Strength Without the Noise: Making Sense of the New ACSM Guidelines

BOTTOM LINE

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has upgraded their 2009 position on resistance training (RT) for healthy adults over the age of 18.

And the message is clearer than ever:

RT isn’t optional. It’s foundational.

If you aren’t doing it, the priority is simple: start—and keep going.  

To build and maintain muscle, aim for roughly 10 challenging sets per muscle group per week, using loads that take you close to fatigue (with about 2 reps left in the tank).

How you do that is flexible.

Gym, home, bands, machines—it all counts.

There’s no perfect program. But there is a clear pattern:

• Do enough work
• Make it challenging
• Repeat consistently
• Recover well

Everything else is detail.

Do enough work. Make it challenging. Repeat consistently. Recover well.

THE UPDATED HOW TO

Understanding the language

Before we get into the HOW TO and the SCIENCE, let’s quickly translate some of the gym jargon into plain English.

The non-negotiables

Regardless of your goal, effective resistance training tends to follow the same principles:

• Get started! And stay consistent
• Train your major muscle groups with 10 or more sets per week
• Maintain good form
• Prioritise your heavier work earlier in the session, after a proper warm-up
• Work through your full Range of Motion (ROM)
• Train close to fatigue (around 2 RIR)
• Split your weekly volume across at least 2 sessions, with at least 2 sets per exercise per workout
• Recovery still matters—but how much you need is individual

If you want to be more specific

For Strength:

For Hypertrophy (increases in muscle mass):

For Power:

• Move the weight quickly into the contraction.
• Control the return (eccentric phase)
• Use lighter loads: 30–70% of your 1RM
• Low-to-moderate repetitions (around 20 reps per set)
• Can be trained using medicine balls, jumps or quick lifts

Power, although often overlooked, becomes increasingly important with age, because it declines faster than strength, yet it becomes important to catch ourselves if we fall and to maintain independence in those other physical functioning outcomes listed above.

Power declines faster than strength—and becomes more important with age.

THE SCIENCE

What this position stand actually is

13 renowned researchers in exercise science reviewed the current evidence in order to update the ACSM position stand on the impact of RT on muscle function and hypertrophy  in healthy adults (over 18).

They analysed 137 review papers of about 35 000 published studies, including more than 30 000 participants.  

That’s a substantial body of evidence! And, in keeping with scientific rigour, they outlined their limitations too, so I’d say their analysis was definitely comprehensive and we can confidently rely on their conclusions.

Why RT matters

Lean muscle is one of the strongest predictors of a healthy longevity, because it:

• Reduces the risk of chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease and diabetes
• Improves bone strength
• Supports your immune system
• Boosts metabolic health
• Reduces harmful visceral fat
• Protects your brain and nerves
• Supports better sleep and overall quality of life

What the research looked at

The position statement examined how resistance training affects both:

How to interpret the findings

For each of these outcomes, the researchers looked at:

• Which training variables influence results
• How those results can be improved

To make this practical, let’s take hypertrophy (muscle growth) as an example.

Hypertrophy

Appears to be supported by

• Standard resistance training (e.g. sets of squats, rows, etc.)
• Circuit-style training
• Resistance bands
• Eccentric work (controlling the lowering phase)
• Increasing total weekly work (volume)

What doesn’t seem to matter as much for hypertrophy. when total work and effort are matched

• How many days you train per week
• Training all the way to failure
• Whether loads are light or heavy
• The specific rep range used

Certain commonly marketed “advanced” methods also don’t seem to add much

• Blood flow restriction
• Variable loading strategies
• Time-under-tension techniques
• Power training
• Periodisation
• Exercise order

What we still don’t know

Importantly, the authors are also clear about where evidence is still lacking. We don’t yet know whether hypertrophy is meaningfully affected by:

• Machines vs free weights
• Isolation vs compound exercises
• Rest time between sets
• Small changes in range of motion
• Time of day
• Specific set structures

The authors then go on to give practical suggestions to improve hypertrophy, based on the above observations.

The main takeaway from the research

For healthy adults, compared to doing nothing, RT, in any of its forms, improves:

• Strength
• Muscle mass
• Power
• Endurance
• Functional performance

Importantly, they state that: “RT programs should be individualized to maximize adherence, enjoyment, safety, and effectiveness specific to training goals.” (ACSM, 2026, p 13, para 2). 

In other words, the best program is the one you can actually stick to.

What actually matters (based on the evidence)

When you strip the research back, the practical implications are surprisingly simple:

Consistency drives results
Resistance training is a skill — and like any skill, you improve by doing it regularly.

Sufficient challenge is non-negotiable
Load needs to be appropriate to your goal, but across the board, sets need to be taken close to fatigue (around 2 reps in reserve).

Total weekly volume is a key driver
Around 10 sets per muscle group per week appears to be an effective target. The authors recommend splitting the volume into 2 or more sessions per week and at least two sets per exercise.

Rep ranges are flexible
The exact number of reps matters far less than the effort within the set.

The exact number of reps matters far less than the effort within the set.

Cutting through the noise

The 2026 ACSM position stand on RT will also help you discern marketing noise, some of which could be barriers to getting started, from what actually works.

If you want to train for a specific outcome—like hypertrophy or power—you can absolutely tweak your program.

But those tweaks don’t make a method better or necessary.

Often, they’re more about branding than meaningful differences in results.

A note on progression and programming

Progressive overload has long been considered essential for continued adaptation—and it still matters.

But the updated guidelines clarify something important:

Progression doesn’t need to follow rigid structures.

It should reflect:

• your starting point
• your capacity
• your goal

The same applies to variation in exercises. More variation isn’t inherently better—it just needs to make sense for you.

And what about periodisation?

Periodisation—systematically changing training variables like load, volume, and frequency—is often presented as essential.

But based on current evidence, its impact (particularly on strength outcomes) isn’t clear.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.
It just means it may not be as critical as it’s often made out to be.

Resistance training is one of the most effective tools we have for improving health, function, and longevity—and it’s relevant at every age.

The formula is surprisingly simple:

• Work each major muscle group for about 10 sets per week
• Use enough resistance to make those sets challenging
• Stay consistent

That’s it.

Not perfect programming. Not fancy techniques. Not chasing the latest trend.

Just doing the work—well, and often enough.

The real takeaway from these updated guidelines isn’t that training has become more complicated.

It’s that it hasn’t.

So if you’ve been waiting for the perfect plan, the right equipment, or the ideal time…

This is your reminder:
You don’t need any of that to get started.

Just doing the work—well, and often enough.

If you want help applying this to your own training (without overthinking it), that’s exactly what I do inside my Made To Move program.

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