How many sets should I do for each muscle group?

Direct answer

There isn't one perfect number, but doing more isn't automatically better.

Explanation

If your goal is building muscle, your weekly training volume matters. As a general starting point, somewhere around 8–12 challenging sets per muscle group per week can work well for many people.

That number can then move up or down depending on your training experience, how hard you're training, the exercises you're using, how frequently you train each muscle and, importantly, how well you're recovering.

Some people may progress perfectly well with less. Others may benefit from gradually increasing their volume beyond that.

The important part is that the extra sets are actually productive. Adding another ten sets to your week isn't useful if the quality of those sets is dropping, your performance is consistently declining or you're struggling to recover well enough to train effectively in your following sessions.

You also don't need to complete all of your weekly volume in one workout. If you're training your chest for 12 sets per week, for example, splitting that across two sessions may allow you to perform those sets at a higher quality than trying to do all 12 at once.