Ninth Wave

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.

For those who already train in the gym and want to keep building muscle. 3 workouts a week, 6 exercises each: compound lifts for 10 reps in Base and 8 in Build and Peak, isolation exercises for 12 in Base and 10 in the next two stages, abs for 15, 2 minutes of rest, 12 sets a week each for chest, back and legs. Three 4-week stages: Base, Build and Peak. After Peak the cycle starts again from Base, with weights calculated from the maxes you have already built.

The exercises stay the same across all three stages, and the app tracks your maxes on them without a break. The reps and the loading pattern change: in Base the load rises week after week, in Build it moves in a wave, and in Peak it stays high mid-stage and drops in week 4 before the next round. Chest, back and legs work in each of the three sessions.

Method: 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.

What studies found:

• Varying the load from period to period adds to max strength and has no effect on muscle growth (Moesgaard et al., 2022)
• 10 or more sets per muscle a week produce more growth than fewer than 5 (Schoenfeld et al., 2017)
• The closer a set ends to failure, the more muscle growth; the link with strength is weak (Robinson et al., 2024)
• A deload week did not reduce muscle growth (Coleman et al., 2024)

The studies tested the principles; the program itself has not been tested in this form.