Posted: April 8, 2024 at 12:43 pm
There can be a lot to think about when you are performing any strength training exercise.
- General posture
- Tempo
- Breathing
- Core bracing
- Focal point
- Feeling the right muscles work
- and so on
One important thing is range of motion (ROM), which is essentially how far you are moving the weight from start to finish (and which joints are responsible for that movement).
When it comes to ROM, exercises can be divided into three categories:
- Full ROM
- Partial ROM
- Hyper ROM or “extra” ROM
The third of those is not applicable to all exercises, but I’ll give some examples.
First, it is important to understand that your muscles are not necessarily equally strong at all points in the range of motion. Speaking in generalities, each individual muscle is usually the weakest when it’s the longest and the shortest, and strongest when it’s in the middle. Note, that is just for individual muscles, and when you factor in everything else like other muscles involved and changes in leverage throughout the ROM, things can get complicated.
To start with, full ROM should make up the lion’s share of your training. This basically entails moving your joints through what is generally accepted to be their full range of motion during the exercise. This will help make sure that both your joints and muscles receive the stimuli they need in order to stay strong and healthy through a full range.
Partial ROM exercises can have their place, and we include them a bit in our programs. However, it is common that people overuse these, often due to their ego. In short, you can almost always lift more weight when doing a partial ROM compared to a full ROM, and so you have to check yourself sometimes to make sure you’re not simply satisfying your ego at the expense of the actual benefit of the exercise. Partial ROM can be OK sometimes, but not all the time, and it should be a conscious decision ahead of time.
Hyper ROM is certainly not for everyone. You need to have healthy joints and you certainly need to have a reason for doing it. An example would be someone with healthy and flexible shoulders who is already super strong at push ups. They can easily crank out dozens of push ups where their chest touches the ground every rep. This person could do push ups with their hands on yoga blocks, so that their chest can get lower than “the floor” on each rep.
Check back later this week for a few examples of what we look for in ROM on some key exercises in your strength training program.
-Tony
