As you may be aware, when weight training, you must complete a certain number of sets and reps for each exercise, as well as lift a specific amount of weight. After that, how do you determine how many sets and reps to do with each workout, as well as how much weight to lift in each set?
Muscle characteristics
The number of sets and reps you do, as well as the weight you lift, are determined by the muscle property you want to build. Muscles have four distinct characteristics:

* tenacity (the amount of force a muscle can produce)
* The diameter of a muscle is its size.
* Endurance (the strength of a muscle to contract against resistance)
* Power (the capacity of a muscle to generate both strength and speed)

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How should each property be developed?

Each property requires a different number of sets and reps to create. In addition, you must lift a different amount of weight. The following guidelines, outlined in Table 1, outline how each muscle property can be formed in a generalized manner.

Strength	Power	Size	Endurance
Sets per exercise	2–6	3–5	3–6	2–3
Reps per set	2–6 (low)	1–5 (low)	6–12 (moderate)	> 12 (high)
Weight (% 1RM)	Very heavy (> 85)	Heavy (75–90)	Heavy (67–85)	Low–Moderate (< 67)
Rest between sets	2–5 min	2–5 min	30–90 s	< 30 s
Training tempo*	1:2:2	Explosive:1	2:2:3	2:2:3

Table 1: Developmental guidelines for various muscle properties. 1RM stands for "one-repetition limit," "min" stands for "minutes," and "s" stands for "seconds." * The number of counts for the concentric, hold, and eccentric phases of a rep is described by the training tempo; for example, 1:2:2 is 1 count concentric, 2 counts hold, and 2 counts eccentric.

What exactly is 1RM?

It's worth noting that the amount of weight you'll need to lift to grow each property is shown in relation to your 1RM (one-repetition maximum) (or one-rep max for short). The heaviest weight you can lift in an exercise for one, and only one, rep while maintaining proper form is your 1RM. Knowing your 1RM for a specific exercise can be beneficial for two reasons:

It can be used to determine how much weight to lift for the exercise (though this isn't needed, as discussed below).
It enables you to detect and quantify a boost in power. If your 1RM rises, you've improved your power. If it doesn't rise any more, you've reached a stalemate.

You can estimate your 1RM for a given exercise by choosing a weight with which you can do three reps (which is safer) and checking a 1RM map, or you can find it by building up to it with progressively heavier weights.
The weight with which you can perform one rep is referred to as your 1RM, and the weight with which you can perform two reps is referred to as your 2RM, and so on.

It's worth noting, though, that you don't need to know your 1RM for an exercise to figure out how much weight you need to lift. The rep range you must stick to simply tells you how much weight you must lift. The rep range for developing scale, for example, is six to twelve reps. This means you must use a weight that allows you to complete six to twelve clean reps. It's too heavy if you can't do six clean reps; it's too light if you can easily do 12 clean reps. In other words, you should be approaching failure to perform clean reps by the sixth or twelfth rep. And when I say "clean," I'm referring to the use of proper form.

What is the best way to build muscular strength?

As seen in Table 1, strength training entails performing two to six sets per workout, each consisting of two to six reps, when using extremely heavy weights (more than 85 percent of your 1RM). Due to the heavy weights, the rest time between sets is relatively long (two to five minutes) to allow for adequate recovery.
Lifting extremely heavy weights recruits nearly all Type I, Type IIa, and Type IIb muscle fibers. However, due to the limited number of reps, muscular strength and size are primarily developed; muscular endurance is not. And the size improvements you achieve with this rep range aren't ideal.

How do you create muscle mass?

Three to six sets of six to twelve reps with heavy weights (67 percent –85 percent of your 1RM) are needed for optimal size training. Because of the small number of reps, this type of training will recruit the majority of Type I, Type IIa, and Type IIb muscle fibers, resulting in significant strength and size gains but minimal endurance gains. Since the muscle sustains further microdamage as a consequence of the higher workload and additional time under stress, more size is gained than with strength training.

What is the best way to increase muscular endurance?

Two to three sets of 13 or more reps (often 15 to 20) with low to moderate weights are performed during endurance training (less than 67 percent of your 1RM). This type of exercise will primarily recruit Type I muscle fibers, which will aid in the development of good endurance but restricted size and strength. To prevent overtraining, sets are limited to three since the rest interval is short and the number of reps is high.

How do you increase the scale, power, and endurance of your muscles?

You will recruit and improve the properties of all muscle fiber types if you combine low-rep training with heavy weights with high-rep training with moderate weights. As a result, you will gain good size, stamina, and endurance.

How do you build muscular strength?

Power is created by rapidly performing one to five reps with a heavy weight (75 percent to 90% of your 1RM), which recruits all fiber types but primarily Type IIb muscle fiber properties.

If you're just doing one or two reps, use 80 to 90 percent of your 1RM; if you're doing three to five reps, use 75 to 85 percent of your 1RM. With a two- to five-minute rest between sets, the number of sets is held between three and five. Explosive movements describe power-building exercises, which include producing a large force as quickly as possible. Such exercises are only recommended for intermediate and experienced lifters because they can be unsafe for beginners. The exercises must be done with proper form after thoroughly warming up to prevent injury.

Small and broad muscle groups have distinct characteristics.

At this point, I should clarify that small muscle groups need fewer sets than large muscle groups. As a result, for small muscle groups, stick to the lower end of the set range and for large muscle groups, stick to the upper end of the set range. Furthermore, small muscle groups need less weight. As a result, for small muscle groups, stick to the higher end of the rep range (and thus the lower amount of weight) and for large muscle groups, stick to the lower end of the rep range (and thus the higher amount of weight).

Small muscle groups are normally trained using isolation exercises, which require a single joint by design, and you don't want to place too much pressure on the joint. Compound exercises, which, as the name implies, require more than one joint, are less dangerous. Furthermore, as the weight is increased, the surrounding muscle groups become more involved in the exercise, defeating the purpose of isolating the muscle.