How much range of motion should we use in our exercise?

Following today’s title, I dare to say that many of us have puzzled over this question more than once during exercise. And what did we come to? In most of the answers, I dare to point out once again that we literally adjusted it based on how much resistance we were just overcoming. What do I mean by that ? Only so much that when the resistance of our barbell was lower during any exercise, we were able to use the full range of motion and the more the resistance increased, then the path of our movement also shortened rapidly. I have already heard several answers as to why this has happened and is still happening, whether for some safety or injury prevention, or to save our joints. The variety of “excuses” for why this is so was really great. But regardless of what’s behind it, let’s try to uncover how it actually works with our muscular and joint systems.

Our musculo-fascial system of individual parts, muscle sectors and coherent lines has the ability to have a certain elasticity. Likewise, our joint segments have physiological ranges from an anatomical point of view that we can reach. Facts that cannot be overlooked.

Although each angle in the range of motion has its justification and meaning, it follows that there is not only “black and white” about where we are actually supposed to get to the path of our movement. But this is not an excuse for performing partial ranges of motion that result from some kind of ignorance. Regardless of whether we have any limitation of the range of motion on our body, resulting either from repeated mechanical overload or based on the anatomical possibilities we are born with, focusing only on performing quarter and half ranges of motion in our exercise is not entirely happy.

There have been some interesting studies to show the range of motion during exercise, and I would like to mention one of them. The study looked at how range of motion affects muscle volume, muscle strength and subcutaneous fat of the loaded muscle part. Over a period of twelve weeks , two groups of exercisers performed a multi-joint exercise three days a week – squat, where one group performed a partial range of motion, up to 50° degrees of flexion in the knee joint, and the second group performed a range of motion of 90° degrees of flexion in the knee joint, i.e. the thighs were parallel to the ground. After the time, muscle strength and muscle mass growth were greater in the group with a full range of motion, and a greater loss of body fat was observed in this group in the place of the loaded muscle part. However, for a change in terms of load and therefore resistance work, it was observed that the group that performed a partial range of motion could perform exercises by 10 to 25% with more weight than the group with a full range of motion. But even though they were able to overcome more resistance, it was found that the internal load on the muscles themselves that performed the work was greater in the group that performed the full range of motion even when overcoming a smaller weight of the barbell. From the point of view of the biomechanics of the movement itself, during individual repetitions, the internal load on the muscle also changes, although the resistance weight we overcome does not change. This means – longer trajectory, greater effort, better muscle activation, improved strength along the entire length of the range of motion, better overall coordination. As you can see, the benefits arising from the length of the movement path were confirmed in the end in both of them and others.

If I could sum it up, then exercises performed in full range of motion will have a positive effect on the increase in muscle mass, better load and exercise of joint segments, improved overall stability, mobility and flexibility. Exercises performed in partial ranges of motion will allow us to improve our fast ÞPower strength as well as muscle strength itself.

Whatever the range of exercises is, it would be good to realize that if it doesn’t let me go deeper and in fact I could, it would be good to pause for a moment and think about why I can’t do it. Maybe my limitation will be a position that I could do differently and then it could work. Maybe it is really enough to change the conditions in which the exercise is performed…

Regardless of our specialization, related to sports or something else, we should always be able to defend why we do what we do the way we do it and not just try to copy what we see around us.