Counting is hard. Yes, when we were in kindergarten it was very easy, but fast forward a bit and suddenly you’re an adult who can’t manage to count over 10 with a weight in hand. You’re not alone! Especially if you’re doing something for higher repetitions or for more than a few sets, it’s normal to stop counting at times. Fortunately, we have a few tips to keep you updated.
Check off sets in your notebook
you have one Training diary, Law? (If not, I strongly suggest you consider one.) If your program has a certain number of sentences that you need to perform, write them down, then tick each sentence as you do it. For example, if my trainer wants me to do four doubles at 80% of my maximum, my notebook will have a line like this at the end of the workout:
4×2 @ 80% ✔️✔️✔️✔️
That way, I’m not confused as to whether I’m doing the third set or just did the third set, which is something I can easily lose sight of.
Use counters
When I do many sets of an exercise, the check marks can get out of hand. For a while I pursued a program where a typical day requires 100 modified pull-ups, 100 band-pull aparts, and 100 dips. You can do them in as many or as few sets as you like, and I generally break them up into 10 sets of 10 reps.
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Not only are there high reps to keep track of, I alternated the exercises with each other (or even practiced them between my main exercises of the day) which meant it was busy. Counters solved the problem: every set of 10 was a grade, and when I got 10 points on each line, I knew I was done with that exercise. In the end, my notebook would look something like this:
100 chin crawl
100 tape pulls creeping
100 dips creeping up
Use physical tokens
I first saw this idea in a Crossfit class when the trainer took out a box of poker chips to walk us through a 10-round workout. One chip per round, and when you have 10 in your little pile, you know you’ve completed all of your workout. I’ve used this idea since then Counting pull-ups with pebbles and kettlebell swing sets with a combination of poker chips and whiteboard tally marks:
Ten swings was one chip, six chips got me a hash mark on the wall, and five hash marks meant I was done.
I saw a clever twist on this recently: someone did a lot of kettlebell swings and before they even started they lined up a number of small items on the floor – most of them were barbell collars, I think. After every sentence he kicked you with his foot.
Keep track of things with your eyes
Now that we’ve covered some ways to count sentences when you are able to stop and use your hands, let’s look at some hands-free options. One of the things I came up with during a pesky kettlebell workout was keeping my eyes on top of things. Do you know how you end up staring at the same spot on the wall for a while? My big brain moment was, what if I look at a different spot on the wall every ten reps?
I have a whiteboard in my garage gym so I wrote a little icon for each set. I switched right and left hands every ten reps, so my board looked like this:
L – R – L – R – L
R – L – R – L – R
For each set, I kept my eyes on the corresponding letter on the wall. (Switching hands also helped me stay on top of things: if I forgot if I was in the fourth or fifth set, I could tell which hand I was using.)
Use your fingers
Alternating hands mean I have a hand free even if I can’t reach that hand to make a mark or move a poker chip. But I can count on my fingers!
For kettlebell vibrations, I would do 10 swings with my right hand, then after passing the bell to my left hand, I would count “one” with my right hand (making a fist of all but one of my fingers). After switching back, I then counted “one” on my left hand. After the third sentence, the bell would be in my left hand again and my right hand would count “two”. Basically, the number of fingers on each hand tells me how many sentences that hand has already made. The very last time I move the kettlebell from my right hand to my left, my right has five fingers open; As soon as I finish the last sentence on the left, I know I made 100.
I’ve already done that during the lap run: In the first lap, my hands are open or in loose fists. After the first round I put a finger over my thumb like a sign language letter “T”. After the second round, I do two fingers, like a letter “N”, and after the third round, I do three. By the time I finish lap fourth, I’ll know I’ve covered a mile and can start over (or mark that mile with another counting method, such as putting a pebble in a pile).
Make mental chunks
Okay, we talked about keeping an eye on the sets, but what if you step back during repetitions of a single set? There my recommendation is to mentally break it up into pieces.
If you do 20 repetitions, that’s four pieces out of five. It can be helpful to imagine that each five has their own personality or place in the universe. For example, reps 1-5 hardly count; you’re just getting started Repetitions 6-10 take you to the two-digit numbers. Reps 11-15 are the first half of an incline, and 16-20 will take you to the top. When I do a set of 25, I think of the first 20 the same way, and the 21-25 reps are a bonus because I’m so great. (Yes, I probably feel like I want to die at this point; it doesn’t matter.)
Or take a set of 10 squats, for example. I like to think of these in pairs or triplets. I’ll try to do the first three reps with the same breath (since I have to breathe and support yourself in a targeted manner between repetitions). Then the next three if I can. If the weight is heavy, I may need to breathe during this second triplet, but I will reset as soon as possible. Now I’ve done six reps and can take a few breaths while deciding if I want to split the rest into another triplet and a single, or if I want to do two doubles, or, more likely, one double and two singles. This mental math keeps me on the right track, and I find it encourages me to keep going. You are more than halfway through now, I tell myself after the second piece of three pieces. Just one more hard rep and that’s the last sauce, I tell myself after eight repetitions.
give up
This may sound like heresy, but you may not even have to count your repetitions. After all, only your lungs and muscles know how stressed they are. As long as you’ve done a good, challenging workout, you’ve done the job it needs to be done to make a profit.
That way, you don’t have to count every rep, just make sure you do enough work. One way to do this is to set a timer and just work until the time runs out. Maybe this means 30 seconds of each exercise in a circuit, or maybe you set a 7-minute timer and do as many biceps curls and triceps extensions as you can, with only as much rest as you need to keep going. Or take a page from dance classes and set your movements to music. This works especially well for cardio training – just ask anyone who’s taken a peloton class.
If you’re training for a competition that requires you to do a certain number of reps in a certain amount of time, then you definitely count! But here, too, there is a way to give your brain a break: record your sentence on video and then count the repetitions.
