Greasing the Groove
Grease the Groove (GtG) is a training technique where you do minimal effort sets of an exercise throughout the day. It's usually used in order to increase the amount of reps you can do in a single exercise.
What Do You Mean By “Minimal Effort”?
In a typical workout, you do high effort reps for a couple of sets. With greasing the groove, you do many sets throughout the day of a single exercise in order to accumulate as much volume as possible. These sets should not leave you fatigued.
How Effective is GtG?
If your goal is to increase the number of reps you can do on a particular exercsie, GtG can be extremely effective. Before attempting to GtG, you should be able to do 5+ reps on any given exercise.
Why You Shouldn’t GtG
You can’t pair GtG with a conventionally structured training routine well. When GtG, you’ll be doing a massive amount on volume on one exercise every day. This eats into your recovery especially on non-training days.
GtG is only really useful when you have a single movement that you really want to get good at. Long term, that’s highly unrecommended, because you’ll develop a muscle imbalance.
Conclusion
GtG can be an effective protocol for increasing your reps on an exercise, but is advised against as a long term strategy to increasing your strength. If you’d like to read more about GtG, you can here.