Muscle Volume Calculator
This is a programme audit. Most people discover two things: something they train far more than they thought, and something they barely train at all.
Your results
Volume recommendations come from group averages in the dose-response literature. Your own tolerance depends on sleep, food, life stress and training history.
Reading the audit
The bars are scaled against 24 weekly sets, so anything reaching most of the way across is high. What you are looking for is not perfect balance — it is unintentional imbalance.
Deliberately prioritising a muscle is good programming. Discovering that your hamstrings get four sets a week while your chest gets twenty-two is not a priority, it is an oversight.
The muscles people habitually under-train
- Hamstrings. Squats and leg presses do very little for them. They need direct work — Romanian deadlifts for the hip function and leg curls for the knee function.
- Rear delts. Almost nothing in a typical programme trains them.
- Calves. Slow-growing, easy to skip, and they need more frequency than most muscles.
- Upper back. Pulldowns hit the lats; the mid-back needs rowing.
And the ones people over-train: chest, biceps and abs — the three you can see in a mirror.
Common questions
Should all muscles get equal volume?
No. Prioritise deliberately and keep the rest at maintenance. Unintentional imbalance is the problem, not intentional emphasis.
What is a reasonable total weekly set count?
For most people 60–120 hard sets across the whole body. Above that, recovery rather than volume is usually the limit.
How do I count a bench press for triceps?
Either as a full set or a half set — conventions differ. Be consistent so your numbers stay comparable.
My legs get far fewer sets. Does it matter?
It depends on your goals, but legs are the largest muscle mass in the body and under-training them limits both appearance and function.
Related calculators
Track the numbers, not just calculate them
MyFitsy stores your weight, measurements and every session, so the figures above become a trend instead of a one-off.
