Most People Do WAY Too Many Exercises Per Workout (What Actually Works)

How Many Exercises Per Muscle Group00:00

When you hit the gym, how many exercises should you be doing per muscle group? It's probably somewhere between half an exercise and a million infinity exercises. Today, get actual recommendations of how many exercises per body part, plus a system to think and adjust on the fly to your own situations and needs.

Muscle Growth Analogy and Sets00:31

Muscle growth is stimulated like a cup is filled with water. Hard working sets fill the cup. The more sets you do for any given muscle in any session or week up until you can't recover (a really high number of sets), muscle growth goes up. More sets leads to more gains.

Five conditions determine how to split those sets into different exercises:

Condition 1: Staleness After 5-7 Sets01:32

After about 5-7 sets of any given exercise, staleness hits. If you have more sets to do, switch to another exercise. Some people feel stale after 3 sets psychologically (lack of connection, motivation, drive, minor joint pain). Others can do 10 sets. For most, after 5-7 sets, switching makes it fresher, even if just psychological, to maximize stimulus.

Condition 2: Muscles Have Different Functional Parts02:30

Many muscles have slightly different functional groups and parts needing independent stimulation. Example: No single exercise hits all delts. Rear delts and front delts are antagonists. Side delts function differently. For a complete delt workout, hit front, side, and rear delts separately—likely requiring more exercises.