It is a very well-known fact in body building circles that in order to gain muscle mass, you need to keep increasing the work load that said muscle is subjected to. So much that this ‘truism’ has been drilled into the head of every average Joe/Jane who has stepped into a gym to build more muscle.

In other words – To build more and more muscle, you need to keep increasing the weight that you lift. Otherwise, the body does not have any incentive to increase its muscle mass.

But it is not as simple as that. If the amount of weight lifted was all that mattered, we could do one single all-out rep of our favorite exercise, and go home and sit on the couch, while our muscles grow happily. Obviously, that does not happen. So what gives?

It turns out that not only does the amount of weight matter, but you also need to consider the amount of reps that you do in your workout. More specifically, it is the amount of time that the muscle is being worked out … because your muscles do not know (nor care) about the concept of reps, they only knows how long they are being subjected to a beating!

To put it in a simplified fashion, the following conditions must be satisfied if you want to put on more muscle:

1. The weight you lift must be above a certain threshold, otherwise the body is not challenged enough to grow.
2. The number of reps of your exercise should also be above a certain threshold, otherwise the growth-promoting factors are not activated.

All of this begs the question – what is the ideal rep and set range for building mass?

Most article and gym trainers recommend a 3×10 training regimen for beginners – 3 sets of 10 repetitions each, for every exercise. This is totally fine for as long as you are a beginner. A beginner’s body is so unused to physical exercise that it will grow on any crappy exercise regimen.

But as you become more and more advanced, or if you are a hardgainer (someone who has a lot of trouble building muscle), the 3×10 routine will not cut it anymore. If you are finding yourself in a situation where the gains are extremely slow, or have come to a complete stop, try the following:

Just invert the reps and sets for your exercises. Try a 10×3 routine – 10 sets of 3 repetitions each. What does this do?

You are still doing 30 reps for your exercise, but you are lifting a much heavier weight because of the lower number of reps per set. That will really jack up the intensity of your workout. Granted that your workout is longer because of the more number of breaks that you are taking in between sets, but the extra weight that you are lifting more than makes up for it.

Try a 10×3 cadence for your compound exercises first (squat, deadlift, bench press, pull ups etc), because they are more conducive to lifting heavier weights. Stick to a more conventional 3×10 cadence for your single-joint exercises like dumbbell curls or tricep pushdowns.

But do go easy on the 10×3 routine, because it is more stressful on your nervous system, as there are heavier weights involved. This will definitely impact recovery time from your workouts, and can potentially lead to over-training if done too frequently.

In part 2 of this article, we will go through a sample workout plan.

References

https://www.t-nation.com/training/science-of-10-x-3