Facts Friday: To Cheat Or Not To Cheat...

Cheat reps are  reps done with added momentum to help you to get the extra few reps out when you are feeling tired.

Most commonly seen in bicep curls, you would use your hips and the momentum you get from thrusting your hips to help get the weight up when your biceps can no longer get the weight up.

Old school bodybuilders popularised this idea because it helped them get more reps out.

And more reps means more gains, right?

Not so fast...

Getting more reps does get you closer to failure but at what expense?

Using momentum to get the weight up, takes the tension off your muscles and onto your joints. This is not what we want when we're trying to build muscle.

Sore joints leads to discomfort, that lead to injuries, that lead to time off the gym.

Can you build muscle when not in the gym? Didn't think so.

Science has also showed us that training just shy of failure is actually a more intelligent way to train. You get pretty much all of the benefits of training to failure, without the high injury risk and delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) for 5 days.

So, let's summarise?

Can we use momentum to get the weight up? If anywhere, it should be on smaller isolated exercises like bicep curls, tricep pushdowns and lateral raises as they have smaller consequences then a deadlift if things go south.

But the smart answer is, we don't need it.

If you can't lift a weight without momentum, you can't really lift it can you?

Fair? Fair.

If you want more common sense approaches to fitness and getting awesome results, hit the blue button below to join Team Brock Ashby.