: Should a weight trainer assign weight per-set or per-exercise? When assigning weight to a routine trainers use a weight that allows them to complete the desired number of repetitions with hard work. Should trainers use the

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Short answer: You should be overloaded at the end of each SET.

For most lifters, you'll want to be near or at the point of failure at the end of each set. That's generally how you stimulate muscles to get stronger/bigger/more enduring.

That said, there's certainly specialty training protocols that differ from this, injury recovery, or if a set is a warm-up set, or if it's some kind of exotic pre-exhausting super-set scheme idea.

But for your standard weightlifting goals, overload yourself on each and every set.

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While trying not to get too confusing here. The ultimate goal of ANY weight training session is to push the body to perform. By performing I mean struggle. If you're not struggling by the end of your set, you're probably only building muscular endurance and not strength. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it depends on your goals.

Another factor worth noting is Progressive Overload. If you continue to do the same weight for each set "with hard work", your body will eventually adapt and get used to that weight. In which case you will need to increase the weight.

Your question is directed at HOW you increase the weight. To this I say it depends on your method of progressive overload.

If you're doing pyramid sets for example, you can increase the weight as you decrease the reps in the same set.

If you're doing a 5 x 5 strong lift. You're going to do the same weight every set, until the following week where you increase 10lbs or so. This is SET BASED progressive overload, oppose to REP BASED

All in all, some claims say one way is better than other, but for anyone who is just starting out, I would say as long as you are overloading the body with resistance, it will get stronger to deal with this increase in resistance. So really it's a personal choice for said trainer.

Hope this helps! Best of luck!