Performing quality reps and quality movement is always vital. Bad reps encourage bad movement, less power and general weakness; they train your nervous system to repeat the bad habit and that is weak and slow.
“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast” is a phrase I hear like a mantra in my head from years of hard firearms training, from a few hard instructors. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect reps do.
Yet, there are some lessons only 1,000s and 1,000 of reps can teach. You learn little things with each. Sometimes you have a big breakthrough; sometimes every rep just feels wrong, no matter how hard you try.
In Taekwon-Do, it is generally accepted that basic understanding comes after about 10,000 correct repetitions. Obviously all of these will not be very good, especially in the beginning. There are some lessons that only 1,000s and 1,000s of reps can teach.
In Taekwon-Do, it is also accepted that perfection is impossible, since no one is perfect. You can always do better, faster or stronger.
Then, there is the gray area of “correct” or “good.” If you try to make every rep perfect, you will never be “good.”
These are all good mental and physical exercises that I think everyone does when they pick up a kettlebell. It is not just about lifting a given weight, working up a sweat, or losing weight. It is about training your body to perfect a skill. As long as you care about the quality of performance, your practice will never be boring.
Perfect practice makes perfect, but is is only through 1,000s of flawed reps that anyone even learns what a “perfect” rep feels or looks like.
“Though they seem opposite, both are true…”
-Jim
