Your reps are the building blocks of your strength training program. Your technique not only determines your success in the gym but also ensures your safety, which is important for consistency.
In this post I'll give you my honest opinion on how to do reps properly and when you can cut the corners a bit.
Table of contents
The good
The bad
The ugly
The good. How most of your reps should be
Each rep can take close or further away from your goal. When we are trying to build muscles and get stronger, each reps should place an appropriate load on our bodies. The force should be directed in the right direction to concentrate the action of the muscles and spare our joints and tendons.
When we are trying to lose weight, each reps should be performed with similar intent. Since this type of program will usually require higher reps, being able to push through the burn becomes important for this goal.
So what does appropriate load, force direction and pushing through the burn all mean?
Appropriate load, the Goldy Lock zone
Selecting the right weights for your exercises is important for muscle growth. Mechanical tension refers to the stress we put on our muscles. When we put too little tension on them, they don't adapt and grow.
When we put too much tension on them they break. Pretty simple physics so far.
If you want your biceps to get bigger, would you go and pick up a five pound barbell? Hopefully not. Would you pick up a 225 pound barbell? Also no.
Just like Goldy Locks likes her oats just right, so should your mechanical tension be.
An easy way to gauge load is to use the Reps In Reserve (RIR) scale. This is very simple: after you finish a set, evaluate how many reps you could have done.
It will take you a while to adequately use this scale. I've seen clients assure me they were at RIR 1, and then bang out another 10 reps when kindly encouraged.
And here's another curve ball for ya: when your techniques goes out the door, that stops the set, so you may not even reach high intensities as first. We will chat about how to progress this below.
Research shows that the best intensity to build muscle is a smart combination of RIR 2-3 with some courageous and well programmed RIR 1-0.
The bulk of your training should be at RIR 2-3.
A set of RIR 2-3 should feel very hard. Manageable, but you should be thankful when it's over. A set of RIR 1 should almost feel impossible. It takes a lot of experience to do a true, intense set like this one.
An RIR 0 is extremely rare. If you are at RIR 0 you are most likely seeing stars, your surroundings get blurry, and it takes you a few minutes to recover. Even advanced lifters seldom use this intensity.
For most people who start of their fitness journeys, the intensity should stay below RIR 2 for the first couple years.
Force direction and good technique
Force direction is a fancy term that refers to how well you are moving the weights the way they should move. Essentially this is your exercise technique.
Fitness curve ball number 53: technique is fluid. All the exercises you see in the gym were invented a some point or another to meet a certain need. Different fitness disciplines and sports emerged over the years, each with specific physical needs.
Various exercise popped up to answer those needs. The point being there are tons of ways of doing each exercises. You can do a back squat, font squat, split squat, Cossack squat, hack squat, pendulum squat, leg press just to name a few squat exercises. Each of these can have further criteria such as high or low bar, dumbbell or kettle bell.
Each of these will have very slight differences in technique.
So how do we simplify this? Just pick an exercise that works for you. That's it.
Don't over think it, pick one you can do easily, get good at it, then get strong at it, and then move on to another similar exercise. Getting good and strong at an exercise will take you months FYI.
If I could explain what "proper form" is in one sentence it would be this:
Proper form is a biomechanically sound execution of an exercise according to an individual's needs.
Biomechanically sound means all your joints are working in a way that was designed by nature. You are not physically hurting your body apart from the stress on your muscles.
An individual's needs is self explanatory but if you need an example, a beginner lifter with short femurs will not use the same squatting technique as a seasoned gym goer with long femurs.
So once again, as an easy starting point, if something feels good, do it, if it feel weird, bad or wrong, don't do it. No need to be kinky in the gym.
Embracing the burn
This will be more valid on higher reps (10+) sets. These sets are great to build muscle when technique is still developing or if you aiming to really burn calories.
You will notice that beyond 10-12 reps, the RIR scale becomes murky, especially with single jointed exercises. Lat raises are a great example here.
You go and grab a light weight and start doing your set. After 10-12 reps your shoulders are probably burning quite a bit. But what kind of RIR are you at? You can always seem to push out one more rep.
When we do sets like this, with light weights and are very safe to execute, rep quality becomes more about how far you can push yourself.
Rep 10-15 of a lat raise set are nice, reps 20-25 with the same weight, where your shoulders literally feel like falling off, are better.
Again, keeping proper form is important.
Fitness curve ball number 72: sometimes, cheating reps are ok. We will take a closer look at them in a bit.
For now let's take a look at "the bad" part of our reps.
The bad: Don't do this
A bad rep is one that does more bad than good to your body.
I will exclude reps that are too light because I'll assume you read the above section and understand the Goldy Lock zone.
Just like there are many way to do reps correctly, there are many ways you can do them incorrectly.
A bad rep, to me, refers to a technique that is not biomechanically sound. That puts stress on your joints and ligaments instead of your muscles.
An improper rep with light weight is detrimental to proper skill acquisition. A bad rep with heavy weights can be detrimental to your life. You may think that's an over exaggeration but unfortunately serious injuries do happen in the gym.
So how do you avoid bad reps? Very simply: don't load your exercises like an idiot and ask help if you need clarification.
Taking videos of you doing the exercise and then analyzing them will also go a long way. Do you look like your supposed to when doing the move, or do you look like an animated Picasso painting?
Asking for help can be daunting in a gym. Usually speaking, the big scary guys with their hoods up are the best people to ask once you can get past the fear of approaching them. And, knowing a lot of them myself, they are generally very nice.
So as a recap, start with weights that feel very manageable, understand what each exercise is supposed to work, and ask for help when needed. Simple.
Ok now let's look at the problem child of this technique equation, ugly reps.
The ugly, useful when done appropriately
Ugly reps, or cheat reps can make appearances from time to time in your program. Here is an example of a classic ugly rep: the swinging negative curl.
If you've done bicep curls you'll know what swinging means: using momentum to make the weights go up.
Shit form when trying to do normal reps. BUT, let's say I want to make my last set super hard. I get to 8 reps and can no longer do anymore. I can now use cheat reps.
So I swing the dumbbells up, completely disregarding the concentric part of the rep, and focus on slowly controlling the weights back down on the eccentric part of the rep. This allows me to completely blast my biceps.
Remember curve ball 53? Technique is fluid? It's a spectrum. Where does good form end and where does cheat reps begin?
There will never be an easy answer. That's why what as consider a cheat rep is anything than makes an exercise you are used to doing a certain way easier.
My personal rules for using these reps are as follows:
Only on isolation exercises as these are more easily controlled than compound moves. Isolation exercises use one joint, like a lateral raise, compound exercises use two or more joints like a lunge
Only a few reps at the end of my last set as a finisher
Never with heavy weights
Only with exercises I am very comfortable with
As you develop your lifting experience and style, you will have a better understanding on how you use these reps, if you choose to use them.
Happy training!
Clem
Comentarios