The two lost commandments that you rarely hear about are:
“Thou shall exercise with weights regularly,” and
“Thou shall do quality reps.”
I follow both religiously!

During this morning’s workout, I paired back squats with standing leg curls for 5 sets of 10 reps each, with 3 warm-up sets beforehand. The pace was fairly brisk, and I wrapped it up in about half an hour.

I’ll train again this afternoon, hitting more squats—this time using a safety squat bar with a wide stance—along with reverse hypers, standing calf raises, and Swiss ball side flexions. That session should also take about 30 minutes.

The point I want to make is this:
It’s not how much you do, but how you do it!

Let’s go back to the back squats for a second. Here’s what I did:

There’s not a huge amount of weight on the bar, but it’s more than enough to get the job done. 225 pounds is about 30 pounds over my body weight, and just considering the work sets alone, that’s 50 reps × 225 lb = 11,250 pounds of total work.

If you factor in 86% of my body weight (see page 88 of my book The Elite Trainer for details on Precise Load Calculations), that adds another 8,600 pounds, bringing the total workload to 19,850 pounds—and that’s not even including the bonus reps I added at the end!

Keep in mind, that doesn’t include what I did for leg curls, and this was just workout 1 of 2 today. It gives you some perspective on how the numbers can really add up. But there’s more to it than just numbers…

Take a close look at my form in the video. You’ll notice I’m doing full squats—we’re talking:

• Ass to grass
• Butt to heels
• Hamstrings draping calves
• “Leave a stain on the ground” squats!

And they’re performed in a slow, controlled manner—4 seconds down per rep, giving a time under tension of about 50 seconds per set. Trust me, there’s a huge difference between doing 10 reps of squats in 50 seconds vs. rushing through them in half the time!

You’ll also notice that my form stays consistent from set to set. There’s no deviation whatsoever.

Since YouTube can be picky about music, I muted the sound. But to prove that each set was filmed separately, I included a subtle change in each video segment. See if you can spot what’s different!

By the way, I “capped” off the final set with some breathing squats—all performed with nasal breathing.

Bottom Line

Don’t obsess over how much weight is on the bar—it’s how you lift it that matters.
The quantity of quality reps is what really counts at the end of the day!