Before delving into this blog post, I want to emphasize the significance of training across full ranges of motion, encompassing various planes of movement. Whether you’re an athlete or an individual pursuing fitness for daily life, exposing yourself to diverse positions holds immense value and can greatly enhance performance.
However, is it always essential to train using the full range of motion?
This question often arises in the bodybuilding community, where partial reps are common, as well as in sports-specific movements that target particular joint angles to achieve desired outcomes that mimics sporting movments.
The answer isn’t straightforward and hinges on several factors, primarily whether our aim is to train a muscle or a movement.
Consider a lat pulldown exercise, for instance. To effectively engage the latissimus dorsi muscles, we focus on pulling the bar down toward our chest while bringing our upper arm toward our ribcage, all while maintaining a relatively fixed shoulder blade. It’s a precise movement, isn’t it? So, should we pull the bar all the way down to its maximum range of motion? Not necessarily. Once your arm and elbow are adjacent to your body, your lat muscle is already in its shortened position. Further extension serves little purpose. This illustrates an instance where the full range of motion may not be required to yield benefits.
When training muscles, the emphasis shifts from elongating the muscle to effectively loading it. It’s about working within a range that maximizes resistance and tension.
Ultimately, there’s a time and place for various training approaches.
In my view, I advocate for incorporating full range of motion exercises across multiple planes of movement and then progressively loading them. However, as demonstrated in the example provided, it’s not always imperative to utilize the complete range of a joint’s motion to achieve desired results.
