Do Cheat Reps Work? - Ascendant Strength

A common misconception is that cheat reps always mean cutting range of motion. This can be the case but isn’t always. You can use a partial range of motion consistently for a specific reason. You can also cut the range of motion short because the set’s getting hard. This is cheating to pretend you’re getting more reps.

We also need to differentiate between range of motion of a muscle and a movement. You can reach the end point of a given muscle in the chain before you reach the end point a movement and vice versa. On a bench press the bar will likely touch your chest before your chest, triceps and front delts have gone through their full range of motion (ROM) and have fully lengthened.

Even when the bar touches his chest his pecs probably won’t be fully lengthened

On the other hand you can stop an RDL at the point where your hamstrings are fully stretched while keeping a neutral spine. You can get some extra ROM from the movement by flexing the back or pushing your knees forwards . But without any extra ROM from the hamstrings

Sometimes it’s impossible to go through the full range of motion of a muscle as it’s limited by a joint.

Considerations for Incorporating Cheat Reps

Intentional Vs Unintentional Cheating

There’s a difference between intentional and unintentional cheating.

If you’re supposed to be doing a strict OHP and you start including leg drive that’s unintentional cheating.

Purposefully doing a push press is technically a cheat version of an OHP, the difference here is the intent.

Squatting higher than parallel is intentional cheating if that is the intended execution for whatever reason. If you start to cut your depth as you do more sets/reps because it’s getting more difficult that’s unintentional cheating.

Deciding to barbell row with some leg and torso movement is intentional cheating as long as you’re not trying to be strict and the movement is fairly consistent between reps. Starting to move your legs/torso in later reps when the set is supposed to be strict is unintentional cheating.

In general intentional cheating can be used effectively IF you know how to use it. Unplanned cheating is more often than not unproductive.

It’s important to note that there isn’t one perfect technique for every situation. Your technique can differ slightly depending on your body proportions and the goal of the exercise.

I’ve been told by some “bodybuilders” that my weighted dips aren’t legit because I lean forwards too much. It’s almost like I’m not trying to turn a weighted dip into a triceps extension. Again there are different ways to perform a given movement for different goals.

I use weighted dips as a compound to build strength in the chest, front delts and triceps. I rarely do any sort of flat press like flat bench. I try to get as much chest as possible out of dips.

This leads me to use a form where I lean forwards. This shifts more stress to the chest and takes some away from the triceps. In addition to the shift in emphasis this also feels much more natural to my body and doesn’t bother my joints like extremely upright dips do. For most people this is the safest way to do weighted dips. It’s the form that I recommend to all my clients who use weighted dips.

This also feels much more natural than a bench press to me. You have the additional benefit of moving yourself through space while also allowing your scapula to freely move (which they’re designed to do).

If my intention was to maximise triceps stimulus then this could be considered unintentional cheating. But it’s not any sort of cheating because leaning forwards in a dip isn’t “bad form”. Despite what some people in internet comment sections like to say.

It’s pretty common, especially online for your progress to make others feel insecure about their lack of progress.

Don’t hold yourself back and potentially suffer a serious injury just to make others feel better about their own lack of strength/progress.

Now that we’re clear on what cheating is and the different types of cheating, lets go into more detail about if/when to incorporate any of these.

Cheat Reps as a “Finisher”

This is a common way cheat reps are included and it’s almost always in the form of unplanned cheating. It’s a pretty common sight, a gym bro is taking a set somewhat near failure (sometimes not even that close) and all of sudden the reps speed up.

They’ve started using momentum in the form of hip swing in a curl. Or the range of motion in their bench press decreases as their ass shoots up in the air.

This is rarely planned. The purpose of the set has more likely switched from trying to push this movement pattern/muscle group hard (if they even thought that initially) to just moving the weight from A to B.

The end of a set is a point where your muscles and possibly connective tissue are quite fatigued. It’s the worst time to subject them to some unpredictable stress. High fatigue, unexpected forces and very little control over the weight increases to injury risk.

IF the cheating is slight and it’s done in a conscious way to stimulate the target muscles more it may have it’s place. This is rarely how it’s used.

Movements vs Muscles

If you’re training for purely hypertrophy (muscle growth) this will not apply as much. IF you have other goals in addition to hypertrophy it’s important to think about this in more depth. Is the exercise strictly for hypertrophy or are you trying to improve the strength/proficiency of a movement pattern as well.

Many sports such as strongman and combat sports require you to be able to use your body explosively as a unit. A barbell row with strategic and intentional cheating has good carryover to those sports. A barbell row with controlled cheating is similar to the first part of a clean. It’s also less technical and much easier to learn.

To reiterate the form in this video is too much cheating for optimal back hypertrophy. This was in the final week of a mesocycle, it’s the most amount of cheating I’d recommend as a deadlift assistance movement. Notice how I’m still pausing at the bottom and going through the full ROM.

Am I saying you can never use strict rows? Definitely not, just that there’s a use for both. I like to do barbell rows with controlled cheating followed by strict chest supported rows when training for both strength and hypertrophy.

Stricter rows definitely have there place when performance is the goal. Strict pendlay rows can be used to reinforce torso rigidity and positioning in big compounds. Again there’s a time and place for many types of rows.

Anecdotally speaking many top powerlifters and strongmen swear by barbell rows with some momentum from the lower body as an effective deadlift accessory.

I’ve found that whenever I’ve included rows in this style, deadlifts have always felt lighter from mid shin and above. They also just felt overall easier, like I was in better control of the weight. I’ve experimented with removing them in the past but this always seemed to hinder me. I’ve always found it beneficial to keep them in.

Many world class deadlifters have long recommended rowing in this style to improve your deadlift. Cailer Woolam who has deadlifted over 900lbs (409kg) and held all time world deadlift records in 3 different weight classes recommends rowing in this fashion for carryover to the deadlift.

Even when prioritising hypertrophy trying to be overly strict in a barbell row hinders the exercise. It feels like even the muscles of the back you actually want to focus on are being held back. Using slight momentum from other muscles may actually allow you to output more force with your target muscles through muscle irradiation.

Without making this article 10,000 words long. There is no way to contract a specific muscle without also contracting others to some extent. So contracting target muscles as forcefully as possible will absolutely lead to other muscles being contracted. This may manifest in slight movement in other areas.

Even when trying to do strict lifts I find that the target muscle is being stimulated better with some slight movement in other areas of my body.

Bent over barbell rows aren’t even the best row for hypertrophy, some kind of chest supported row is better in the vast majority cases. I prefer to think of bent over barbell rows as an exercise that trains a movement pattern .

Speaking of chest supported rows, watch someone strong and jacked train them hard. Their arms aren’t the only things that are moving. Their legs are probably moving too even if this doesn’t necessarily lead to significant force transfer to the equipment due to the chest support.

In most cases I don’t think it’s possible to put maximal force and intent through the target muscles without some slight movement in other body parts. If you’re training hard you’re probably making some weird ass faces, is that your intention? No, it just happens when you push yourself, you contract the muscles in your face.

Research on cheat reps

We even have a study supporting this. Obviously 1 study isn’t conclusive proof but I’m unaware of any other studies on this subject. The anecdotal experience of myself and many other lifters supports the findings here.

To quickly summarise the study. What many would expect is that any amount of external (not supplied by the target muscles) momentum used would take away from the force the target muscles supply.

This study used dumbell lateral raises . They found that using some external momentum allows you to supply momentum to a part of the range of motion where the muscle is in a biomechanically weak position to supply force. This momentum can allow the muscle to produce greater force in the part of the range of motion that is better suited to overloading the desired muscles. Fun fact, barbell rows have a very similar strength curve to dumbell lateral raises. With the top part of the range of motion being much harder than the bottom.

The study found that in dumbell lateral raises loading increases correlate with the amount of external momentum (cheating) supplied and also the stimulus for the side delts. UP TO A POINT.

This may have just been because the reps and time under tension for the actual side delt dropped too low after this point. So this decrease in stimulus may just be down to the reduced total time under tension, not inherently due to the “cheating”. This positive trend may even continue with even more cheating.

The researchers concluded that “moderate cheating” (57.5º/s) at the start of each rep gave the best compromise between safety and stimulus.

I’m not 100% sure how to conceptualize “moderate” cheating compared to significant or minimal cheating. I have an idea in my head as you probably do as well. My interpretation would be that you’re focusing on the right muscles for the entire ROM. You also give the weights a boost with a decent but not large amount of body swing to start each rep off.

No matter how it’s defined it’s clear that this study found super strict reps to be inferior and decrease muscular activation. The anecdotal experience of many top lifters also corroborates this.

Film your sets

This is something everyone can benefit from regardless of whether they’re using cheat reps or not. Filming yourself doing an exercises wil give you a more objective look at what your form is like and how hard the reps actually are. You can catch things you don’t notice when you’re focusing on the actual set.

It’s somewhat common for reps to feel horrible and slow but look a lot smoother and quicker on video. On days like that having the objective feedback can stop you from wimping out.

When using cheat reps filming them can allow you to see whether the degree of cheating is appropriate. You can see how the feel of the exercise corresponds to an amount of cheating. After a few sessions of this you’ll be in a much better position to evaluate if the level of cheating you’re doing is consistent and acceptable.

A good way to incorporate this is to draw a line at the level of cheating you deem to be too much and define that as failure/RPE 10. Any reps with worse form than this are past failure. If you can add weight and/or reps without exceeding that form threshold, or you can repeat a performance with less cheating you know that you’re progressing. It adds slightly more complexity but really isn’t that hard to do when you get the hang of it.

Too Much Cheating

If the goal of the movement is hypertrophy and cheating has caused a decrease in the intensity and duration of tension felt in the target muscles you’re cheating too much.

Don’t turn a bicep curl into a reverse grip power clean. You should feel your biceps throughout the entire ROM.

This doesn’t mean that if you feel it a bit in your front delts you’re necessarily doing it wrong. The purpose is to train the biceps, not 100% take out the front delts which isn’t possible anyway. You may actually feel that you’re getting a better bicep stimulus while feeling your front delts slightly, compared to (attempting to) stay super strict.

You can do a power barbell row when the goal is improving your ability to use your whole body together for an explosive pull. This may carryover to another movement such as a deadlift or another sports specific goal. However If you’re not moving the bar very far or standing too upright it’s probably too much cheating.

Sometimes people can’t get the bar all the way to their stomach even with cheating. At the top of the bar path they bring their torso down to meet the bar. Moving your torso down here serves no purpose. It just gives the illusion that you’ve moved the bar further than you actually have.

If you’re doing a row for this purpose there is the inital burst of momentum from some torso and leg movement at the bottom of the rep. After that point the power generated from the bottom should carry the bar all the way up to your torso. If you need to move your torso down to reach the bar you’re cheating too much. Even if you have a reason for doing partial ROM rows the downward torso movement accomplishes nothing.

Progression Tracking and Assessment

When cheating it’s more likely that form will differ from rep to rep. This makes it harder to track progression as there’s not a fair comparison between sets.

Did you get more reps this week because you’re stronger or because you cheated more? Maybe you matched reps but cheated less which would actually represent you getting stronger.

If you decide to incorporate cheat reps filming your sets is a must so you have an objective view of what your form looks like.

I don’t think slight inconsistencies in form are a huge deal. As you get more advanced progression will be slower. It’s pretty common for more advanced lifters to let form suffer slightly as they try to progress their isolation lifts. This is much better than not training hard enough and using form as an excuse which many people do.

If you’ve been training hard for over a decade it’s not realistic to add reps even in high rep ranges eacd session. The “beat the logbook” mentality often leads to form suffering as time goes on. I’m not saying that’s a bad mindset to have, there are just positives and negatives to every approach.

The best thing you can do here is choose certain points to reset your form (like the start of a new mesocycle) and compare progression. For example if you find that cheating escalates going through a mesocycle make sure that you reset the form at the start of the subsequent one. You can then compare your performance from meso to meso under the same fatigue level and form to assess objective performance changes. As an advanced lifter trying to assess much sooner than this isn’t possible anyway since you progress so slowly.

Ideally you want to standardise the form for each exercise every time you do it. If you’re training a muscle group/movement pattern multiple times a week most of them should be as standardised as possible. As long as you’re confident you’re training at the right level of effort having 1 movement that isn’t perfectly standardised isn’t a big deal.

This doesn’t just apply when intentionally cheating. It’s very common for people to allow this to happen when they’re trying to be strict. The vast majority of people in the cult of “strict” reps don’t actually train strict all the time. In the pursuit of progression they tend to shorten their pauses, speed up negatives, cut range of motion, alter form in other ways to just move more weight.

It’s extremely common. Using controlled cheating doesn’t add much complexity and is a valid technique if you know how to use it.

It’s also pretty common for people to train at different gyms or use a different machine if the one they want to use is busy. The inconsistency from dong this will be greater than a standardised cheat rep.

If you’re using slight cheating for hypertrophy you should be more advanced. At an advanced level you don’t see consistent increases in performance every session anyway.

You should still make sure you’re still moving the weight maximally with the target muscles when the goal is hypertrophy. Some other musculature may get involved to a slightly larger extent as the mesocycle progresses even when the goal is hypertrophy.

Then at the start of the next mesocycle you can “reset” form to a stricter baseline. You can compare performance to the start of the last mesocycle with equal form and fatigue levels. Since it may take this long to assess progression as an advanced lifter, this is a perfectly valid strategy.

Injury Risk

Cheat reps may increase risk of injury. You’re moving heavier weights/doing more reps so the overall stress on your body is higher. I’m not convinced that the injury risk is higher when incorporating cheat reps in a smart deliberate way. If it is I highly doubt it’s by much, however I believe the increase in gains to be noticeable.

If you’re super scared of injuries and no amount of increased gains is even worth a (questionable) tiny increase in injury risk you probably shouldn’t try to achieve a high level of strength/muscle anyway. Everything comes at a trade off and I’ve never heard of someone getting to a high level of either without at least a minor injury.

Again so this isn’t taken out of context I’m not talking about just swinging weights around. You definitely shouldn’t do that. We’re talking about controlled intentional cheating here.

Stimulus to Fatigue Ratio

Stimulus to fatigue ratio is a term that I believe was coined by Renaissance Periodization. Essentially exercises stimulate a certain amount of muscle growth but also generate a certain amount of fatigue. How much of one we get in relation to the other is stimulus to fatigue ratio. This isn’t set in stone and varies significantly between different people and situations.

The stimulus to fatigue ratio depends on how you’re incorporating the cheat reps. If you reach failure with your normal form and then get more reps past failure by cheating the target muscle has been taken past failure (above RPE 10). If you use controlled cheating from the start of the set this isn’t necessarily the case.

Taking a muscle past failure will absolutely lead to a greater stimulus but it will also lead to greater fatigue. This greater fatigue is disproportionately high compared to the stimulus. It isn’t worth it many cases when the goal is hypertrophy. If you have the time available you may just be better served doing more sets and using a lower RPE.

It’s sometimes espoused that cheat reps inherently lead to a worse stimulus to fatigue ratio. Like most blanket statements this has some truth but isn’t black and white and there are exceptions.

It depends on the context that the cheat reps are being used in. In a bicep curl the goal is to train the biceps for muscle growth and/or strength. If you cheat too much you may be actually taking away tension from the biceps. It may be placed on muscles such as the front delts, lower back and leg muscles.

These muscle groups won’t be getting enough of a stimulus for growth but will be accumulating fatigue from this. You may even be getting less bicep stimulus, but the total body fatigue generated has increased significantly. This has made it a much worse exercise for hypertrophy and even can be for strength.

On the other hand trying to stay super strict may actually diminish how much tension you can generate with the biceps. Because of muscle irradiation using nearby muscles may actually allow you to contract the biceps even harder in some parts of the strength curve. A small amount of cheating may actually improve the bicep stimulus without adding a meaningful amount of fatigue to other muscles.

Control Change of Direction at the Stretch

A key factor that will make cheat reps safer is to control your changes of direction. My article about pause reps explores this concept from another angle. I usually recommend incorporating at least a brief pause in the stretch when handling heavy loads and not peaking for a max lift.

This transition point out of the stretch is the point where the muscles are subjected to the highest degrees of force. It’s significantly easier to stay in the correct position if the bar is controlled into the stretch. You don’t want to just bounce right out of that position.

It’s much easier to subject your body to unexpected forces when trying to maximise the use of the stretch reflex. You don’t want to come out of position with a heavy enough weight that you can’t actually manage with strict form.

Pauses in the stretch improve safety across the board

With a short pause you still get the benefit of positioning while keeping some of the stretch allowing you to produce greater forces.

Intent at Mechanical Disadvantage

When the goal is hypertrophy you should try to control the weight through every portion of the range of motion. Due to the strength curve of some exercises some parts of the range of motion are much more challenging than others. For example the top of a barbell row is mechanically much more difficult than the bottom. Attempting to pause the rep at the top on a heavy strict set probably isn’t possible.

This happens to a greater extent with some slight cheating. The intent should still be there. You should still feel it in the target muscles even if you can’t produce enough force to stop the bar in disadvantaged positions. The bar shouldn’t just be free falling. However the main goal isn’t hypertrophy this may not be necessary.

Level of Advancement

I believe cheat reps to be relatively safe when done in a controlled fashion by someone with a high degree of body awareness. I recommend beginners to stick with stricter movements even if they may theoretically benefit from cheat reps in some instances. At this point your technique isn’t ingrained well enough. You’ll probably struggle to coordinate your body well enough to “cheat right” while bracing your core to provide a solid base.

It’s not Binary

People like to speak in absolutes. The majority of the time things aren’t black and white and there’s a grey area in between.

You don’t have to choose between never cheating and always cheating. I think for many more advanced lifters the best formula is to bequitestrict on the majority of exercises. You can use controlled cheating on a few exercises in a way that’s appropriate for your goals.