For bodybuilding
A bodybuilding app that counts what builds muscle.
Building muscle comes down to enough hard sets for each muscle every week, with a little more weight or reps over time. Arclift logs every set for free. With Pro, its body map counts your weekly sets for 18 muscle groups and shows what has recovered, and the progression coach sets your next weight and reps, for $19.99 a year.
What a normal training log misses.
Bodybuilding is a volume game played across a whole week, and most logs only show you one workout at a time.
You can’t see your weekly volume per muscle
Most logs show workouts, not muscles. To know whether your side delts got 4 sets or 14 this week, you add it up yourself across push day, pull day and the arm day you half skipped, counting a row as back work and part biceps work, and the total usually ends up a guess.
Some muscles quietly get left behind
Chest and arms get trained because they’re fun; hamstrings, calves and rear delts get dropped when a session runs long. Over a few months that shows in the mirror, and nothing in a normal log warns you, because it shows what you did and never what you skipped.
Drop sets and burnouts wreck your numbers
Intensity techniques are part of bodybuilding, but a drop set at half the weight or a burnout to failure looks like a bad set to most trackers. It drags down your averages and confuses whatever you use to pick next week’s weight, so you end up ignoring your own history.
Knowing when to add weight
Hypertrophy work lives in rep ranges like 8 to 12, so the question every session is whether to add reps or weight. Deciding that for twenty exercises across a split, from memory and between sets, is where most people either stall for months or jump up too soon.
How Arclift tracks hypertrophy training.
Logging, set types and templates are free. The body map, recovery map and progression coach are part of Arclift Pro.
Weekly sets for every muscle, counted for you
The body map counts the last seven days of sets for 18 muscle groups. Each completed set counts fully toward the muscles an exercise mainly trains and partly toward the ones it only helps, warm-ups are left out, and the groups you’ve been neglecting are ranked, so a skipped hamstring day shows up long before it shows in the mirror.
Recovery you can read
The recovery map shows how fatigued each muscle group still is from the last 72 hours of training, easing off hour by hour, and it can name a time, like fresh in about nine hours. It answers what is recovered right now, which helps when you are choosing between today’s split day and an extra rest day.
Drop sets that stay in their lane
Mark a set as a warm-up, drop or failure set as you log it. Drop sets count toward the weekly volume they really add, but neither drop nor warm-up sets ever feed the progression coach’s targets, so a burnout at half the weight never drags down next week’s numbers.
Double progression on every exercise
The progression coach runs double progression in an 8 to 12 range by default: add reps until every set reaches 12, then add the smallest jump and start again at 8. Every set gets a target and a one-line reason, and a stall is caught after three sessions and answered with a deload.
Weekly sets per muscle: where to start.
Starting ranges for an intermediate lifter, counting hard sets of exercises aimed at each muscle. Begin near the low end and add two sets where growth stalls.
| Muscle group | Hard sets per week | Already trained by |
|---|---|---|
| Chest | 10 to 16 | Incline and shoulder pressing, dips |
| Back and lats | 10 to 16 | Deadlifts and other hinges |
| Quads | 10 to 16 | Lunges, split squats, step-ups |
| Hamstrings | 8 to 12 | Romanian deadlifts count fully |
| Side delts | 8 to 16 | Almost nothing else, so most work is direct |
| Biceps and triceps | 6 to 12 each | Rows and pull-downs, and every press |
| Calves | 8 to 16 | Very little from other lifts |
Count a set as one for the muscle an exercise targets and about half for each helper, and leave warm-ups out. The guide to sets per muscle group explains where these ranges come from.
Related
Bodybuilding app questions
What is the best app for bodybuilding?
The one that shows you what to change. For bodybuilding that means weekly sets per muscle, a clear rule for when to add reps or weight, and logging fast enough to use between sets. Arclift does all three on iPhone, with logging free and the body map and coach in Pro. Hevy, Strong and JEFIT are solid logs too, and run on Android.
How many sets per muscle should I do for hypertrophy?
For most people, about 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle group per week, and fewer in your first year. Count only sets taken close to failure, leave warm-ups out, and spread them over two sessions per muscle. Arclift’s body map adds them up for you as you log.
Is the body map free?
No. The body map, the recovery map and the progression coach are part of Arclift Pro, at $2.99 a month, $19.99 a year or $49.99 once. Logging, set types, unlimited templates and custom exercises, and your full history are free.
Does Arclift track bodyweight, measurements or progress photos?
No. Arclift tracks your training, not your body: there is no bodyweight log, no measurements and no progress photos. It can read your weight from Apple Health, but only to estimate the load of bodyweight exercises and the calories of a workout.
Can I run a push, pull, legs split in Arclift?
Yes. Save each day as a template, as many as you like on the free plan, and start a workout from it in a tap. Templates keep each exercise’s rest time and each set’s type, so your warm-ups and drop sets are there every session.
Guides
- Deload week: when to take one and how to run it
What a deload is, how to tell you need one, three ways to run it with sample weeks, and what the research actually shows.
- Push pull legs: a complete routine and how to run it
A complete push pull legs routine for three or six days a week, with sets, reps, rest, weekly volume per muscle and a rule for progressing it.
- How long should you rest between sets?
Rest times for building muscle, strength and endurance, by goal and by lift, what the studies found, and how to fit longer rests into a short session.
- How many sets per muscle group per week?
Weekly sets for building muscle, by experience and by muscle group, how to count compound lifts, and when to add or cut volume.
- Upper lower split: a complete 4-day routine
A complete four-day upper lower routine with sets, reps and rest, a beginner version, weekly volume per muscle and how it compares with other splits.
Train every muscle, and see it.
Arclift is free on iPhone for logging and unlimited templates, with no account. Add Pro for the body map, the recovery map and the progression coach.
See what’s free and what Pro costs