The Simplest Way to Build More Muscle

Follow these rules to maximize your gains, starting today

Muscle growth is 

an incredibly complex process, including actions by as many as 70 genes and a list of hormones you'd need a graduate degree in endocrinology to fully understand. Your body simultaneously speeds up the mechanisms that encourage growth and slows down the ones that inhibit it. The payoff is that, for 24 to 48 hours following a workout, your body adds protein to your muscles faster than it takes protein away.

The process is not only complex, but for most guys it's also painfully slow. It takes a lot of hard work to go from someone who lifts to someone who looks like he lifts. And sometimes progress is so slow it seems nonexistent.

The solution may come down to basic math: what you're doing + a little more = better results.

"There's a dose-response relationship between volume and hypertrophy," says Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., author of The M.A.X. Muscle Plan.

For beginning lifters, or those returning after a long layoff, the dose-response is surprisingly linear: two sets per exercise is better than one, and three is better than two, according to the position stand of the American College of Sports Medicine. If you're currently doing three, adding a fourth set may be better still.

Same with frequency: Two total-body workouts a week is better than one, and three is better than two.

Once you're past the beginner stage, "there's really no cookie-cutter answer," Schoenfeld says. The ACSM position stand shows that up to six sets per exercise, two times a week, can be effective. The longer you've been lifting, and the closer you are to your genetic ceiling for strength and size, the more you get out of increasing the total volume of your workouts.

Nine to 12 sets per major exercise per week, spread over three total-body workouts, is a reasonable goal for most guys.