Bank Your Reps, Then Cash Them In
Most lifters think reps in reserve is a bodybuilding idea. Leave two reps in the tank, recover faster, train the muscle again sooner. That is the version most of us know.
I had a conversation with James Ross, a sport scientist and Master of Sport out of Melbourne who is doing a PhD on the kettlebell swing, and he flipped that idea on its head in a way I have not stopped thinking about since. He uses reps in reserve in reverse. Not to spare the muscle. To pace the whole set.
Here is the core of it, and it might change how you train your long sets for good.
The set is a bank account
When you stand on the platform for a 10 minute set, your prescribed pace is a budget. Say you are programmed for six reps per minute in long cycle. Every minute you hold exactly six, you are spending exactly what you have. Nothing banked, nothing borrowed.
But what if you cruise? What if you sit a touch under that number for the bulk of the set, technique clean, breathing in the rack, never red-lining? You are not loafing. You are saving. Each rep you DON'T spend early is a rep in reserve, and a steady pace at a tolerable effort lets you stack those reserves minute after minute.
Then, in the last minute or 90 seconds, you cash them in. You open up. You sprint. All those banked reps come out at once, and your final number lands higher than it ever would have if you had tried to hold a hero pace from rep one.
This is what I coach my athletes constantly. Find your cruising speed. Stay in the moment. Work your technique. Then at the end, we go. The science just gave me a cleaner way to say it. You are keeping reps in reserve so you can spend them when they count.
The sprint at the end is also a test
Here is the part that makes this more than a pacing cue. The sprint is data.
James does it like this. Instead of only programming straight 10 minute sets, he will program a shorter set at a target pace with a maximum sprint at the end. Then he reads the sprint. If a lifter can only squeeze out one or two reps above the prescribed pace, that set was brutal for them; they were near the edge the whole time. If they dig out six, eight, ten extra reps in that final push, they had a lot left.
That number tells you what to do next week. Lots of reps left in the sprint? Add a minute or two. Barely anything left? Hold the pace and the duration where they are, or back off. You are not guessing whether to progress. The lifter's own finish tells you.
So one move does two jobs. It trains the cruise-then-sprint pattern you actually use in competition, and it measures readiness to add load. That is elegant, and most people never set their training up to give them that feedback.
Why cruising beats grinding
You might ask why not just find your hardest sustainable pace and hold it the whole way. Some lifters train that way. It works for some of them. But there is a cost.
Training regularly at a pace that is right at your limit is psychologically expensive. It makes every session a battle. And kettlebell sport is not won by single heroic sessions; it is won by consistency over months. Consistency is king. If your training is so hard you cannot string it together week after week, that is the worst outcome there is. A program you can actually repeat beats a program that looks impressive and breaks you.
Cruising lowers the training stress so you can keep showing up. You get the volume in, you reinforce good technique under control, and you save the all-out effort for the end of the set and for competition day. That is a far more tolerable way to live inside a 12 week block.
Turn yourself into your own experiment
The reason this whole approach works is that it makes your training measurable. Same cruise pace, same finishing sprint, repeated regularly, and you start to see your own reliability. Good day, bad day, you have a baseline to compare against.
And once you are consistent, you can finally trust what your programming is telling you. Run a block, retest at a competition or a hard set 12 weeks later, and you can honestly say this worked, that did not. If you are inconsistent, you never know whether the variable was the training or just the chaos.
James said something I want every lifter to sit with. People beat themselves up when they miss what was on paper, and they almost never appreciate how much the little stuff moves the needle. Time of day. What you ate. How you slept. Whether you rested five minutes between sets or fifteen. A 15 minute rest versus a 5 minute rest can swing a set hard, and you might log a "bad" session that was really just a session you accidentally made harder. Be a little forgiving with yourself. The numbers come good when you stay consistent long enough to read them.
A note on the food side
We talked nutrition too, and one principle is worth carrying out of it. Carbohydrate fuels your anaerobic gear; that is the gear a hard sprint at the end of a set runs on. If you want your three or four weekly sessions to be high quality, show up fueled. This is a general training principle, not a meal plan for your body; dial in your own intake with a qualified professional who knows your situation.
The takeaway
Stop trying to hold a hero pace from the first rep. Pick a cruise you can repeat, bank reps under it, and unload them in the last 90 seconds. Read the sprint to decide whether to add time. Stay consistent long enough that the numbers mean something. That is the loop.
Cruise. Bank. Sprint. Read it. Repeat.
Listen to the full interview here.
If you want eyes on your own pacing and a plan built around sets you can actually repeat, come train with us. We have never turned anyone away over money; if you are willing to show up and suffer a little, there is a place for you here.
Vokse eller dø. — Coach Jordan