I am always extremely honest with clients. If someone isnt making good progress or they have a poor session it is in their best interest for me to tell them. However, recently I found out how beneficial lying can be. I am confident that people have a rep number in their head before starting a set and often settle on that rather than striving for more. They very frequently finish their set on a neat number like 8, 12 or 15. I think a lot of people can push much harder than they normally do. To test this theory a friend of mine was in the gym doing hack squats. I asked him how many reps he got and he said 10. I told him that last time I did hack squats with that weight I did 20. Then, I watch as his competitive nature makes him grind out 21 reps. I have since tried this with a few clients (telling them they did 10 reps last session when in fact they may have only done 7) and in almost all cases they significantly improve their performance. The mind is a powerful thing. When it comes to numbers in the weight room it is often the limiting factor rather than physical fatigue. Next time you are in the gym set yourself a higher target on a lift than you normally would. If you train with a partner of a similar strength to you tell them you beat their previous set by a few reps and watch them push harder to try and chase that target down. This works especially well on high rep sets where people cease the set due to pain rather than actually reaching concentric failure. Note: DONT do this on exercises at the expense of form. You dont want your partner to try and beat his last set of deadlifts by 5 reps by using poor form and giving himself a back injury. If you give this a go make sure you report back with your results.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 16:30:09 +0000