As Many Reps as Possible, or as Many Good Reps?

The more experienced you are at exercise, the better you get at saving energy without noticing. Squats that stop short, press-ups that never reach the floor, a treadmill rail you’re quietly leaning on. It feels like work. It’s often the opposite. Here’s how experienced exercisers cheat themselves, what it costs, and what a good rep actually asks of you.

The clever exerciser

There’s an irony I see all the time. People go to the gym to spend energy, and the longer they’ve been going, the better they get at not spending it. (Some of that is skill, and skill is good: I’ve written about where efficiency stops helping in The Movement Efficiency Paradox. This post is about the other kind: the shortcut.)

Nobody decides to do it. It creeps in:

Squats and press-ups only as deep as lets you finish the set, or save face in front of the person next to you.
Holding the treadmill rails on a fast uphill walk.
A few inches of stroke on the VersaClimber, when the whole point of the machine is the full reach. (Watch Ivan Drago in Rocky IV: whatever else he was, he used the full stroke.)

Short range buys you duration, and duration feels like the right kind of benefit. You did 20 reps instead of 12. You walked for 30 minutes on a steep incline. Quantity has quietly beaten quality.

What the shortcut costs you

Less strength and less muscle. Across 16 studies, training through the full range built more strength and more leg muscle than partial-range training of the same exercises (Pallarés 2021). Grade: meta-analysis of small trials, moderate. Functional performance also favoured full range, though that result wasn’t statistically clear.

Less work than you think. In a study of 10 adults aged 38 to 60, gripping the treadmill rails cut oxygen use by about 15–21% at the same speed and incline, with a lower heart rate and an easier perceived effort (Berling 2006). Even very light, continuous rail support lowered oxygen use in women on a step treadmill (Christman 2000). And on a fitness test, holding on made people’s fitness look 22% better than it was (de Oliveira 2020; the handrail test was always done first, so the order wasn’t randomised). Grade: consistent small trials. The machine’s calorie counter doesn’t know you’re holding on.

A groove you’ll have to unlearn. I see this all the time, and cutting out those habits is hard. The hardest part is often getting someone to see it: the shortened rep feels normal to them, because it’s the one they’ve practised. This is my coaching observation, not a trial result: under stress, the body takes the path of least resistance, learns it fast and holds on to it. Practise a shortened, compensated rep a thousand times and that is the movement you’ve trained. It’s harder to retrain later than it was to learn properly first, and it’s the pattern that’s there when you’re tired, loaded or in a hurry. Grade: coaching practice. What the research does show is that how you practise is what you get better at; whether a fatigued, compensated pattern is harder to unlearn hasn’t been tested directly.

And then injury. The common story I hear is “it just went”: a back on a lift done a hundred times before, a shoulder on a press-up. Fewer workouts follow, so less energy is spent, which was the opposite of the point. Grade: my observation. The link between poor posture or “bad form” and injury is weaker in the research than most coaches believe, and mostly from studies that can’t show cause. I’d rather say that plainly than overclaim it.

The overhead squat: coach the journey, not the end point

Ask someone to squat with their arms overhead and you’ll see their whole history in one rep.

Stephen in a deep squat with arms overhead, side view: arms in line with the spine, feet flat — **Overhead squat, side and front.** Arms in line with the spine, feet flat, knees over the second toe, the torso staying stacked as the hips go down. Most people can’t get here on day one; the job is to go as deep as you can while holding the position.

Stephen in a deep squat with arms overhead, front view, torso upright — **Overhead squat, side and front.** Arms in line with the spine, feet flat, knees over the second toe, the torso staying stacked as the hips go down. Most people can’t get here on day one; the job is to go as deep as you can while holding the position.

What usually happens: the arms drift forward as a counterbalance. Tight ankles, tight shoulders and a forward head let the hips fold early and the chest drop, which spares the thighs. Each rep costs less, so more reps get done.

What a good rep asks: stacked over your centre of mass, pelvis neutral, feet flat, knees travelling over the second toe, arms staying in line with your spine. It costs more per rep. It loads the joints better. And it works muscles in ranges you wouldn’t choose to visit, which is exactly where the adaptation is. (What “quality” means more broadly, range of motion with control, is in We’ve Been Measuring Exercise All Wrong.)

That’s why I coach the journey to that position, not the end point. Most people can’t get there on day one. The job is to go as deep as you can while holding the position, and to earn the next inch.

The press-up: it isn’t a triceps exercise

Many people avoid the bottom of a press-up because they’re afraid of exposing themselves in a weak range. Done well, you draw your shoulder blades together on the way down, which stretches the chest and calls on more of the muscle. If you can’t summon that coordinated drive, the head and hips drop, the wrists roll out so the palms aren’t a stable base, the elbows flare, and you crash to the floor instead of driving up as one solid unit. Done wrong, it’s a triceps killer and agony on the wrists. Done right, it’s a chest exercise that needs a lot of stomach and glutes.

What to do instead: lower the angle until you can do it properly. Hands on a bench or a wall is a real press-up if the body moves as one piece through the full range. Ten of those beat thirty of the other kind.