There is tons of research on that. The terms you are looking for are training volume and intensity for hypertrophy and strength. For hypertrophy you need 12-20 sets per muscle group per week ideally split into 2-3 sessions. Then how many sets you do per exercise depends on how many exercises you do for that muscle group. There is no rule saying you have to do a certain number of sets per exercise. You can do 2 or you can do 5 but it needs to make sense in the overall program. Regarding intensity or the number of reps, you can build muscle anywhere in the 5-30 rep range as long as your sets are brought close to failure. The lower rep ranges below 5 are mostly focused on strength but it is still possible to gain muscle. Ideally you want to have a mix of rep ranges in your program. The usual way to accomplish that is to do compound movements like squats or bench at low reps and any isolation movements at higher reps.

Anonymous wrote:Can anyone point to an article or the science that can explain the difference/pros and cons of different set and rep schemes for optimizing strength and/or muscle gains? Do you do 3 sets of 8, 4 sets of 6, 8 sets of 3, 2 sets of 12? What's best? and how much is one better than the other? Sorry, I'm not looking for what you do personally and how well or not well it works for you. I'm looking for a something that explains the differences. Thanks.

You won't get any factual answers on that specific question because not everyone is built the same. The bottom line is mix it up. That's simple.

Can anyone point to an article or the science that can explain the difference/pros and cons of different set and rep schemes for optimizing strength and/or muscle gains? Do you do 3 sets of 8, 4 sets of 6, 8 sets of 3, 2 sets of 12? What's best? and how much is one better than the other? Sorry, I'm not looking for what you do personally and how well or not well it works for you. I'm looking for a something that explains the differences. Thanks.