Are You Partial to Full Range of Motion?

by Skip HillHow important is using a full range of motion when you train? The answer seems obvious. Without thinking about it any deeper, almost anyone would answer quickly that it’s incredibly important. Why? Because most of us have heard and preached this mantra for a very long time. But is this thinking antiquated or can you back up, logically, that you need to train with a full range of motion for optimum growth and development?

I enjoy challenging what people think to be true. I’ve found that too much of what I thought was true over the years wasn’t true. I’m not a studies guy, as most who know me will attest. That isn’t to say that I feel studies don’t have any merit, but I’ve always felt that you can construct or run down a study to back up almost anything. Supplement companies do it all the time. I put far more emphasis and significance on practical and applied knowledge and experience. This is likely because I’ve been in this game for a long time, and I feel that many things on paper can sometimes look awesome, but when applied, the results end up being less than arousing.
In my experience, I’ve seen many people, including myself, benefit from great form through a full range of motion, and I’ve seen many people over the years benefit from terrible form as well. I’ve had progress with both, if I’m being honest. But is one better than the other? I’m sure that you’ve seen the guy in the gym doing what we all would deem shitty curls and yet his arms have continued to grow probably better than anyone else’s. We’ve all seen guys with huge, well developed legs who squat so high that we could take a picture and post it to Facebook with the caption, “Check out this dipshit squatting like a ***** and he wonders why his legs suck.” But we can’t…because he has insanely great legs.

Maybe training with a full range of motion is machismo bullshit. Maybe this is just one more way that we judge each other. Maybe it’s like how not squatting makes someone an instant ***** or how you’ll never get a huge back if you don’t deadlift. Clearly, these aren’t literal truths, but most of us believe them to be, and we believe that they’re etched in some stone template somewhere, existing since Christ was alive. These truths aren’t to be questioned and to do so is at best,


The answer lies more in the middle. Range of motion is important for things like flexibility and injury prevention more than it is for overall hypertrophy of muscle. I have seen too much during my marriage to this sport to know that full range of motion isn’t the only way to train or the best way. It doesn’t produce monsters with absurd amounts of muscle any more than doing super strict side laterals with a twenty pounder will make your shoulders huge. The bigger you get, the more your range of motion suffers anyway. Anyone who has grown to even average muscle size knows that doing a barbell curl doesn’t feel anything like it used to when you were smaller. Your shoulders and lats and chest all tend to kind of “get in the way” and straightening your arms completely at the bottom just isn’t comfortable anymore. You have to look no further than a bench press (at any angle) to clearly see that range of motion can’t possibly be the end all that we are told it is because the elbows don’t even come close to coming together at the top of the movement, leaving benchers at roughly two-thirds of a full range of motion. If range of motion were king, wouldn’t dumbbell presses be king for size and dumbbell flyes be lauded as another king mass builder, dwarfing benches? If range of motion is king, where does that leave things like stiff-legged deadlifts for hamstrings?? There are many examples like these.

As with anything else in this sport, genetics likely dictates how well you grow far more than whether you lock out a bench press or not. The guys responding well to high squats or shitty curls are usually genetically gifted individuals. The more “genetically gifted” you are, the more likely you are to respond well to training. As long as you’re able to put a huge stress on that muscle, it will likely grow, full range of motion or not.

I’m not writing this article to provide black and white answers. With training, there aren’t any. Again, I’m challenging what you think you know. If you believe that a full range of motion is the best way for you to train, stay with it. I have to stay with a full range of motion on most exercises these days because this allows me to use less weight and still hammer the target muscle group hard. It guards me from injury after so many years of pounding the weights. In the back of my mind though, I know full well that if I could move more weight, with an abbreviated range of motion, it would almost certainly allow for more growth. Of course, it would also set me up to be called names and, I mean, that never happens these days, right? Just sayin’.

In one way or another most movement hurt when I go full range. For that reason I usually don't even try. Half of my lifts have been tailored to get around a bad shoulder.

I do a lot of full ROM but as long as I feel the muscle I'm targeting contracting and working then I'm happy.

I will agree with the article in many regards. I've seen plenty of amateur hour idiots doing utterly perfect form with next to no weight.....if u saw them on the street you would have no clue they have ever in their life been inside a gym let alone go regularly.

There is a fine balance of both.

I use both methods...one thing my PT buddy commented to me is that I am one of the most flexible bodybuilders he has worked on, except my hams...have to really be tenacious to stretch them and hip flexors. I really try and focus on the muscle (mind to muscle) and feel full stretch without incorporating other muscle groups...for instance DB Flyes, only go as low as you feel the pec muscle fully stretch...not into the shoulders, that is where people screw up their shoulders, going way too low in the stretch. Short bump movements give a great pump and truly keep that muscle being trained under constant tension...which is why I like using cables too for that reason.

Anyway...thanks Baby for this and the other diet sucks article, keeps you on track!!!

In many cases I feel the Full ROM is too much for a lot of peeps. They just dont have that kind of flexibility. Maybe they could if they worked on it but in real life they just dont. Therefore they get injured trying to do full rom.