Why Cheat Reps Are Actually Awesome

As soon as you read the term "cheat-reps", you probably imagine that one old dude at your gym: he's standing in front of the mirror, staring at himself, trying to lateral raise the 50-pound dumbbells with his quads and glutes.

And you'd be right to say that cheat reps are stupid if this demonstration were all cheat reps were.

But I think there's more to the story of cheat reps.

Today, I'm going to make the case that cheat reps can be awesome if applied in an intentional, intelligent manner.

First off: you wouldn't be wrong to say that most cheat reps the average gym bro performs are synonymous with wasted - or at least misdirected - effort.

Why? 

The typical cheat-repper is motivated by the wrong outcome: the number on the dumbbell, barbell, or machine - rather than stimulation  of the target muscle.

The typical cheat-repper views lifting heavy weight as an act of toughness - yet, ironically, these are the people (in my experience) who most often complain about the injuries and joint pains they experience on a regular basis.

But here's the catch: there's actual utility in the concept of a cheat rep if applied with specific intention. 

With this in mind, I want to create a clear distinction at the outset: there are two kinds of cheat reps:

1. Dumb Cheat Reps
2. Smart Cheat Reps

Let's talk about the difference.

Dumb Cheat Reps

From a 30,000ft view, dumb cheat reps are those which move the lifter father away from their desired goal.

The lifter who performs dumb cheat reps has a misunderstanding of one crucial fact: muscles can only lift what they can lift.

It's obvious when you hear it, but out of view when you don't.

Imagine you're doing lateral raises in two scenarios.

• Scenario 1: you're performing slow, strict repetitions with 20-pound dumbbells. Your knees, hips and spine don't bend, your elbows stay completely straight, and you raise and lower the dumbbells with unwavering control. In this scenario, let's imagine you perform 10 repetitions until your middle delts can no longer raise your arm.
• Scenario 2: you're performing fast, loose repetitions with 40-pound dumbbells. Your knees, hips, and spine are moving all over the place, your elbows bend and straighten as you perform the motion, and no one who's paying attention would say that you're controlling the weights you're using. In this scenario, you also perform 10 repetitions, and the failure point is still your inability to raise your arms.

Ask yourself this question: between scenario 1 and 2, did your middle delts suddenly become twice as strong? Did your aggression simply unlock a brain state that opened the door to superman strength?

Or, when you doubled the weight in your hands, did you simply rely on the motion of non-target joints and contraction of non-target muscles to help you lift the extra weight?

Hopefully the answer is obvious: during the dumb cheat reps, you simply launched the weight with the help of your quads, glutes, and spinal erectors. 

And in either case, you still reach muscular failure of the middle delt. However, every repetition in the dumb cheat rep scenario recruits a bunch of muscles you weren't intending to target (and thus a bunch of fatigue unrelated to the goal).

So it's safe to say that, in the dumb cheat rep scenario, your middle delts - at a minimum - didn't get "more" out of the set, you just needed to use non-target muscle groups to lift the extra load that your middle delts couldn't on their own.

And on a per-rep basis, we might break down the muscular stimulus like this:

• In the strict scenario, your middle delts perform close to 100% of every rep (of course, secondary tissues like the traps and serratus anterior are also involved, so perhaps 80% is more accurate).
• In the dumb cheat rep scenario, your middle delts perform maybe 40-50% of the motion, while your quads, glutes and spinal erectors take on the rest of the load.

Of course, these are just arbitrary percentages, but hopefully the point I'm making here is clear: every repetition of the dumb cheat rep consists of significant muscular contribution that has nothing to do with the stated goal, while the strict rep method has a much more sensible and specific ratio between target and non-target muscles.

Again: the middle delts (or any other target muscle) can only lift what they can lift.

If you perform strict reps with 20-pound dumbbells and perform 10 reps until failure, by definition, the additional 20 pounds you lift on every rep of a 10-rep set while cheating must be controlled by something else.

How To Make Cheat Reps Smart

So how do we turn the dumb cheat rep into a smart cheat rep? What would that look like?

Recall my earlier definition of a dumb cheat rep: those which move the lifter father away from their desired goal.

Smart cheat reps, therefore, are those which move the lifter closer toward their desired goal. 

In other words, the smart cheat rep is one which allows the lifter to increase the amount of stimulus of a target tissue on any given rep, while a dumb cheat rep does the opposite.

Imagine the same scenario as before, still with 20-pound dumbbells, still done with strict form.

After you fail on the 10th rep of your strict-form set, where you can no longer raise your arms at all, imagine you use a subtle amount of "tossing" so that you can continue to get the weight up toward the top while still fully controlling the negative portion of the lift.

Here's what that might look like (watch the full thing).

While these smart cheat reps still include non-target tissue recruitment, the amount of effort needed to continue a strict set is incredibly low.

In addition, at this point in a set - when the target muscle has already failed with the initial strict technique - every repetition performed with a less-strict technique thereafter disproportionately targets the intended muscle because of how much fatigue it is already under.

Think about the above example in the same way that you'd think about a drop set on a machine: when you perform a drop set, you lower the load on the machine to continue performing the set under a high degree of muscle fatigue. But because you've lowered the weight, you can continue to perform the same exercise with a rep quality that is highly stimulating on every rep.

In other words, the intentional cheating in this instance is one which allows you to get more stimulus in the target muscle out of the set than you otherwise might.

Let's use another example: dumbbell curls.

Anyone who has performed a dumbbell curl where the arm is perpendicular (90º) to the floor - as in a normal standing dumbbell curl - knows that it is much more difficult toward the top of the range of motion, where the dumbbells are approaching your chest.

And when you fail in this version of a dumbbell curl, you'll fail at the top of the range of motion.

But eeking more out of a set of dumbbell curls is easy to do with just a little bit of body english (i.e. a smart cheat rep).

As you approach a point in the set where you can no longer curl the dumbbells all the way up, you can subtly start tilt your body backward as you curl upward to make it easier toward the top. Here's what that looks like.

Again - your biceps can only lift what they can lift, so making it easier by "cheating" the later reps is necessary if you want to continue accumulating hard reps.

Although these techniques are similar to the concept of a dropset, they are different in two important ways:

1. Using smart cheat reps does not require a change in load or any rest.
2. Performing drop sets does not allow you to substantially challenge the negative (eccentric) portion of the lift once the positive (concentric) is fully tapped-out.

To make point #2 more concrete: if I fail on a set of curls and instead of smart cheat-repping I grab a lighter pair of dumbbells, I can still perform the positive portion of every rep.

However, when you perform a smart cheat rep, you lose the ability to perform the positive with the target muscle alone and instead need to use other parts of your body to complete each rep. When you do this, though, you can still control each rep's negative with the target muscle completely.

In essence, smart cheat reps are characterized by a subtle self-assist toward the end of your sets so that you can squeeze more out of fatigued concentrics (so that you can fully fatigue the eccentric).

Important Caveats and F.A.Q

• I wouldn't recommend implementing this technique if you're not already  completely comfortable training to failure with strict reps. If the sets you're performing are already garbage, more garbage is not productive.
• If you are comfortable with this technique, or at least the idea of trying it, I wouldn't suddenly add it to all of your sets on every exercise, or on every exercise at all.
  • Certain exercises will obviously lend better to this technique than others. In general, isolation motions like curls, extensions, and raises are smart places to start, especially because the absolute loads are light enough to where you need to use very little body english to extend your sets. Exercises like leg presses, bench presses, or deadlifts make little to no sense to do this on, given the practicality of this technique and also the potential danger of dropping a bar on your neck or being pretzeled by the leg press sled.
• A practical recommendation is to try this out on isolation exercises on your last set of a given workout.
• I'd recommend using this method if you're an experienced lifter as a novel way to get more out of each of your sets, especially in priority muscle groups.

Hope this helps.

-Ben

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