How lifters actually train

Lifters overwhelmingly work in moderate rep ranges. The median weighted working set is 10 reps, 74.2% of sets are between 6 and 12 reps, and 62.4% land on exactly 8, 10 or 12, the round numbers most programmes prescribe.

n = 121,495 lifters, 19,126,397 weighted working sets (reps 1–30, warm-ups excluded).

Heavy work lives on the big barbell lifts

Only 2.9% of all weighted sets are 1–5 reps, but the bench press, squat and deadlift get several times more heavy work (14.3%, 13.4% and 15.5%). Even on those lifts the median set is still 10 reps.

Three or four sets per exercise

The median exercise gets 3 working sets in a workout. Almost nine in ten entries are exactly 3 or exactly 4 sets.

n = 148,087 lifters, 7,494,151 exercise entries.

Women do a little more high-rep work

26.7% of women’s weighted sets are 13 reps or more, against 21.4% of men’s. The median set is 11 reps for women and 10 for men.

We looked at every active training week: a calendar week with at least 2 logged workouts. In a typical active week lifters logged 53 working sets in total (middle half 36–80) over 3 workouts. Each set counts once towards each primary muscle of its exercise.

n = 67,478 lifters, 369,399 active training weeks.

Women and men split their week differently

Women train glutes in 73% of active weeks (men 49%) and quadriceps in 72% (men 56%). Men train chest in 84% of weeks with a median of 12 sets (women 66%, 8 sets).

n = women 23,001 lifters, men 40,068 lifters.

More experienced lifters do a little more

Lifters who described themselves as advanced reach 10–20 chest sets in 34% of active weeks, against 30% for beginners. For lats the figures are 14% and 9%, and for hamstrings 10% and 7%. Experience is self-reported in the app.

Want to fix a lagging muscle? See the hamstring exercises, lat exercises and calf exercises, or read how many sets and reps to do to build muscle.

The median workout timed live in the app lasts 51 minutes and includes 19 working sets. The middle half of workouts last 37 to 69 minutes.

n = 116,750 lifters, 1,263,876 app-timed workouts of 10 minutes to 4 hours.

About twice a week

Among lifters who logged workouts in at least 4 different weeks, the median averages 2.1 workouts per logged week (middle half 1.63–2.75). A week with no workouts at all isn’t counted, so this is frequency in the weeks people did train.

n = 24,066 lifters, 456,938 logged weeks.

Monday is gym day

n = 263,346 workouts on Mondays, down to 121,655 on Sundays.

Age barely changes how people train

* Median workouts per logged week, lifters with 4+ logged weeks (24,066 lifters). Age is taken at each lifter’s last logged workout.

Plans built around your available days: 3-day full body, upper/lower split and how many times a week to work out.

Ranked by the number of lifters who logged each loaded exercise at least once. The lat pulldown is the most widely used: 24,219 lifters, 19.8% of the 122,354 who logged a loaded exercise, just ahead of the barbell bench press (23,973).

By sex

Share of lifters of that sex who logged a loaded exercise (women 41,853, men 72,031). Alternate heel touches and bodyweight squats are bodyweight moves that GymStreak’s catalogue logs as rep exercises, so they appear in this list.

By country

The lat pulldown is the most-logged loaded exercise in 7 of the 12 countries with the most GymStreak lifters (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Netherlands and Indonesia). The barbell bench press is first in India, France, South Africa and Saudi Arabia, and dumbbell bench press in Philippines.

Country is the account country. Lifters from every other country are grouped as “other” and not shown.

For each lifter we took their best set of 1–10 reps in the last 12 months of their training and estimated a one-rep max (1RM) with the Epley formula. These are estimates from logged sets, not tested maxes, from people who use a gym app.

† Near the 20 kg bar-weight minimum used in the study, so the true figure may be lower. Treat it with caution. Bodyweight multiple = estimated 1RM ÷ the midpoint of the lifter’s 10 kg bodyweight band.

A bodyweight bench press puts a man at about the 75th percentile of GymStreak lifters: the 75th percentile is 1.02× bodyweight. The median squat is 80.0 kg for men (0.94×) and 50.7 kg for women (0.7×); the median deadlift is 81.6 kg (0.98×) and 51.7 kg (0.71×).

What the data is

GymStreak is a workout-tracking app. Users log their workouts set by set: the exercise, the reps and the weight. This study uses those logs together with the optional profile details users entered in the app (sex, date of birth, bodyweight, height, training experience and account country).

• Coverage: December 2019 to September 2026 (82 months with at least 100 active lifters). The workout logs come from a database backup taken on 29 September 2026 and the profiles from an export taken on 30 September 2026. About a third of all sets (8.8M) were logged in 2022, so that year weighs heavily in the all-time figures.
• Scale: 27,494,415 logged sets from 149,299 lifters, across 1,411,936 workouts with logged sets.
• Not a representative sample. Everyone in it chose to download a gym app and log their training. They are probably more engaged, and more strength-focused, than the general population or even the average gym member.

How the data was anonymised

• Every account and workout ID was replaced with a keyed hash. The key was destroyed after the dataset was built, so the hashes can’t be linked back to accounts.
• Names, emails, device identifiers, free-text notes and custom exercise names were never extracted. Only exercises from GymStreak’s standard catalogue are analysed.
• Profile details were stored only as broad bands (sex; age 18–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55+; bodyweight in 10 kg bands between 35 and 200 kg; the 12 largest countries, everyone else as “other”). Exact birth dates, bodyweights and heights were never written to the analysis dataset.
• Workouts logged while a user was under 18, according to their profile birth date, were dropped, together with those users’ profiles.
• Every published number describes at least 100 different people. Smaller groups are removed entirely. In any breakdown by sex, age, bodyweight or country, a group is also removed if one person accounts for more than 20% of its sets.
• Processing ran inside GymStreak’s own Google Cloud project; no row-level data was downloaded, and the pseudonymised dataset deletes itself after 90 days.

Cleaning and exclusions

• Logs with placeholder or out-of-range dates (outside 2016 to 30 September 2026) were dropped. Pound weights were converted to kilograms (1 lb = 0.4536 kg).
• Working sets are sets ticked as done, excluding warm-ups. Rep statistics cap reps to 1–30. Exercise-level statistics use catalogue exercises logged by at least 1,000 users.
• Workout length uses only workouts timed live in the app, lasting 10 minutes to 4 hours. Weekly sets per muscle use weeks with at least 2 workouts.
• When a user skips a profile question the app fills in defaults, and it doesn’t record whether a value was entered. Profiles that look defaulted are treated as unknown and left out of sex, age and bodyweight breakdowns. Some real values are lost this way. Some profile values may have been imported from Apple Health or Health Connect; the app doesn’t record the source. Bodyweight is the latest profile value, not the weight on the day of each lift.

Estimated one-rep max (Epley)

e1RM = weight × (1 + reps ÷ 30). For each lifter and lift we take their best working set of 1–10 reps, with a bar weight of 20–400 kg, within the 12 months ending on their last logged workout. The formula is applied to singles too, so a 1-rep set counts as its weight × 1.033. Lifts: bench = barbell bench press, squat = barbell squat, deadlift = barbell deadlift, overhead press = standing barbell shoulder press.

Limitations

• The data shows what people logged. Forgotten workouts and unticked sets are missing.
• e1RM is an estimate, less accurate above about 10 reps, and depends on users entering weights correctly. Some users may log plate weight without the bar, which biases e1RM low.
• Percentiles are computed with approximate quantiles, accurate to within about 1 percentile point at these sample sizes.
• Profile answers are self-reported and can be stale or defaulted.

The summary tables behind this page are free to download as CSV under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence. They contain aggregates only (every row describes at least 100 lifters), never individual records. Column notes are in the README.

• Reps per set (1–30)Share of weighted working sets at each rep count.q2_rep_values_overall.csv
• Rep rangesShare of weighted working sets in each rep range.q2_rep_buckets_overall.csv
• Reps by liftRep percentiles and rep-range shares, overall and for the big barbell lifts.q2_rep_percentiles.csv
• Reps by sexRep percentiles and rep-range shares for women and men.b2_rep_ranges_by_sex.csv
• Sets per exerciseWorking sets per exercise per workout.q4_sets_per_exercise.csv
• Active training weeksWeekly working sets in weeks with 2+ workouts.q1_active_weeks_summary.csv
• Weekly sets per muscleHow often each muscle is trained in an active week, and how many sets.q1_sets_per_muscle_week.csv
• Weekly sets per muscle by groupThe same, split by sex and by training experience.b1_sets_per_muscle_week_by_group.csv
• Workout lengthMinutes and working sets per workout.q4_session_length.csv
• Workout length bandsShare of app-timed workouts in each length band.q4_duration_buckets.csv
• Workouts by ageMinutes and sets per workout by age band.b4_sessions_by_age.csv
• Workouts per weekShare of logged weeks with 1 to 7+ workouts.q5_weekly_frequency.csv
• Workouts per week (summary)Average workouts per logged week, lifters with 4+ logged weeks.q5_weekly_frequency_summary.csv
• Workouts per week by ageAverage workouts per logged week by age band.b4_weekly_frequency_by_age.csv
• Day of the weekShare of workouts on each weekday.q5_day_of_week.csv
• Most popular loaded exercisesTop 25 loaded exercises by number of lifters: overall, by sex and for the 12 largest countries.b3w_top_weighted_exercises_by_group.csv
• Strength standardsEstimated 1RM percentiles (kg and bodyweight multiple) by sex, bodyweight band and age band.b5_strength_standards.csv
• Coverage by yearLifters, sets and workouts in the study by calendar year.q0_coverage_by_year.csv
• Coverage windowFirst and last month with 100+ active lifters, and the study totals.q0_coverage_months.csv

You’re welcome to quote and chart these figures. Please credit GymStreak and link to this page. Suggested citation:

GymStreak (2026). How lifters actually train: GymStreak Training Data Study. Data: GymStreak app users, Dec 2019–Sep 2026, n=149,299 lifters.

Short form for captions: “Data: GymStreak app users, Dec 2019–Sep 2026, n=149,299 lifters.” Link: https://www.gymstreak.com/research/how-lifters-train

How many reps per set do most people do?

Ten. In GymStreak’s data the median weighted working set is 10 reps, and 62.4% of sets are exactly 8, 10 or 12 reps. Only 2.9% of sets are in the heavy 1–5 rep range.

How many sets per muscle per week do people actually do?

Fewer than most guidelines suggest. When a muscle is trained in a week, the typical median is 4–9 sets; chest is the exception at a median of 11. Only 32% of active weeks put chest in the 10–20 sets range, and 9% for hamstrings.

How long is the average gym workout?

The median app-timed workout in GymStreak lasts 51 minutes and includes 19 working sets. The middle half of workouts last 37 to 69 minutes.

How many times a week do people go to the gym?

About twice. Lifters who logged at least 4 separate weeks average a median of 2.1 workouts per logged week, and 30.1% of logged weeks contain a single workout. Monday is the busiest day (18.3% of workouts) and Sunday the quietest (8.5%).

What is the average bench press?

Among GymStreak lifters, the median estimated one-rep max bench press is 66.7 kg for men (0.78× bodyweight) and 37.3 kg for women (0.5×). These are estimates from logged sets, not tested maxes, from people who use a gym app.

Can I use this data?

Yes. The summary tables are free to download and reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence. Please credit GymStreak and link to this page.