Before we get into today's episode, if you want to actually improve your body composition and are sick of random workouts that just wear you down and burn you out, that's exactly why I build Evolo. Evolo is science-back strength training designed to help you build muscle, improve body composition, and feel better in your body without beating yourself up or living in the gym. You can try Evolo now for two weeks free if you visit evolofitness.com. Welcome to the Dr. Shannon Show, body recomposition capsule. There's so much fitness advice out there, and quite frankly, much of it isn't true. So in this 10 episode series, we're covering all the science-based tools for body recomposition. You may have heard me cover many of these topics before, and some things will be brand new. I wanted to create one organized capsule of information that will give you all the important concepts for improving your body composition, because we know improving your body composition isn't just external. It has incredible benefits for your health, energy, mood, and longevity. I'm your host, Shannon Richie. Welcome to the show.!! Today, we're diving into volume and frequency, how many sets per week you need to build muscle, how many times per week you should train, slash how often you should train each muscle group, and what the research actually says about maintaining muscle if you just want to keep what you've built. So before we get into the numbers, none of this works unless you're choosing the right exercises and training close enough to failure. So make sure you go listen to the last episode, because that is very important. Adding more isn't necessarily better. Sometimes you just need to do what you're doing, but take each exercise closer to failure. Volume and frequency only matter after you've applied that. So let's start with volume, which means the number of sets that you do, and frequency, which means how many times per week you work a muscle group. So you may have heard people say, you need 10 sets per week, per muscle group, to maximize hypertrophy. And that's maybe five sets of glutes on Monday and five sets of glutes on Thursday, or however you want to divide it up. And that's for every muscle group in your body. And that comes from a well-known meta-analysis that I'll link in the show notes. But the details of this study do matter. So I want to unpack this, because it gets frequently referenced. So the researchers in this meta grouped weekly volume into three categories over an eight to 12 week period. So they had low volume group, which was four sets or less per muscle group per week. They had the moderate volume group. This was five to nine sets per muscle group per week. And they had higher volumes. This was 10 or more sets per muscle group per week. Here were the average hypertrophy or muscle growth outcomes for each of these groups. So the low volume group, the group that was doing four sets or less. They saw about 5.4% muscle growth over those eight to 12 weeks. The moderate volume group, the five to nine sets per muscle group per week, they saw about 6.5% muscle growth, so a little bit more. And the high volume saw about 9.6% muscle growth. So as you can see, the more volume you add, you do build muscle faster. You build more muscle over the same amount of time. So knowing that adding more weekly volume will lead to faster muscle growth. What do you do with this information? So after about 10 sets or more per muscle group per week, you do see more gains, but the additional gains per extra set become smaller. So you start to see diminished returns as you add more volume. The return on your investment is lower and your recovery demand goes up. For most women, especially women with jobs and families and stress and normal recovery capacity, doing super high volume just is not very sustainable. So this is why I recommend the moderate volume approach. And this is exactly what we do in Evela. We do around four to eight sets, maybe sometimes nine sets per muscle group per week. I really do think it's a sweet spot because it's enough to stimulate muscle growth without destroying your body or your nervous system. And the thing we hear the most from members is that they have not been able to be consistent with other programs, but they finally can be consistent with Evela because we have this moderate volume that not only works, but it doesn't beat you up. So moderate, manageable, smart volume lets you actually show up and it has a real visible impact on your body. So that's volume. How many sets per muscle group per week you should do? Next, let's talk about frequency. How often should you train each muscle group? So a recent meta analysis that combined all the data that we have on frequency found that training a muscle once per week does still produce muscle growth, but training it twice per week is significantly better. Training it three times per week offer no meaningful additional benefit for most people. So three times per week can absolutely work, but it's often harder to recover from and harder to keep up with long-term. So twice a week is the sweet spot. And my opinion, not only is it practical, it's great for building muscle and it's easy to stick to and stay consistent with. So if we put all this together, how many strength workouts do you need each week to build muscle? I recommend anywhere from three to five, so three, four or five. You can do two full body workouts a week, but it will mean that you have to hit each muscle group in both of those workouts. So the workouts can just get really long and it may get hard to stick to. So although it's an option, it's not my recommendation. I do recommend sticking to three, four or five times per week if your goal is body recomposition. Whether you choose three, four or five is really up to you. Just try to train each muscle group twice on non-consecutive days. If you like fewer strength sessions, but slightly longer workouts, choose three times per week. If you like shorter workouts, more spread across your week, choose five times per week. If you're an Evela member, you can try any of our tracks. So we have three, four and five times per week and they're the same for building muscle. I am typically on the four or five times per week track just because that's the track I teach on. And I like to spread my work throughout the week. I just feel like I recover better. My workouts are shorter. They're really easy for me to show up with. However, I did do the three times per week track recently. Three times per week track is two 45 minute classes and one 35 minute class. And I loved this track. I thought it was so awesome. The classes felt great. They're three full body workouts. So again, it's absolutely an option as just a preference. If you're an Evela member and you haven't tried the three times per week track, I would recommend you try it just to see if it fits with your lifestyle and what you like. And with two kids under two, it seems like that's maybe an efficient option that I would choose right now, but I am teaching on the five times per week track. So that's my usual go-to track. I've also body recompositioned twice on the five times per week track and it works great. So again, just choose your preference. So if we zoom out for muscle growth, train each muscle group with at least four sets per week spread across two sessions. That is the simplest, most evidence-based guideline to build muscle. Now let's talk about maintenance. A lot of people think maintenance means you can switch to quote unquote easier workouts when you're trying to maintain the muscle mass that you have. So maybe this means lighter weights or lower load or more cardio or just walking or weighted vest walking or Pilates or bar or whatever. And they think that you can do easier workouts or not workout at all and just maintain what you've built. But muscle is metabolically expensive and your body will happily get rid of it if it's not being challenged. If the signal to your muscles is not strong enough on a consistent basis, your body considers that muscle mass or that tissue extra and it slowly starts to trim it down. So no, you cannot maintain your muscle with low load workouts or only doing cardio. You have to continue sending the message that your muscle is needed. And that comes in the form of training to failure or close to failure. So I'll talk about how to maintain here in a moment, but I do recommend always being in building mode, even if your actual outcome ends up being maintenance because life gets in the way. And I've experienced this several times where I'm trying to build muscle and then I go a month where I'm super stressed out and it's just enough for me to show up. And I'm not really training close to failure or I'm not hitting my protein needs or I'm not recovering very well. And maybe I end up losing a little bit of muscle. I've seen that. So I recommend kind of always being in build mode so that you have a little wiggle room to play with so that if you undershoot build mode, you'll at least maintain. But let's talk about what you actually need to do to maintain muscle mass. And it's not doing easier workouts. It's not doing lighter weight workouts. It's not doing cardio only. The really interesting thing about maintenance is that it takes far less volume than building, but it still takes the same amount of intensity. You have to continue training close to failure. Several studies show that you can maintain muscle with as little as one third of your previous training volume. And in some people, even one ninth of your previous training volume. So here's a few examples. So a paper from Bickel and colleagues showed that adults maintained muscle for 32 weeks with one third of their original volume, which was about three sets. So they maintained muscle with about three sets taking close to failure. So if you're used to training with nine sets per muscle group per week, you might be able to trim it down to three sets per muscle group per week and maintain. I've also seen some studies show that you can maintain with even one hard set per muscle group per week. As far as frequency goes, you can maintain by just hitting each muscle group once per week. So that really will trim down how much you need to train, but it doesn't mean that you aren't training close to failure. It doesn't mean that you're switching to lighter weights. If you're an Evela member and you need to switch to maintenance for whatever reason, you have some options. So you can take upper body, lower body and mat build. That will ensure that you hit each muscle group one time or several times within the same workout. And that's the best, surest way to make sure that you're maintaining your muscle mass. You can spread those workouts out throughout the week however you want. You can take them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or you can spread them out throughout the week, whatever is easiest for you to maintain. Or if you want even fewer classes, an option you could do is take Monday's build 45 and Wednesday's mat build. That will hit each muscle group once with about three to four sets. So again, you can do either one of those tracks and still maintain your muscle. Some people say that they do those tracks and they're still even able to build a little bit of muscle. I think that depends on genetics, training status, individuality, lots of things. So just to summarize about maintenance, the simplest guidance for maintenance is aim to work each muscle group with at least one hard set per week. More is totally fine, but that's the floor. So just to summarize everything that we just talked about about volume and frequency, building muscle requires enough volume. Around four to eight sets per muscle group per week, that moderate volume works great. You can do a little less, you can do a little more, just pay attention to your recovery and training close to failure. So that's volume and frequency. Next episode tomorrow will be a fun one. We are talking about efficiency techniques like supersets, how to combine cardio and strength training and mistakes people make in trying to be efficient. So we'll see you tomorrow.
