Progressing with debt reps

If you can't or won't do the target reps, you owe yourself those reps, plus the same again. This helps you progress.

In a progressive resistance training routine, the idea is... to progress the resistance. This is an ancient and arcane truth, hidden from the general public by a global conspiracy, and only revealed to you now by special dispensation from the secret lizard people controlling the world. In every workout, or at least every month or so, you should try to do more weight than you did before. If you can't do more weight, do more reps. If you can't do more reps, do more sets. Any of those would be progress, and you'd be stronger.

The problem is that at some point it gets bloody hard. Keep adding weight or reps, and eventually they won't come up easily, you'll be grinding them out. At this point most people wuss out, and progress stops. This is why the curlbro benching 60kg on his own and 85kg with his buddies rowing it up today will still be benching 60kg a year from now, it's why the woman pressing the 5kg dumbbell will still be pressing it a year from now, and it's why almost nobody squats and deadlifts properly.

Obviously technique is an issue - if you're doing the lift badly you won't progress for long - as are nutrition and rest. But often it's simply willpower. Do you really push yourself, or do you wuss out when it gets hard? Almost everyone wusses out eventually, whether it be with squatting the empty bar or squatting 200kg two years later.

One way around this is debt reps. Let's say you're doing a routine where the simple rule is that if you can do 5, 5 and 5 reps with a particular weight, you add weight to the bar next time, let's say 2.5kg. With any such routine, the problem arises: what if you're unable to do 5,5,5? The first thing is to figure out if you were unable to do it, or unwilling to do it. Debt reps accomplish this.

Debt Reps mean that if you don't do the target reps, you owe reps, plus the same again - a 100% interest rate, nasty I know. You get these out however you can, however long it takes. There isn't interest on the interest or you could be there forever. But you WILL get out those extra reps!

For example if your target was 5,5,5 and you managed 5,4,3, then you were short by 3 reps, so you owe 6. A reasonable way to get them out would be 5,4,3....3,3. But doing singles or doubles would be fine, too. Just get those damn reps out. Chances are you'll find that 5,5,5 comes up without trouble next time.

The Debt Reps approach really comes into its own with things like high rep squats, like the classic 20 rep squat routine.  The horrible thing is that if you can squat the weight 12 times, you literally always can do another rep, the only question is do you want to? People fail physically on the 3rd or even 7th rep, almost nobody physically fails the 18th rep, they just give up. Debt Reps are a good cure for this, since when the person hits rep 12 or so and then realises that if they stop now they'll owe 16 reps, this is a strong incentive to only stop if they really really have to.

If you're lifting weights, try progressing the resistance sometimes. If that gets hard, that's alright. Always do more, when it gets really hard try debt reps. It won't kill you unless your friend is too busy checking out the hot guy or girl in lycra to notice you're pinned by the bench press bar. Choose a training partner with bad eyesight.