Will 20 squats or 20 pull-ups a day make a difference?

Twenty bodyweight squats a day will make a difference if you do no leg training now: your legs get stronger and the squats get easier. For anyone who already trains, 20 squats a day changes very little, because a set of 20 easy squats ends far from failure, so it is not hard enough to build muscle. Twenty pull-ups a day is a different case: for most people it is several hard sets, so it builds back and arm strength until you can do 20 without much effort, and then it stalls the same way. Doing 20 squats a day will not make your bum noticeably bigger on its own; glute growth comes from squats and hip exercises that are hard (close to failure) and get harder over time, with added weight, more reps or harder variations.

The short version: a fixed daily count works until it stops being hard. Muscle and strength keep coming when the sets stay close to failure and the load or reps keep going up, with enough recovery between hard sessions. The rest of this post is the evidence behind that and a way to turn a daily habit into a plan that keeps progressing.

What 20 squats a day does, beginner vs trained

What 20 squats a day does depends on how hard those 20 reps are for you. The same 20 reps can be a hard set for one person and a warm-up for another.

The pattern is the same in both columns. The count does not matter; the effort and whether it rises does.

Will 20 pull-ups a day do anything?

Yes, if 20 pull-ups is hard for you. Someone whose best set is 8 reps needs three or four sets to reach 20, and each of those sets ends close to failure. That is real training for the lats, upper back and biceps, and it will raise your max until 20 reps stops being hard.

The problem comes later. Once your best set is 15 or 20, those same 20 reps are one or two easy sets, and easy sets do little for muscle or strength. A daily count that never changes turns into maintenance. For strict form and the muscles involved, the pull-up exercise guide covers the technique; if you cannot do one yet, build up to your first rep in stages instead of chasing a daily target.

Will doing 20 squats a day make my bum bigger?

Not by much. Twenty bodyweight squats are too easy for most adults to grow the glutes.

What grew the glutes in research was loaded squatting taken through a full range. In Kubo et al., 2019, men who did barbell full squats twice a week for 10 weeks increased gluteus maximus volume by 6.7%, against 2.2% for half squats, while their full-squat one-rep max rose by about 32%. That was heavy, progressing barbell work, not daily bodyweight reps.

If a bigger bum is the goal, three changes do more than adding squats:

• Make the squat harder. Hold a dumbbell or kettlebell for a goblet squat and squat as deep as you can with good form.
• Train one leg at a time. A Bulgarian split squat puts your whole bodyweight on one leg, so it stays hard for longer without a gym.
• Add a hip exercise. The hip thrust loads the glutes directly and is easy to add weight to.

What happens if you do 100 squats or 100 pull-ups a day?

High reps can build muscle, but only when the sets are hard. A 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis of 21 studies found that light loads (60% of one-rep max or less) and heavy loads built similar muscle when every set went to failure. Heavy loads built more maximal strength.

So 100 bodyweight squats a day can grow the legs of someone for whom a set of 30 or 40 is a real struggle. For most people who can do 100, the reps come in easy sets of 20 or 25 that end far from failure. That builds endurance and costs time, but adds little muscle.

100 pull-ups a day is the opposite problem. For most lifters that is many sets close to failure, every day, with no easy days. Frequency is not the issue on its own (see below), but the same joints and the same movement take that much work daily, with no room for the volume to go up later. A plan with fewer hard sets on fewer days, and a load that rises, gets further.

The evidence: what actually builds muscle

Three findings explain why a fixed daily count stalls.

Sets need to end close to failure

The US guidelines already say this, in plain words. The CDC's What Counts as Physical Activity for Adults tells adults to do muscle-strengthening work "to the point where it's hard to do another repetition without help", 8 to 12 repetitions per set, at least one set and two or three for more benefit.

Research on proximity to failure says the same about growth. Robinson et al., 2024 pooled studies by estimated reps in reserve and found that muscle growth increased as sets ended closer to failure, while strength gains were similar across a wide range. Refalo et al., 2023 found no evidence that going all the way to failure beats stopping just short of it. Close to failure, not at failure, is the target: about 1 to 3 reps in reserve on most working sets. The reps in reserve guide explains how to judge it.

The load or reps have to keep rising

The American College of Sports Medicine's position stand, Progression Models in Resistance Training for Healthy Adults, recommends loads of an 8 to 12 rep max for beginners and a 2 to 10% load increase once you can do one or two reps more than the target. That rule is what a daily count is missing. Twenty squats stays twenty squats; the stimulus shrinks as you get stronger. The progressive overload guide covers the ways to keep raising it.

Weekly hard sets matter more than training every day

A meta-analysis of 25 studies on training frequency found no meaningful difference in muscle growth between training a muscle more or less often when weekly volume was the same. What does scale is volume: a dose-response meta-analysis found that each additional weekly set was linked with more growth.

"Every day" is not the active ingredient. The number of hard sets you do in a week is. Daily training is fine if you prefer it, but six days of easy sets are worth less than two days of hard ones. Training frequency for hypertrophy goes into how to spread those sets.

Is 20 minutes of strength training a day enough?

Yes, for health, and usually for progress too. The US Physical Activity Guidelines ask adults for muscle-strengthening activity at least 2 days each week, and the CDC's adult guidelines add that it should work all major muscle groups: legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms. Neither sets a number of minutes.

Twenty minutes fits several hard sets for two or three muscle groups. Run as a split (legs one day, upper body the next) it covers the whole body over the week. What makes it enough is the same as above: the sets end close to failure, and something goes up over time.

How to turn 20 a day into a plan that progresses

Keep the habit; change what you count. Instead of a fixed number of reps, count hard sets and make each week a little harder than the last.

1. Find your real number. Do one set of squats (or pull-ups) and stop when you have about 2 reps left in you. That is your working set, whether it is 8 reps or 40.
2. Do 2 or 3 of those sets, 2 or 3 days a week. That matches the 2 to 3 days per week the ACSM recommends for beginners and the 2 or 3 sets the CDC suggests for more benefit.
3. Add a rep when the sets feel the same. When a set ends with more than 3 reps left, add reps the next session.
4. Make the exercise harder when reps get high. For squats, move to a goblet squat holding a dumbbell or kettlebell, then a Bulgarian split squat, then a loaded back squat. For pull-ups, add weight with a belt once you reach 8 to 10 strict reps; the pull-up calculator gives a starting belt weight from your reps.
5. Take rest days. Hard sets need recovery between them; how long muscles take to recover covers the spacing.

How RIRLift keeps a daily habit progressing

A daily count is easy to remember because nothing changes. A progressing plan is harder, because last week's numbers decide this week's. Was it 12 goblet squats with that dumbbell or 10? Did that set have 2 reps left or 4?

RIRLift records load, reps and reps in reserve for every set, so the effort is written down next to the numbers. When you start the same exercise again, your last session's sets are on screen, and RIRLift picks the next step from them: one more rep when your weakest set hit its target, more weight once every set reaches the top of your rep range. Bodyweight exercises progress by reps until you start adding weight. Bodyweight squats, goblet squats, Bulgarian split squats and pull-ups each keep their own history, so moving to a harder version starts its own log instead of blending into the old one. Log every set with its reps in reserve and the habit has somewhere to go after 20.