dumbbells, you would be working your biceps 10 times. If you’re performing 10 sets of bicep curls, you would be working your biceps 100 times. The more sets and reps you perform, the stronger your muscles will become. However, it’s important to note that muscular strength is specific to the muscles that are being worked. So, if you want to increase the strength of your biceps, you need to perform exercises that target your biceps. Sets and reps are two common ways to measure muscular strength, but they’re not the only ways. There are also things like 1RM (one-repetition maximum) and 5RM (five-repetition maximum). These tests simply involve lifting a certain amount of weight as many times as possible until failure. The more weight you can lift, the stronger you are. Muscular strength is an important aspect of physical fitness, and there are many different ways to measure it. By understanding how sets, reps, and different types of tests work, you can find the best way to measure your own muscular strength and improve upon it.

Muscular endurance:

Muscular endurance is the ability to perform an activity using your muscles for an extended period of time without tiring or becoming fatigued. It is different from muscular strength, which is the ability to exert maximal force for a brief period of time. To improve your muscular endurance, you need to do exercises that tax your muscles and force them to work for an extended period of time. This can be done by doing multiple sets of an exercise or by performing a single set of an exercise for a very high number of repetitions (reps). For example, if you are doing a set of bicep curls, you would perform 12-15 reps before taking a break. Doing multiple sets of an exercise will also help to improve your endurance. By pushing your muscles to their limits and making them work for extended periods of time, you will help to improve their overall endurance.

How many times should you work out per week

According to experts, the ideal number of exercising is five days a week. Being moderately active boosts your general well-being and fitness status.

While 5 days per week may sound intimidating for a lot of people, just remember that you can be active for as little as 30 minutes, and it would still be considered a great workout.

As a general advice, you should not start with this number of workouts per week when you are a beginner. After all, you need to take your fitness level, experience, and available time into consideration.

If you can start with 45 minutes of training, 3 times a week, that would be perfect.

It is important to switch things around and avoid sticking to the same workout routine since it will tire your muscles and be very boring.

For instance, divide your workout routine into several parts:

• Day 1 – cardio workout (e.g., jogging, swimming, cycling)
• Day 2 – rest
• Day 3 – strength training (e.g., lifting weight in the gym)
• Day 4 – rest
• Day 5 – diverse workouts (e.g., High-Intensity Interval Training -HIIT-, CrossFit)

New Lifters

Someone new to exercising my do fewer exercises per muscle group than some that is advanced. Isolation exercises and a focus on smaller muscle groups might be needed to correct muscle imbalances before moving to a more advanced program. The training program used for a new lifter might include a full body workout session 3 times a week. These full body workouts will focus on lighter weight and correct movement patterns. Training volume per muscle group will be lower per week than an advanced or intermediate lifter. Doing a simple workout program will be helpful so that you can improve movement patterns and avoid injury.

Intermediate lifter

The workout split for an intermediate lifter will be a little different from someone that is new to the gym. You might do a push pull split, a lower body split or an upper body split. The nervous system, muscle tissue and movement patterns will be ready for the new workout plan. Here’s an example of what a week might look like

• Upper body Tuesday
• Lower body Wednesday
• Upper body Friday
• Lower body Saturday

When you switch to a different workout program you can up the training volume for the workout session.

If you’re advanced

If you’re an advanced lifter you can do more workouts per week. Some advanced lifters can do up to 6 days a week. Also if you’re advanced you might work on a specific muscle group for a workout sessions over a total body workout session. Workout programs for more seasoned lifters will have a different workout schedule than someone just starting out. Keep in mind that you might be doing different exercises for different goals. Powerlifters will be doing fewer exercises than someone doing body building.

How many exercises per workout?

To avoid burnout and optimize the efficiency of your workout, aim for 3-4 exercises per workout routine.

Depending on your approach, choosing the type of exercises to perform will differ. For instance, if you focus on muscle groups rather than full-body workout, you will probably choose 3-4 exercises that target the same muscle group.

For instance, if it chest-day, you might perform:

• Barbell bench press
• Flat bench dumbbell press
• Low-incline barbell bench press
• Machine decline press

With that said, we recommend that you stick to compound exercises in the beginning as they target several muscle groups. A good ratio to start with is 80/20 of compound to isolation exercises.

As for the number of repetitions, it all depends on your physical fitness and how much weight you are lifting (more on that later).

Following these tips will undoubtedly lead to great benefits, regardless of your fitness goals.

Now that we got the basics out of the way, let us see why 3-4 exercises per workout is ideal:

Including too many exercises per workout can be counterproductive since it distracts you from what truly matters.

Here are some common adverse effects of focusing on several exercises per workout:

Lost focus

Performing more than 4 exercises is likely to distract you from giving it your best with each movement. You can think of it as having an extremely busy schedule with a lot of things to do; the more tasks you need to do, the lower the quality of each performance.

Long workout session

Most people get bored if the workout routine lasts for too long. Adding more exercises may contribute to burnout.

General fatigue

Following the tips listed in this article should leave you with no energy after 4 exercises. Adding more exercises makes your performance mediocre at best.

How to maximize your routine

Regardless of your physical routine and the number of exercises you aim for, there are a few steps that everyone should follow.

Rest periods

Generally, your resting periods depend on the weight you are lifting. The heavier the weight, the more rest you should take between sets.

As a general rule of thumb, your resting period ranges between 30 seconds to 2 minutes, depending on the intensity of your exercise and the weight you are lifting.

Weight

Choosing the number of repetitions and the weight you are lifting should not be exclusively based on guidelines.

For instance, if you doing bicep curls and feel nothing when you reach the 12th repetition, this means you need to either increase the number of repetitions or add more weight.

Recovery

Recovery is not exclusive to spacing your workouts to rest. It also includes components, such as nutrition and sleep.

Ensure that you are eating a balanced diet composed of whole fresh foods and enough protein. You also need to sleep 7–8 hours a night to help your body recovers and stimulates your hormones to do their job.

Takeaway message

Gathering the necessary knowledge about the optimal way to stimulate your muscles is a crucial process that everyone needs to do. It allows you to reap the most benefits out of each workout routine.

We hope that this article managed to address some commonly asked questions in the field of fitness. If you still have any other questions, please do not hesitate to share them with us in the comment section below.

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