The Last Two Reps Are the Easiest - Abe Goldberg (1953)

"WH-A-A-AT did the man say? The LAST two reps are the EASIEST? Nay, nay sir! Alas, poor Goldberg, he fought those swingin' doors till the last! Has the poor boy dreamed up some new crazy exercise system?" 

A new system . . . yes. But crazy? No, not really, for the title is very true, the working technique is simple, and the results are amazingly gratifying. You may demand, as did the late Will Rogers, "Show me a 'show-me'". So without prefacing my homily, here, gentle reader is how we here at my gym are practicing a new system of counting our repetitions, the psychology of which has enabled us to do not only our scheduled reps, but permits us to force out some valuable extra ones as well. 

This is how it all began . . . 

Once upon a time (three months ago, to be exact), I was observing one of my pupils perform the bench press. Jerry had been stuck with 225 pounds for two weeks, and in addition, was losing reps each exercise day. I was puzzled because no one in my classes was a harder worker, or had more endurance than Jerry. 

Having ascertained that he had nothing organically wrong with him, that he had been living a good, clean and fairly righteous life, and that he otherwise was in the (you should excuse the expression) pink, I concluded his trouble must be mental. 

"What were you thinking about while doing that last set, Jerry?" I asked. 

"Abe," he replied disgustedly, "I'm honestly trying to get out those 10 reps, but somewhere . . . as I count the reps, along about 8 or 9 I'm sure I'll never get the 10th."

Since he had confirmed my suspicion that it was a mental problem, I thought perhaps if I could conjure up something to spur him on, that might do the trick. Perhaps a prize . . . but now, as I visualized my stock of prizes, I realized I had very few to give. There was an old broken-down iron shoe . . . a cast-off, forlorn, and unloved pair of gym trunks tossed aside by a calloused client . . . or maybe that cruddy old head strap . . . no, this was just wishful thinking. Not even if I offered Jerry one of Goldberg's specials (milk, chocolate, bananas, honey, and high protein food, 45 cents please) would it budge him out of his mental state. 

What in the world could I do for him? 

There there flashed through my head a trick I had used the previous week in just such a situation . . . perhaps it would work on Jerry. Here's what happened. 

I had set a goal for myself. I wanted to do 50 leg presses with 500 pounds. I had lain under the machine, and summoning all my strength and endurance I was batting them out, when suddenly I became conscious of the fact that I was getting so fatigued from thinking about the high reps, and the actual counting of them, that I was unable to concentrate on the exercise itself, and consequently I was getting nothing from it. 

I stopped the exercise, took five minutes rest, and decided to change my way of counting. I got back under the machine, determined to do a full 50 reps this time . . . 

So, instead of counting UP to 50, the very thought of which is tiring, I counted downward thusly: 

Twenty-five-AND, twenty-four-AND, etc., downward until I reached two-AND, one-AND. I did one complete press on "twenty-five," and a complete press on "AND," etc. 

By thinking of counting downward, beginning with the highest NUMERICAL count, and continuing until the lowest NUMERICAL count had been reached, the battle was progressively easier. 

I then suggested that Jerry try it on his bench press. He reluctantly agreed, and I sent him out for a drink of water, and a brief rest. While he was gone from the room, I quietly placed 10 more pounds on the bar, and when Jerry returned, I handed him the weight, counting thusly for him: SIX - AND - FIVE - AND - FOUR - AND - THREE - AND - TWO - AND - ONE - AND. 

Jerry had pressed 10 pounds more than his limit, and in addition had gotten 12 reps, which as L'il Abner says, "Enny fool kin plainly see." 

Needles to say, Jerry felt that he had conquered the world when I told him of the little trick I had played on him. That it was a trick is true. We had simply played a trick on his mind, but it worked. So, now I tell my pupils, "Don't count up to 10, count DOWN to ONE. Certainly, if you can make your mind believe that you are doing the NUMERICALLY highest rep first, and the NUMERICALLY lowest rep last, truly then, the last two reps were the easiest. 

And so it must have happened to you many times. No doubt, you have often said, when a training period went badly, "Oh, well! It's just one of my off days." The chances are that your body was rarin' to go, and your mind was off on some tangent far removed from bodybuilding and you were fatigued even before you did the exercise. Consequently, the whole workout was fruitless.

If you can make your mind not necessarily "work FOR you," but instead teach it to play WITH you, you can accomplish miracles in bodybuilding. The mind and the body should be partners, not boss and slave. Think of your exercises as being not "half as difficult," but rather that they are "twice as easy." One is positive, the other slightly negative, although the essential meaning is the same. That's one of the great secrets of successful bodybuilding. "Think positively, and optimistically." 

Once you have gotten the hang of counting "downhill" instead of "uphill," you can apply it to any and all exercises. 

It is particularly effective when doing supersets. One of the best groups of these supersets is for the chest. I consider it the greatest group of exercises I have ever employed for blowing up the chest. It consists of three parts, each of 12 reps. Some of my students were unable to tackle it until I showed them this new system of counting. For to count 36 repetitions with an adequate weight is too formidable for some people. There are stages in development, when everyone needs supersets and this new system is just made to order for those occasions. 

Here is the chest with the supersets [tri-sets]. It's rugged, but man what a blown-up feeling it gives. Try it on your next chest training day. It consists of the following: 

Dumbbell Incline Bench Press, bench at 30 degree angle)

Stiff-Arm Lateral Raise, flat bench

Bent-Arm Lateral Raise, bench at 30 degree angle. 

Do one set of DB incline bench presses for 12 reps . . . rest only 30 seconds, and do one set of stiff-arm lateral raises . . . rest only 30 seconds more, and do one set of bent-arm lateral raises on the incline bench. 

Now take only a one minute rest before the next tri-set.

One the second, third and fourth tri-sets, decrease the weight of the dumbbell by 10 pounds each set, but keep the starting weight for the stiff-arm, and bent-arm lateral raises. Rest only 30 seconds between parts of the tri-sets, and only one minute between the tri-sets themselves. 

For an advanced man a good starting weight in the incline press would be 80 pounds for the first set, decreasing to 70, 60, and 50 for the remaining sets. A good starting weight in the stiff-arm lateral raise would be 30 pounds, and in the bent-arm lateral raise, 55 pounds. 

Have all the bells ready and waiting. 

The stiff-arm and bent-arm lateral raises should be performed with this slight variation . . . instead of lowering the weights slowly, let them swing down until you feel a terrific pull at the sternum. Heave them up with a great concentrative surge. Feel the snap-pull at the bottom, and the crushing effect coming up. 

Note: Don't. 

In counting your reps of the tri-sets, count SIX-AND, FIVE-AND, etc.,, downward. Do a complete press and lowering on SIX, and another on AND, until you have completed the set. 

If you doubt this counting system, here's a simple armchair test you can make on yourself. As you sit, count forcefully up to 10, as follows: ONE - TWO - THREE - FOUR - FIVE - SIX - SEVEN - EIGHT - NINE - TEN. 

Now count the 10 reps in this manner: FIVE-AND, FOUR-AND, THREE-AND, TWO-AND, ONE-AND. You will have discovered that is seemingly took less time to count downward than upward . . . even though 10 words were spoken in either instance. 

Try doing some sit-ups. What's you usual number? 30, perhaps? Try doing 45 reps by counting as follows, doing a complete sit-up and return on each WORD: Fifteen-And-Uh, Fourteen-And-Uh, Thirteen-And-Uh, and so on down to One-And-Uh. You will be amazed at the ease with which these 45 sit-ups were accomplished. Those 45 will appear easier than the 30 you had been doing. 

Note: This is the earliest and one of the few articles I've seen on variations of the standard counting approach. Ages ago I used several that were similar to those above, especially when doing heavy breathing squats. One-Ee-And-Uh up to Five-Ee-And-Uh for 20 reps. A little while after that, I chose to just lift a finger the tiniest bit after each rep. Start with your right hand little finger after rep one, lift your right hand ring finger after rep two, etc., all the way to going through the fingers and thumbs of both hands twice for a total of 20 reps. But sure, I use all sorts of counting methods, including ones similar to those presented in this earliest article I've seen on rep-count variations from the past. Because I was a musician in the past I used similar versions of rep-counting. One-And, Two-And (double count); One-Trip-Let, Two-Trip-Let (triple count); One-Eee-And-Uh, Two-Eee-And-Uh (groups of fours), etc. It's all about the games we can play with our minds that lead us to believe a counting variation is "easier" than the standard method. If you're doing multiple sets, saving the different method for a last hard set comes in handy at times as well, and you don't have to use any method of counting reps only. Whatever works. 

When counting even numbers of reps such as sets of 8 or 10, count Four-And, or Five-And, downward counting. Such counting has another beneficial effect. Since the mind is relieved of the fatiguing count, it can more ably concentrate on the exercise at hand. 

I do hope that you will give these counting variations a good try. Use them in any exercise and they will serve you well. 

Enjoy Your Lifting!