POWERBUILDING
how to properly do isolation movements will
help you bring those up. If you’re weak off the
chest and your pecs have no strength, then
doing the standard motion of pec flyes prob-
ably isn’t going to help you work your pecs.
You’re going to be all shoulder, and your weak
spot off of your chest will still lag.
Injury
Another risk with machines and dumbbells
is that the increased range of motion some
of them provide can cause serious injury.
Imagine you’re doing dumbbell bench press:
If you were doing it with a barbell, it would
stop at your chest, but because there’s noth-
ing between the dumbbells, you can let them
come back as far you want, which can cause
serious damage to your rotator cuffs. The leg
press is another good example. If you do a
full ROM and let your knees come back and
squish into your chest, you would get some
major flexing at the lumbar spine and your
knees would take a beating.
The Bigger The Better?
Are there times when a shorter ROM can
hinder progress as well? Yes. If you only ever
do movements in a stunted pattern, you’ll
IF YOU CAN GO FARTHER,
FEEL THE MUSCLE, AND
NOT HURT YOURSELF,
BY ALL MEANS WORK
THROUGH THE FULL
RANGE.
eventually tighten up and you won’t get the
full breadth of stimulation. I used to do this
with lat pulldowns all the time. I’d let them
most of the way up and bring it down about
three-quarters of the way to my chest. In
that short movement, I worked my lats, but
not as efficiently as I could have. I never let
my shoulder blades fully come up and out
and then pull them back down and togeth-
er, so I never got to really work on scapular
retraction, which is a huge part of all three
major lifts. Because I never pulled the bar
very tight to my body at the end, I never got
the full contraction and muscle stimulation
for all the little muscles that engage when you
really squeeze your shoulder blades together.
I usually wouldn’t allow my rows to go all the
way down or pull all the way in either, and
this became a theme in many of my back
exercises. This led to some very tight tissue
over time, and finally when I realized it and
started doing full ROM, it felt like a whole new
exercise. It was new and interesting to let the
bound-up tissue free since it hadn’t been
worked in years. After not too long, my mo-
bility improved and my muscles in the area
developed much better than they had been,
and this led directly to increased strength in
all of my big lifts.
Make It Individual
There’s no set principle of when you should go
all the way up and down in a movement; it’s all
about your body and your goals. Small ranges
of motion can be very useful for some goals
and can hinder others. If you can go farther,
feel the muscle, and not hurt yourself, by all
means work through the full range. But if you
start to lose connectivity or feel pain in the
joint, then back off and reassess how you’ve
been doing that exercise. IM
ironmanmagazine.com | JUNE 2017 71