Don’t Cheat Yourself With Bad Reps

This article was originally written for and posted in my column, The Fitness Corner, in The Macon Telegraph.

In gyms everywhere in Macon, in Georgia and in the whole country, people are cheating themselves out of good workouts.

They’re going to the gym faithfully. They’re following their workout routines. They may even be seeing some results. Still, they are cheating themselves because they fail to perform quality repetitions.

What Do You Mean By “Repetitions?”

I shouldn’t assume that everyone knows what I mean by repetitions. Repetitions, or “reps” for short, are repeats of an exercise move. Usually, workouts are structured to have the exerciser complete sets of reps.

For example, a chest-building workout might call for three sets of 10 reps, meaning that the exerciser has to complete a set of 10 reps three times to finish that particular exercise.

…And “Quality” Repetitions?

So what are quality repetitions? Quality repetitions are repetitions that emphasize full range of motion and that avoid momentum, regardless of the exercise.

Let’s use a dumbbell biceps curl exercise for example. For each rep, I should be lowering the bar until my arms are nearly locked, then pulling the dumbbells up until they almost touch my chest and my arms can no longer pull the dumbbells any closer. Reps like this will ensure that you train your muscles, in this case the biceps, through their entire range of motion, recruiting as many muscle fibers as possible.

You should also be careful to avoid leaning back when doing dumbbell curls. Doing so introduces into the exercise the momentum I was referring to earlier. Here’s the thing: No matter how much your muscles might be screaming for relief, you don’t want to use momentum.

Think about it: The purpose of strength training is to build strength in the muscles. However, when momentum is introduced, stress is removed from the muscles, making the strength training less effective. To add, that stress is often shifted to the joints, and because joints simply aren’t meant to take stresses in this manner, you increase your chances for injury.

One Exception

Before ending this article, I will say that there is one particular exception that I can think of to performing reps using a partial range of motion — bodyweight exercises.

While you can lower the weight when training with weights, you can’t necessarily do so with bodyweight exercises. Several years ago I decided to build up the amount of chin-ups that I was able to do. At that time, I could only perform two or three reps, and those reps were through a partial range of motion. However, after building my strength through those partial reps, I was eventually able to move to reps with a full range of motion. Getting to a full range of motion should always be your goal in this case.

If you find yourself struggling to complete all of the reps for a set of exercise, it’s generally best that you either pause the set to lower the weight before continuing, or that you just end that set.

Make every rep count, focusing on full range of motion and on preventing momentum. Just remember: Bad reps build ego, good reps build muscle.