Project HUGE: 100 Reps Of Leg Press

Friday night, I went to the gym with my lifting partner to hit up a work out. It ended up that he worked out and I kind of just went through the motions. After having had my teeth cleaned earlier in the day (which is super stressful for me), I had tension pain in my neck and traps and my gums felt all irritated. As such, I couldn't seem to focus or perform any kind of movement that didn't somehow hurt my neck. Basically, I was worthless both to myself and to my partner.

Saturday, I spent most of the day in the office working on a double secret project. At about 4PM, I was so overcome with the shame of having not stepped up to the previous day's workout, that I realized that even though it was an "off" day, I needed run over to the gym and do something manly. I decided that I would try something that I had never tried before: the 100 Rep rep scheme.

The 100 Rep rep scheme consists of selecting a weight on a given exercise and then performing 100 reps with that weight. You don't need to do this all in one set, obviously, you just need to get it done. Maybe it takes 4 sets, maybe it takes 20 sets - it doesn't matter; the only thing that matters it that you walk away with 100 reps. And, since I felt like I hadn't had a good leg workout in a while, I thought I would try this on Leg Press (somehow, I felt trying this new technique on squats would only lead to injury).

So, I got on the leg press and did a few warm-up sets until I was at a weight that I thought would be challenging - 12 plates (6 plates per side). I wasn't exactly sure how to perform each set - do I go to failure on each set? Do I go no higher than a given rep count? While these questions remain unanswered, it really didn't matter; in the end, I didn't have much of a choice.

It took me 10 beefy, blood-pumping sets to get to 100 reps:

• Set 1: 12 reps (12 total)
• Set 2: 13 reps (25 total)
• Set 3: 10 reps (35 total)
• Set 4: 7 reps (42 total)
• Set 5: 10 reps (52 total)
• Set 6: 10 reps (62 total)
• Set 7: 10 reps (72 total)
• Set 8: 8 reps (80 total)
• Set 9: 12 reps (92 total)
• Set 10: 8 reps (100 total)

It was a pretty intense exercise! Lots of talking to myself, trying to psych myself up, lots of pacing back and forth, looking up and saying things like "Oh I guarantee!" and "Light weight baby!" I was surprised that I was able to keep up the 7-10 rep range on each set. That might just mean the sled wasn't heavy enough. Maybe next time, I'll try 7 plates per side, but this isn't something that I am going to be doing a lot. This is just for shock value to my system - get it out of the rut and force some sort of adaptative response.

Today, my quads, glutes, and even my calves are feeling very tight and sore. I would have liked to have included more hamstring, but the leg press is a very quad-dominant exercise. Maybe next time I try this rep scheme, I will rock 100 reps of deadlifts, a very hip-dominant exercise. Until then, let's sit back and enjoy this YouTube.com vide of big Ronnie Coleman (former Mr. Olympia) doing 8 reps of leg press with 2,300 lbs: