Have you made better progress by doing fewer sets?

When progress slows down, adding more work can feel like the obvious answer. Another exercise, another couple of sets, perhaps an extra session during the week. Cutting back can feel suspiciously like taking the easy option.

But has anyone here reduced their training volume and actually made better progress?

There are a few different things to separate. Doing fewer sets while keeping the same exercises is one change. Dropping exercises, training less often or changing how close you go to failure are others. If several things change together, it becomes difficult to know what made the difference.

It would be useful to hear some specific examples from members who have tried this. What did your routine look like before, what did you remove, and how long did you give the revised approach?

Also, what counted as better progress? Did your lifts start moving again, did you notice changes in your physique, or did you simply feel less worn out between sessions? Feeling fresher is valuable, but it would be interesting to know whether that translated into results over time.

The opposite experience is welcome too. Perhaps you cut back, enjoyed the shorter workouts, but eventually found you needed more work to keep progressing.

For anyone sharing a routine, please include roughly how long you’ve been training, your weekly schedule and how hard you take your working sets. Six sets stopped comfortably short of failure and six sets taken to the limit aren’t quite the same description of a week’s training.

No need to turn this into a competition over who can do the most, or the least. The useful question is how you worked out what was productive for you.

What convinced you to change your volume, and what happened afterwards?