Ninth Wave
Gym Workout for Mass, 3 Days a Week
Sailors called the ninth wave the biggest of all, the one that rolls in after a run of smaller ones. “Ninth Wave” moves in waves too: three 4-week stages, each with its own loading pattern, and after Peak the cycle starts over from the maxes you’ve built. Start with the intro week.
- GoalMass Gain
- LevelExperienced
- WhereGym
- Workouts36
- One workout~54 min
- ForEveryone
Who it’s for
- You already train in the gym
- You want to keep building muscle
- You can train three times a week
How it works
- 013 workouts a week, 6 exercises each; chest, back and legs work in every session, 12 sets a week per muscle group
- 02Reps: compound lifts for 10 in Base and 8 in Build and Peak, isolation exercises for 12 in Base and 10 in the next two stages, abs for 15
- 03Three 4-week stages: in Base the load rises week after week, in Build it moves in a wave, in Peak it stays high and drops in week 4
- 04A new round: after Peak the cycle starts again from Base, with weights calculated from the maxes you’ve built; 2 minutes of rest between sets
A weekly wave across three stages
The exercises are the same in all three stages, so your maxes on them keep building without a break. The loading pattern changes: a climb, a wave with a step back, and a drop at the end of the cycle before the next round. In Build and Peak, isolation exercises are taken closer to failure.
Weekly volume
Counts sets where the muscle is the main target of the exercise
- Chest12 sets3 workouts
- Back12 sets3 workouts
- Shoulders6 sets2 workouts
- Quads6 sets2 workouts
- Hamstrings & glutes6 sets2 workouts
- Arms6 sets2 workouts
- Abs6 sets2 workouts
In the Build stage, some sets go to failure
What the research shows
4Varying the load from period to period adds to max strength and has no effect on muscle growth
Moesgaard et al., 202210 or more sets per muscle a week produce more growth than fewer than 5
Schoenfeld et al., 2017The closer a set ends to failure, the more muscle growth; the link with strength is weak
Robinson et al., 2024A deload week did not reduce muscle growth
Coleman et al., 2024
Workout A
6 exercises · ~54 minThe whole first workout. Tap an exercise to open its technique with photos and video.
All workouts in the program
36 sessions over ~11 weeks, 3–4 per week. Workouts A, B and C repeat in a loop, 12 times each. The other workouts and the weight for every set are in the app.
Workout intensity
The load of each session: higher means harder. average per round A–C
Workout number
Program weights — from your 1RM
1RM is the weight you can lift once. Enter it for the base exercises and AtletIQ will calculate working weights for all 36 workouts of “Ninth Wave”.
- The weight of every set comes from your 1RM
- All workouts of the program in order, with rest between sets
- Progress for every exercise
| Workout | Weight | Sets × reps |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 35.5 kg | 3 × 10 |
| 2 | 40 kg | 3 × 8 |
| 3 | 33 kg | 4 × 12 |