Training volume.
Volume is how much work you're doing. Strictly, it's sets times reps times weight. Practically, lifters and coaches just count hard sets per muscle per week, because that turns out to track adaptation better than any of the longer formulas.
What volume is
A hard set is one taken close to failure — two or fewer reps left in the tank. Warm-up sets don't count. Sets you stopped because you got bored don't count. The body responds to challenging work, and it ignores the rest.
Most research lands on a sweet spot of about ten to twenty hard sets per muscle per week for trained lifters. New lifters need less. Advanced lifters can sometimes tolerate more. Everyone falls somewhere in that band.
Signs you're doing too little
- You leave the gym feeling fresh and untaxed.
- Weights haven't moved in a month despite consistent attendance.
- The muscles you want to grow aren't sore — ever.
Signs you're doing too much
- Performance drops session to session instead of climbing.
- Sleep gets bad. Mood gets worse.
- Joints ache where they didn't before.
- You're spending two hours in the gym and gaining nothing for it.
The volume curve is non-linear
More volume gives more growth — up to a point. Past that point, more volume gives more fatigue, no extra growth, and eventually negative growth as recovery breaks down. The art is finding the dose that works for you and adjusting it across phases.
How Checkfit calculates it
Checkfit assigns a target weekly volume to each muscle based on your training history, your phase, and how recently you deloaded. As the block progresses, volume creeps up; before the deload, it's at its peak. Then it drops, you recover, and the next phase starts the curve over.
You don't count sets. The app does.
