I adopted the Timeless strategy from Kettlebell Simple & Sinister, and it improved my training. Breaking free from the clock allowed me to take my training to new levels.

But breaking free from the clock does not mean I threw it away. As I worked on the Iron Cardio protocol and started tracking my total time to accomplish a certain number of sets—what I call a “work-constrained approach”—I started to fool myself by misjudging my rest and recovery between sets.

Richard Feynman famously quipped: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” I was “coming out of the gate too hot,” sprinting through my first few sets. And while I was able to reset my breath for the following set/sequence, my recovery was not sufficient to sustain the work.

(As we learn from Strong Endurance™, your cardiorespiratory system has inertia, and it takes some time for your heart rate and breathing to catch up to the metabolic demands of your exercise.)

Tracking my “10-set splits”—recording the time for every ten sets to be completed—allowed me to catch this mistake and to stop fooling myself.

From my Iron Cardio e-book:

Record the time for every ten sets to be completed. This can be very valuable for identifying when you are chasing the clock.

I performed the same session on April 16 and July 22.

On April 16 my 10 set split times were:

3:15 > 9:10 > 14:35 > 19:54 > 25:40 > 32:15

And on July 22, they were:

5:20 > 11:00 > 17:10 > 23:20 > 29:35 > 35:58

What do you notice?

Look at the first two sets of ten in the respective sessions. 3:15 vs. 5:20 and then the next split of 9:10 vs. 11:00. I went “out of the gate” very aggressively to get my first ten sets done in 3:15, resulting in the next ten sets taking six minutes vs. a 5:20 first ten sets which allowed for a five minutes forty seconds next ten sets. Jumping from three minutes to six minutes to complete ten sets clearly indicates that I was chasing the clock for the first ten, and I doubled the time needed to complete the next ten. But on the July 22 session, my 5:20 first ten sets allowed me to stay on the just over five-minute “pace.” (This leveled out to a roughly six-minute pace.)

My pacing on the July session resulted in stronger pressing, and I woke up the next day feeling like I was ready to train again, but after the April session, I took me two days to recover.

Tracking my 10-set splits allows me to check on the overall pace of the session and not only catch myself from starting too aggressively but also to catch when I should “pull the plug” on a session. For example, if my 10-set splits are about 6 minutes, but then it jumps to 8 or 10 minutes, I am accumulating more work than I can recover from, and the session should end.

What will your split times reveal to you?