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 Figure out which one you respond to best, higher reps with less load or low reps and higher load.  You can use any rep scheme you want within reason as long as the volume is high enough.

If you- respond better to higher reps and less load and want to use a lower rep range with a high set count- you can still do this easily, just keep the total VOLUME high, meaning a lot of sets of lower, high quality, reps.

If you respond better to lower reps and higher loads- you can still use highish reps, just do it with rest paused/myo rep/cluster type set rep schemes, and focus on total poundage moved in those few sets. 

Likely one of those will be more OPTIMAL for you, and the other will still "work", assuming youre consuming enough protein and total calories.  If you can think back to which one you respond the best to, pick that one.


 If youve been on 5's for a long period of time, just switching up the rep scheme can bring you out of stagnation.  Vary it from day to day, week to week, whatever, but use 3s and 8s etc. for a while.  That by itself will often take you out of a rut if youre stuck in one.  Either way, youre not going to build any significant amount of muscle tissue if your diet isnt on point, so get that fixed as well.

lol. something has to give man, you want to build muscle? Youre going to be a little heavier.  This is the thing though, a gain of 10lbs of lean tissue in the lower body is huge as far as improving performance, assuming you dont gain a lot of fat and or cut  in the process.

 Pick up 10lbs of steak and look how thick and dense it is, your leg size will definitely improve and so will performance if you take care to manage unwanted bodyfat gains.  You could easily build 10lbs of muscle mass, and lose 10 lbs of fat at your current state.  Thats a 20 lb change, but bodyweight will remain constant.  A 20 lb change for the better is HUGE for performance.

  Just be realistic about what rate you can build muscle at, dont overdo the eating, but dont underdo it either.  Keep adding weight to the bar consistently, eat a very high protein diet, and manage carbs/fats so that youre not gaining too much fat in the process.  

 No, 10 reps can fine for a while IF you keep the intensity at a high enough level. One thing I was trying to convey earlier is, just because youre using lighter loads, i.e. 10rm weight, does not mean you have to do 10 reps each set.  You can do sets of ~7-8 etc., but more sets, which will allow a higher QUALITY of each rep.   Going into the higher rep ranges during squats can cause you to fail from structural support/cardiovascular reasons before the musculature youre trying to train gives out as well, it just depends on the lifter. 

 One other thing to think about it is, adding another exercise, and not trying to do everything with the squat alone as far as extra volume goes.  I remember reading you liking bss, so you could easily add a few sets of hypertrophy specific work, using the bss after your sets of squats, as well as a ghr/rdl done the same way.  That really adds to the volume aspect without burning you out neurally as tons of volume in the squat.  You can keep your squat in a little lower/more explosively oriented rep range, and get the extra volume youre looking for that way as well.  Either way will work, just depends on what you respond best to.

So what you're essentially saying is that I could go on with 3x4-6 since that type of training is more specific to what my target is in terms of athletic goals but doing some assistance work like RDLs 2x8 or BSSs 2x8 would help in my wish for more hypertrophy as a additional stimuli.

yep

But is 2x8 "enough" of a stimuli for hypertrophy? Do these 2 sets really make any difference at all?

Of course they do, your muscles dont know whether youre doing a squat or a lunge or a tire flip, they only know TENSION. You can target the specific musculature you want to enhance with assistance exercises like the bss, all while saving the cns for your squatting and jumping a little more. We use the squat to train the movement and the movement pattern.  when hypertrophy is the goal, the musculature being trained in an efficient manner is all that matters, not specificity to sporting movement.

I think I'm going to do 3x10 for a while, just to break out of the groove. Will get back to 4-6 rep sets in the near future but for a while I'll go with 10 rep sets.

I'm not sure about gaining weight though... I worked pretty hard to lose weight and get lighter and suffer less from landings and jumps, and also benefit from more speed in my one leg jumps. I'm very close to being too heavy for one-leg jumping in my opinion, at ~85 kg I'm really heavy for one-leg jumping, I'm at 79.7 kg now.

So they kind of beat each other up, my goals, of gaining muscle and not getting heavy.

 It will be fine to change up your set/rep scheme for a while man but dont fall into that wheel of changing things just to do something different, make SURE there is a reason.  You can look anywhere you like and find that the people who make the most progress are the ones who stick with what they are doing the longest, and the ones who spin their wheels are the ones constantly changing their training focus/plans to the newest, hottest topic around. Just about anything will work as long as youre adding consistent weight to the bar, but you have to stick with a plan to do that.

  At the end of the year, if you arent lifting more weight on your main lifts that matter the most to your performance, your strength training failed.  Sometimes you have to waste a year to learn this, sometimes you can take someones word for it and avoid it, but in the end thats all that matters.  So pick something and stick to it until you have a good reason to change to something else.

  If youre eating clean and plenty of protein, adding consistent weight to the bar, and maintaining an active schedule jumping/running/playing ball etc., the weight you gain will almost always help your performance a lot.