The ACSM's new strength guidelines, translated into numbers

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has just updated its resistance training guidelines for the first time in seventeen years. Seventeen. We have changed phones seven or eight times since then, yet we were still arguing in the changing room using 2009 recommendations.

What sits behind the document

The new position stand is not built on anyone's hunch, nor on a single study: it draws on 137 systematic reviews covering more than 30,000 participants. It is, essentially, a summary of almost everything ever researched about lifting weights. And the overall conclusion is rather reassuring: nearly everything we argue about matters less than we thought.

The numbers you can use on Monday

Frequency comes first, and here the guidance is blunt: every major muscle group, at least twice a week. Not two arm days and no leg days. All of them.

Then come the figures, depending on what you are after. For strength, 2 to 3 sets per exercise with heavy loads, around 80 % of your 1RM (the most you could lift once — no need to test it: it is the weight that has you struggling by the sixth or eighth rep). For muscle growth, weekly volume is what counts: roughly 10 sets per muscle group per week, spread however suits you. And for power, moderate loads of 30 to 70 % of your 1RM, moved as fast as you can on the way up.

The gym is now officially optional

This is probably the most useful headline in the whole update: the ACSM concludes that elastic bands, bodyweight exercises and home-based routines deliver marked gains in strength, muscle mass and physical function. They are not a plan B for when you cannot get to the gym; they are simply a plan. If you have spent months putting off that membership, your last excuse has gone: three days a week in the living room with no kit at all already puts you inside the official recommendation.

And what you can stop doing

Training to failure on every set. Picking a side in the holy war between machines and free weights. Building periodisation schemes worthy of a shared spreadsheet. For a healthy adult, the impact of all that is inconsistent: sometimes it adds a little, sometimes nothing at all. What is worth keeping is the five-minute warm-up before your first set, which costs little and saves a lot of grief.

The best resistance training programme is the one you will actually stick with.

American College of Sports Medicine, 2026

Seventeen years of research to tell us that consistency beats sophistication. It may sound obvious, but there is something rather pleasing about it: the simple plan you could already be doing — two days, a handful of sets, some weight — is exactly the one the best available evidence recommends. All that is left is the hard part, which is starting it.