Is there a set and rep number that is optimal?

You warm up - 10 minutes on the treadmill, manual setting. You move to the first exercise - 1 warm up set, 3 working sets of 10 reps. Exercise 2 - 3 working sets of 12 reps. And so on and so forth.  A cookie cutter routine, taken from some magazine or book and followed to a tee. Finish with a cool down and some stretching and you have yourself a recipe for an unchanged physique. 

Sure, initially your body will respond to this routine but the body adapts quickly, finds a homeostasis, and then rests comfortably in this state if unchallenged. So how then do you achieve the look you want the washboard abs, the tight round butt, the detailed full arms?  Whatever your ideal body image is can be achieved no matter your starting point.  You simply have to go above and beyond what traditional training has laid out for you. Don't be afraid of playing with set and rep numbers that surpass the norm. Training to meet a rep count limits your progress...you have simply hit a numeric goal that doesn't necessarily represent taxing the muscle to the point of adaptation. Remember that all muscle is, is a physiological adaptation to stress. Simply put, your body builds muscle after a stressful encounter with resistance training or activity, so the next time the body is presented with a set of circumstances like those again it is prepared to handle it. So it stands to reason that if the exact scenario were presented again, the body would go through it unscathed and not be forced to adapt any further i.e. no new muscle. 

 "the optimal set and rep range for you to preform is the one that forces you body to take one step closer to the finished product you have envisioned in your head"

Traditional training logic says that you go back next time and add more weight. This is not wrong, but at some point this will not be practical either.  If this could continue infinitely, everybody in a gym would be benching 500+ pounds and squatting a 1000+ pounds. But they are not, because at some point you will hit a weight that is to heavy to move properly.  A new plan of attack is now needed. Something that will allow you to grow and change but not put you at the risk of injury that continuously increasing weight might do. Differences in reps, sets, lifting cadences, ranges of motion, and angles should all be explored. So to answer the query presented atop this article, the optimal set and rep range for you to preform is the one that forces you body to take one step closer to the finished product you have envisioned in your head.