I’m all for the cheat principle on rows and curls. When done the right way I think you get more out of the exercise. Layne Norton said it best in one of his videos when he stated that you shouldn’t use form so sloppy that you leave yourself open to injury but you shouldn’t use form so strict that you limit yourself to using very light weights. And it’s not like there are 3 judges watching you during your workouts. All that matters is that you lift in a way that gets you to your goals in the most efficient way possible.
That said, I think Maxing out on Rows and Curls is stupid because you can cheat so much that you can easily lose perspective on if you really made the lift.
Let’s say you decide to do Barbell Rows as an ME exercise for your Bench Day for a 3 week cycle. The first week you max out at 315. The second you max out at 365. The final week you max out at 385. Did you really get that much stronger between ME workouts? Or did you just do better the second ME workout because the first ME workout you used a little cheat and the second workout you wanted to make the weight so bad that you just Deadlifted it and then pulled yourself into the bar as it was falling?
Maybe you can be totally honest with yourself and always cheat in a way that adds 5% to your lift or whatever but I honestly couldn’t to that so I couldn’t be sure if I was making progress or just getting better at cheating.
[quote]FightingScott wrote:
I’m all for the cheat principle on rows and curls. When done the right way I think you get more out of the exercise. Layne Norton said it best in one of his videos when he stated that you shouldn’t use form so sloppy that you leave yourself open to injury but you shouldn’t use form so strict that you limit yourself to using very light weights. And it’s not like there are 3 judges watching you during your workouts. All that matters is that you lift in a way that gets you to your goals in the most efficient way possible.
That said, I think Maxing out on Rows and Curls is stupid because you can cheat so much that you can easily lose perspective on if you really made the lift.
Let’s say you decide to do Barbell Rows as an ME exercise for your Bench Day for a 3 week cycle. The first week you max out at 315. The second you max out at 365. The final week you max out at 385. Did you really get that much stronger between ME workouts? Or did you just do better the second ME workout because the first ME workout you used a little cheat and the second workout you wanted to make the weight so bad that you just Deadlifted it and then pulled yourself into the bar as it was falling?
Maybe you can be totally honest with yourself and always cheat in a way that adds 5% to your lift or whatever but I honestly couldn’t to that so I couldn’t be sure if I was making progress or just getting better at cheating. [/quote]
Great post.
One way to remedy this is to ALWAYS test your non-cheating strength. Cheat all you want, but at the end of the day, your strict form 1RM should go higher. Only then will you know if cheating really works for you or not.
I think the poster is refering to ending a set with some body english.
For example, on a set of strict press (military) doing 6 reps so your close to failure, and then using a little leg drive to get a 7th and 8th. Not enough to make it easy, but just to get the extra reps in.
I think this is fine if done occasionally. Like the last post said, figure out if it works for you.
But lets not go any farther than that. First you start doing curls for triples and singles. Then you tread into the territory of saying it’s OK to do Squat Rack Curls, that training with the 21 method is the best way to develop strength, that the Westside Template should be changed to include curls, and a bunch of other rubbish. Before you know it you’re putting bands on the curl bar and chalking up before you head over to the preacher curl station.
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I understand what you are saying but to compare doing low reps curls which is totally fine and normal to the bunch of other fluff stuff you mentioned is a giant leap. You know the original powerlifting competitions first included the squat, bench, deadlift, and curl?
And now 2 PL organizations include a curl for a 1RM. If you think you cheat too much do it up against a wall, there is no cheating there. The idea that 6 reps is okay but 5 or 4 is not makes no sense to me.
[quote]Tim Henriques wrote:
In general cheating when training the smaller muscles (like biceps or shoulders) is okay because then you are using larger muscles to “spot” the smaller muscles, just don’t go crazy with it and be honest with yourself about your form. But cheating when you are training your largest muscles, like when you do a bench, squat or deadlift, is not a good idea because the only way to cheat is to alter your form and try to change your biomechanics which could lead to injury. That is my opinion anyway.[/quote]
^^^Smart man right there. Tim is absolutely right. Cheating on like a curl wont hurt much at all. But if you jerk a deadlift or bounce a bench press, it can lead to injury. You should always strive to have 100% good form on any compound lift. But a little cheating doing some auxiliary lifts wont hurt.