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#1 Reason You're Not Gaining Muscle
It first needs to be stated upfront that if you are training once a week or whenever you feel like it, you're not going to increase the size of your muscles. You need volume and you need to vary your rep range that you use when you train in order to achieve hypertrophy.
Although the optimal amount of reps you need to achieve the maximum hypertrophy from your training is still an ongoing debate, clinical studies done on this subject show that a moderate rep range of between 6 to 12 reps for each set that you do shows the best results for maximum muscle growth.
Often called "bodybuilding-style training" this rep range offers the best combination of muscle damage, mechanical tension and metabolic stress. But the problem that most people fall into, sometimes without even thinking about it, is that they think ALL their training should be limited to this rep range.
Sports science has done extensive research on muscle hypertrophy over the years and recent meta-analyses something that was published in the popular, well-respected Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, the study shows that doing multiple set training will give you a 46% increase in strength and a 40% increase in muscle growth compared to doing just one set.
You will be increasing your hypertrophy levels and your lean body mass because of the increased volume. This gives you an increase in muscle damage, total muscle tension or metabolic stress, or a combination of all three of these factors isn't clear. But what is clear has been shown to be multiple sets.
The problem is that even if you're doing multiple sets it's still very possible that you are not training with enough volume. Maximal muscular development comes from strength and this means some of the sets you do need to be done within the lower rep ranges of 1-5 reps per set.
When you can use a heavier weight you generate more muscle tension in the middle rep ranges which enables optimal stimulation of hypertrophy. When you are able to increase the tension in the muscle without compromising your metabolic control, then you will have set the stage for maximal hypertrophy.
As explained above there are two sides of maximal hypertrophy and high reps doing 15 to 20 reps in each set also has its place in training for size. If you are training with sub-rep max, the lower intensity will increase your lactate threshold. This is important because when you get too much lactic acid building up it will interfere with your ability to contract the muscle.
In conclusion the number one reason why you're probably not gaining muscle from your weight training is because you don't have enough TUT (time under tension) with a hypertrophy-oriented workload. Varying your rep ranges from 1 to 20 reps in a set will slowly develop a much greater tolerance for doing higher volumes. Which has now been proven to be an important component to develop maximizing hypertrophy.