: How many sets and reps should I do as a beginner? About a year ago, I asked a question looking for a list of beginner dumbbell exercises. A user suggested this helpful website, which I promptly bookmarked. Having procrastinated

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Short answer: 8-12 reps, whichever your goal may be (strength, mass, speed, etc).

Long answer: This has actually been rather well studied in science. 8-12 reps is the ideal range for a beginner, no matter what your goal is. You can see a (rather lengthy) post I wrote about this here, or just go to my source, the 2009 position stand by the American College of Sports Medicine (click on "Article as PDF" on the right-side menu).

There's a wealth of information on that paper by the ACSM -- if you're not scared of reading scientific papers, I strongly recommend it. Among all that information, they mention in the abstract that "For novice (untrained
individuals with no RT experience or who have not trained for several
years) training, it is recommended that loads correspond to a repetition
range of an 8–12 repetition maximum (RM)." In the paper itself, they split their recommendations in terms of goals: strength, muscle mass, explosive power, and endurance; for all those, the best rep range for a beginner is 8-12.

Note that for more advanced trainees, with some years of training already, different rep ranges should be used for different goals. But until you have some years of training, 8-12 is the best way to go.

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If your main focus to primarily to gain strength, I would highly recommend you to consider a starting strength 5x5 program. There are different variations of 5x5 programs, but they basically focus on compound exercises through squatting, benching, and barbell row/cleans. There's some extensive wikis on Mark Ripptoe, Bill Starr, and Madcow programs; however, all of these programs require barbell exercises, so I don't know if this fits your situation.

If you would like, I can find the 'calculator' excel sheet for a 9 week 5x5 program.

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Number of Reps for a Novice

As noted in my answer to your original question, I think sets of 5 or so are fine for a novice such as yourself. That is close enough to the strength end of the rep range spectrum, but is high enough to trigger some muscle growth (hypertrophy) in addition to the neurological improvements. Later, you can decide whether to switch to higher rep ranges for endurance or hypertrophy, or lower rep ranges for strength and power, or stay where you are to stay in the Goldilocks Zone.

Number of Sets

A handful of sets is fine. One set will spur the bare minimum adaptation. Three sets is almost certainly plenty if you're lifting heavy. If you're lifting light weights, more sets are necessary. However, that question really depends on what program you pick.

Pick a Program

Instead of creating your own program from scratch as an untrained novice, I recommend finding a dumbbell workout program created by someone else that has specific recommendations for sets, reps, and exercises. GreySkull Linear Progression, Starting Strength (which has more of an athletic/lower-body bias), or StrongLifts (which has the same bias as SS) are all fine examples. These are barbell-centric, but the principle stands: creating your own workout program is prone to error in inverse proportion to one's experience with working out.