How to Build Muscle Almost 2x Faster (NEW RESEARCH)
24 Sept 2025 · 71 min
Transcript of a Built With Science podcast episode (hosts Max Coleman, D. Pizzle Plotkin/Danny Boy and guests) focusing on muscle length training and hypertrophy. The episode defines muscle length and sarcomere mechanics, reviews animal and human studies suggesting a hypertrophic advantage to training muscles in a lengthened (stretched) position, discusses partial-range (‘lengthened partials’) vs full-range training, practical implementation (pseudo-partials, exercise selection, integration), limitations, safety and open mechanistic questions.
Foreign.
What's going on, everybody? And welcome to Be Built With Science podcast. You're here with your host, as always, of course, me, that is Max Coleman, AKA Coleman, et al. And sitting in front of me, as always, is D. Pizzle Plotkin, D.P. plotkin, D Money, aka Danny Boy. And in the last several episodes, believe we've talked about a bunch of different topics through the scope of an entire episode, right? So the last one, I think we talked about a bunch of different things that can, quote, unquote, kill your gains. Prior to that, we talked about some of our pet peeves in the industry as a whole. And before that, we even talked about some other topic that had a bunch of other topics within it. But this one, this particular episode, we are focusing on one thing and one thing only, right? And that is muscle length training with respect to what it means to train your muscles through different lengths and ranges of motion.
Right.
We're going to first define what it means, what we're talking about when we say muscle length. Then we're going to talk about, you know, even some common misconceptions with respect to range of motion. Should you really still be using a full range of motion, or is that somewhat dogmatic at this point? And then we're going to even talk about some downsides with respect to, you know, maybe trying to accentuate the length and position as much as possible. But before we get into any of that at all, Danny Boy, why don't you go and tell us, explain to us a little bit what we mean.
By muscle length in general.
What, what do we mean when we say something like a length in partial or we're saying train at long versus short muscle lengths. You want to run us through that?
Yeah.
So in order to talk about that, you sort of need to talk about the basic biology. So the way muscles shorten is we have these tiny subunits within muscle called sarcomeres. Sarcomeres have two Z discs at each end and they have these proteins called actin and myosin. So the myosin head pulls on actin and pulls those discs together in order to cause a shortening of a muscle. So bringing one bone to another, sort of like this in a bicep curl, while when a muscle lengthens, the opposite happens. So the Z dicks, the Z disks come apart. And then all of the length, all of the length mediated stuff is what happens at that descending limb of the sarcomere relationship. So there's extracellular matrix things that can go on, there's titan things that can Go on. So all kinds of mechanosensing properties that may be involved with the more lengthened position. So all the lengthened position really means is that the sarcomere is being stretched. And since there's thousands, actually probably hundreds of thousands of sarcomeres within each muscle, that means all those little subunits within are in that stretched position when the muscle exists at a more lengthened bone relationship.
So do you want to explain that to us so that, that, that makes sense from a mechanic or a molecular standpoint? But for the non physiologists such as myself out there, what does that look like on a more gross scale, on a more practical scale, what is a, what is a, what is a long muscle length during, like a bicep curl versus a short muscle length during a bicepice?
Bicep curl.
So when the bone is closest to the other bone, then it's shortened. And when there's the largest angle between the two bones, that's the lengthened position. So that would be true for the hamstring, for the bicep and tricep and so on. So I think that's probably the simplest way to conceptualize when the muscle is in the most lengthened position on a gross scale.
Yeah.
And I think to put it in even simpler terms for the lizard brain boys such as myself, is like basically the beginning portion of a range of motion of an exercise is 99% of the time the most lengthened portion of that exercise. Right. So the start of a bicep curl, the start of a lateral raise, the start of a hamstring curl, the start of a leg press.
Right.
And we're talking about the concentric start, not necessarily the lowering phase of an exercise. Right. That's another way of thinking about that. Right. So just generally speaking, there's a lot of reason to believe that there might be something kind of special about that lake position.
Right.
There might be something kind of special about when those sarcomeres, when those muscles are exposed to high tensions in that lengthened position as opposed to that shortened position?
Right.
Now, there's a couple of reasons or a couple of things that have led us, led us to believe that there might be something special about stretching or that stretched position.
Right.
I guess that's another really great way of thinking about it is when you are stretching a muscle, it is at a longer muscle length, right. So when you go down to touch your toes and you feel that really, really deep stretch in your hamstrings, that's because you are lengthening Your hamstrings to a very large extent.
Right?
Yeah, I think that's probably way to conceptualize it because mine would actually fall apart for certain muscles. So.
Yeah.
So stretching, whenever you feel a deep stretch in the muscle, that's usually because it is in a lengthened position.
Right.
Now, some of those things that led us to believe that the stretched position or the lengthened position of a muscle is special. You know, I heard something about hyperplasia and birds, something about the inhumane act of strapping their wings to dumbbells and forcing them to hang out that way for a while. You want to touch on that a little bit as to what maybe led us to believe there might be something special about the lengthened position.
Yeah, so I'm blanking on the name of the researcher. I think it's Goldspink, but I'm not 100% sure on that. But, yeah, the famous quail weighted wing studies where they essentially just strapped weights on them on their wings in a more stretched position and just had them hang out there and they grew a ton. And not only did they grow, but typically the thought is, is that muscle cells increase in size, but they don't increase in number. But not only did they see a very significant increase in size, but they saw a dramatic increase in muscle cell number as well. So that was probably one of the first indications that there's something to very, very intense stretching protocol. But that didn't necessarily say, oh, we're for sure confident that this is going to translate to regular weightlifting. But it's definitely one of the early signs that the stretch. The stretch position was important. Another thing to consider is immobilization studies. So studies that immobilize a limb in a more shortened position cause a lot more atrophy. So a lot more loss in muscle size when that muscle stays in that shortened position. So let's say you injure your hamstring and then the muscle is immobilized in that shortened position. You're probably going to lose more muscle size in the hamstring if it's left in that position while you're recovering, and vice versa, if it's left in a lengthened position, then it loses less size.
Not only does it lose less size, but it actually, we've seen that it increases sarcomeres in series. Right. So you actually see an increase in the number of sarcomeres in series. Now, that's probably not going to aid to you looking any more jacked. Actually, not substantially aid to you looking more jacked by any Means, but. And you will still be losing muscle.
But it's just an interesting thing to point out, right.
And just to kind of recap the bird thing, this avian model, it would be as if we strapped five pound weights to your, to your wrists and had you just stand for. Or walk around like that for 30 days straight. We would. If we followed the same model as these birds, you would have massive trap increase like sizes increases in your traps by the end of those 30 day periods. Now, of course, the study hasn't been done and we can't pontificate on if that would actually happen or not. However, and then in general, it's kind of hard to extrapolate findings from very weird, mechanistic studies like that to humans. However, we are very lucky that there's a researcher named Warnicke. I wish I knew his full name, but Warnicke at all is what he's colloquially known at within this weird old field.
First name is Constantine.
Oh, wow, what a name.
Dude, that's incredible. Constantine. Constantine Warnicke.
I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, it's incredible. Anyway, he, I believe through.
The.
I think he's doing this for the purposes of his dissertation, but he has done a series of studies looking at this exact same thing, but in humans, where he has individuals wear an orthotic, what we call an orthotic. And it basically just. It's a boot that you wear around your ankle that stretches the calf out to a very extreme degree.
Right.
And he had individuals wear this. I can't remember how long the study was for, but he told. He had participants wear this boot for, I believe it was an hour a day for, let's call it eight weeks. Now, don't quote me on that.
All right?
And he told them, stretch this. Stretch your cap out using this boot for an hour a day until you reach what we call an 8 out.
Of 10 on a pain sensation. Right?
So this wasn't just some comfortable, fun.
Little thing that they were doing, Right?
And they actually saw substantial increases. These people were not lifting at all, Right. And they saw substantial increases in the size of their. Of their calves. Now, nothing crazy, they didn't double the size of their calves or anything, but they did see calf growth, which then further leads to this idea that there might be something special about that stretched position.
Right?
And then even on top of those studies, right. Danny boy and I were actually involved in this study led by Deep money. That's not the pizzle, but Deep money out of Canada, our good friend Derek Van Avery, in which he had individuals within subject either perform just cap raises to failure or calf raises to failure with a 20 second isometric stretch or hold in the stretched position. And there was nothing crazy, nothing magical there, but they did see very slight increases in their calf growth compared to those that didn't. Now we're talking on the order of 1 millimeter, but it was, it was probable that that was not due to chance. Even though it was a small effect, it's still, there still was an effect. And we can be pretty confident that was due to the intervention.
Right.
So a lot of things ultimately leading to this idea that the stretched position is something magical, right? And even on top of that, this. I'm just compiling all of these studies that are kind of corroborating this opinion.
Right.
There was a recent study that came out, and this isn't one of those initial studies, but now we're just talking about all of the studies that show that the stress position is somewhat special.
Right.
There was a study looking at hamstring curls, this famous hamstring curl study, right. Where they had individuals either perform seated hamstring curls or lying hamstring curls.
Right.
And the special thing about the hamstrings is that they actually are what we call BIA articular, meaning they cross two joints, both the hips and the knees. Which is why when we want to maximally grow our hamstrings, at least theoretically, we want to do both hip extensions. So those are things like your deadlifts, your RDLs, your stiff legged deadlifts, your 45 degree hyper extensions, whatever it may be, and curls, hamstring curls, seated hamstring curls, lying hamster curls, whatever you want.
To call it, right?
Whatever you want to do.
They compared the seated hamstring curl to the lying hamstring curl, right. And found substantially more growth in the hamstrings using the seated hamstring curl. And the reason for that is because when you sit upright, when you have a degree of hip flexion, right? Which just means you're leaning forward, you're stretching the hamstrings on board end, right. And that, that is just again, another study showing that there might be something special about the lengthen position. Conversely, in that exact same study, the sartorius, which is not a muscle that's commonly thought of, but it's also involved in knee flexion, actually grew more from the lying position because the sartorius is also involved in hip flexion. So when you're in hip extension, that one is more stretched out when you're in hip Flexion, the hamstrings are more stretched out.
Right.
Basically, all big recap here. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that there is something special, there's something particularly hypertrophic about the stress position for muscles. Now, we're not super sure as to the mechanism of action here. We're not sure why this is necessarily the case. Danny boy, you want to kind of throw out some ideas as to why you might think, and remember, this is speculative, y', all, but why you might think that there's something special about the stretched position.
Yeah. So when we think about, and this is for sure speculative, and there's some ideas that can come out of this in terms of potential study designs. But I think the prevailing hypothesis is that if tension is the main mediator of the hypertrophic response, then the passive plus active tension is greatest in the length and position. So from a really high level standpoint, if we just assumed that each muscle was able to experience a stretch and that stretch position was the highest amount of total tension because of active plus passive tension, then we could say that, okay, well, tension solves this problem here. The issue is that not all muscles are likely to reach the length and position that we need in order to create the most tension, meaning the most active plus passive. So that throws a significant wrench into that hypothesis. However, it could be that there's a specific benefit to the stretch position just based on the anabolic signaling. For reasons that we don't really know. It could be that the body is saying, okay, this stretch position is the most likely to be injurious. So let's make sure that if the person is spending a lot of time there, all the anabolic signaling associated with that position is going to be upregulated, regardless of tension. So independent of the fact that tension isn't the highest, it could be the tension needs to be there, but it doesn't need to necessarily be higher than a different position in order to get more anabolic signaling. So it could be that there's more tension and this could actually be different between muscles too. So we don't know whether the mechanism of action is the same across muscles. It probably isn't, if I had to guess. So lots to unpack. And within that stretch mediated signaling, tension type deal, there's a lot of potential players. There's the extracellular matrix. There's literally people who believe that the myonuclei flatten more and sense that tension and that causes the signaling. There's titan phosphorylation and calcium Binding to Titan causing a greater amount of stiffness, which might cause a greater amount of tension. There's tons and tons of speculation. All kinds of proteins involved. There's phosphatidic acid, there's filament. See back three. There's tons of potential players that could mediate this effect. But we're really, really in the dark for multiple reasons. The biggest reason being we don't really know where a sarcomere is in the length tension relationship in each muscle with any sort of real confidence. So, yeah.
So you did exactly what I wanted you to do when I asked you that question, which is used a bunch of words that even I don't understand, which is awesome. And the reason that I asked you that is because I wanted to highlight the fact that while we are seeing some sort of difference in growth when doing more length based training versus more short based training.
Right.
We don't know why. And the reason I wanted to ask you on air here for our audience is because as. And I don't want to make you uncomfortable in front of our audience, but Danny Boy is one of the smartest.
Dudes in this field.
And I know I'm biased because I work with him, he's a good friend of mine, but he knows more about this stuff than almost anyone I've ever met.
Right.
And even he, a true expert in this regard, doesn't understand the mechanisms of why these things are happening. That if you hear someone saying that they confidently do know, you should turn up your skepticism dial a little bit.
Right.
Because there's a lot of people that will pontificate or, sorry, will stay with a high degree of confidence that these things are happening the way they are for this specific reason. We just can't be super confident as to why.
Right.
And I just wanted to highlight that. So thank you. Thank you for doing so. Okay. Earlier we talked about, or I kind of alluded to the fact that full range of motion.
Right.
Which a bunch of different ways you can look about that, but generally it has a pretty clear colloquial understanding.
Right.
Lifting a weight through the entirety of the range of motion for an exercise that the joint will allow.
Right.
Was for a very long time thought of as being the best way to go about lifting for hypertrophy. The best way to go about maximizing the hypertrophic response from a given exercise.
Right.
However, because we know that there's something special about this lengthened position, it has led a lot of people to believe that maybe we should be spending more time in this lengthened position, I. E.
Not doing a full range of motion.
Right.
So for a very long time. And the idea that full range of motion was better than half reps or a partial range of motion was not unfounded.
Right.
For a very, very long time, the majority of studies that were looking at full range of motion and comparing it to a partial range of motion were doing so when the muscle was in a shortened position.
Right.
So they, for instance, would compare a bicep curl, a full range of bicep curl from full elbow extension all the way to full elbow flexion. They would compare that to a bicep curl in a partial range of motion, but from like 90 degrees of elbow flexion all the way up. Right. So just kind of constant tension training.
Almost to a certain extent.
Right.
And it wasn't until relatively recently that we started seeing more and more studies comparing full range of motion to a partial range of motion. But in that lengthened position, Right. Where you were taking, instead of doing a bicep curl from 90 degrees of elbow flexion all the way up, you were going from full elbow extension all the way about halfway up.
Right.
To 90 degrees and then going back down.
Right.
And they actually found that we are seeing, you see an increase in. In hypertrophy from doing that partial range of motion.
Right.
Staying in that, trying to increase the tension that your muscles are exposed to when in the lengthened position.
Right.
So for a long time, we have like 20 plus studies comparing either full range of motion to partial range of motion or different partial ranges of motion throughout or different ranges of motion at different muscle length. So a shortened bicep curl versus the length of bicep curl.
Right.
And of all of the studies comparing shortened partial range of motions to lengthened partial range of motions, you see a benefit to doing the length.
Right.
However, that's not what we're here to talk about because that's not interesting. What's interesting is that there's been about five studies. Some of them are not fully. There's one that's not fully published yet. It was presented in a conference, it's in preprint, but it's not peer reviewed. So it should be taken with not a grain of salt, but a degree of skepticism.
Right.
And of those five studies, four comparing full range of motion to a partial range of motion in the lengthened position, showing benefit. A benefit, meaning more muscle growth to those using a partial range of motion.
Right.
Which is crazy to me. I think this is like one of the most interesting and novel findings of the lab in this field within some.
Time, in my opinion.
Should have given him a shout out earlier, but this is these findings, this paper that I'm personally particularly referring to is done by Dr. Milo Wolf. And I think I said his name earlier, but he's a beast. And he's the reason that a lot of people are shifting to partial range.
Of motion training, right?
Anyway, four out of the five studies benefit to partial range of motion in a length of position. One of the five studies didn't show a detriment, but it simply showed no difference whatsoever. So I believe that was on leg extensions, and you had individuals doing even less than half of the range of motion. I think it was much shorter. I can't remember exactly, but basically no difference, right? Which is to say that length and partials, what we'll call them for the rest of this podcast, basically doing the first half of a movement is at worst the same as a full range of motion, and at best anywhere from 5 to 10% better than doing a.
Full range of motion.
Right?
And here's the really interesting thing to me is that there seems to be something particularly beneficial for partial range of motion in the distal portion of the muscle, right? So when I say distal, this is an anatomical term used to describe the position on the body, right? So when I say proximal, it just means closer to the midline. When I say distal, it just means.
Further away from the midline.
So if you look at the bicep, right, the proximal portion of your bicep is the portion that's closer to your shoulder, and the distal portion of your bicep is just the portion that's closer to your elbow, right? Here's the thing. Distal hypertrophy is good because that's where muscles look the coolest. This is not evidence based, it's just my opinion, but also basically as close to evidence based as it can be. If it's my opinion, a giant bicep, right, that hangs off your elbow or a tricep that looks like it's eating your elbow, or a quad that looks like it's swallowing your knee, that's where we want our muscles to grow. That is a really good. So the fact that we're able to preferentially target that area with this training technique is incredibly valuable in my personal opinion. So though, once a fringe opinion that, and I kind of stole that from Iron Culture, but though wants a fringe opinion that partial range of motion training was. Is a benefit, is now becoming a little bit more universally accepted.
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Now if you note, I did say five studies comparing full range of motion to partial range of motion. That is not a lot. That is not a lot. Especially given that we've only really studied it in the glutes, the quads, the calves, the biceps and the triceps.
Right.
So we can't be super competent. This stuff works for like the back, chest or any other muscle group. We can't be super confident that it even works for all of these other muscles outside of the exercises that were studied in the, in those particular studies. Right now I basically just word vomited for the last 10 minutes. I do apologize. But Danny, do you want to add anything to this discussion about full range of motion versus lengthened partials or anything like that? Is there anything that I missed that you feel like we should say?
Yeah, I think just to summarize, all the studies comparing the shortened partials versus lengthened partials were very conclusive, while we have much less evidence comparing full range of motion to partial lengthened lengthened partials, but growing evidence now that we can be at least confident that it's neutral to positive. Particularly because we have four out of five studies that are positive and one that is neutral. So there doesn't seem to be a distinct downside if you're going to cut off that range of motion for the major muscle groups. But as we spoke about previously, you might be leaving some gains on the table because different muscles exist on a different length tension relationship depending on what your limbs are doing. So only focusing on one range of motion when thinking about a particular muscle group means that you could be forgetting about other muscle groups that could round out your physique. So I think we'll get into some of the other downsides later on. But I think just as a summary, it seems pretty clear that lengthened partials are at least neutral but likely positive for many muscle groups.
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Well said. And I kind of said that like we can't be super confident that length and partials are the, are the bees knees right for hypertrophy in general. But Given because of those five studies.
Right.
But given that we have those five studies in conjunction with all of these other studies that I previously mentioned, kind of highlighting the importance of that lengthened position for a muscle.
Right.
Remember the hamstring curl study that we talked about, the intercept stretch study that we talked about. There's also this one study looking at. I'll get into this in a second actually, but let me finish this up. With all of these studies together, we can be pretty confident, not necessarily that lengthened partials are. Or the move or the bees knees, but that lengthened position training, we can be relatively confident that that's probably where we want to be spending a lot of our time if we're looking to maximize getting jacked as possible.
Right.
So to be clear, don't skip that position. Do you mean like partial training or just make sure that that position is a large part of your training?
Yeah.
So I'm not saying the length and partial training should be a large part of your training, though done to my head, I do think length and partial training, if you're looking to get as jack as possible, probably should be at least a considerable component of your training. But if you're maybe a little against doing a partial range of motion just because you've been entrenched in doing full range of motion for so long, one, I understand that. And two, there are things that you can do to, so to speak, kind of have your cake and eat it too, with respect to accentuating the length and position while also using a full range of motion. And this is actually a perfect segue into the exact thing, the exact thought that I was trying to express with respect to this other study.
Right.
So there was one study that kind of threw it. So with. Sorry. With lengthened partials, basically what we're doing is we're just taking. Because when we do a full range of motion, Right. There's pretty much even tension throughout the muscle, depending on the implement you're in a little bit. But there's basically even expo equal exposure throughout the entire range of motion to tension.
So.
Right.
However, with length and partials, what we're trying to do is just shift all of that tension, the majority of that tension to the length and position.
Right.
And there are ways to do this without doing lengthened partials.
Right.
So there was this one study that compared individuals doing preacher curls versus incline curls.
Right.
And an incline curl is where you're sitting on an incline bench and you let your arms hang behind you and you curl up.
Right.
And the reason that this is great is because the long head of your biceps brachii crosses the shoulder joint and it's placed in an even more stretched position when you place it behind your.
Back in an incline curl.
Right? So theoretically, greater growth, right. That's more stretch, greater growth than a preacher curl, where there's basically no stretch on the muscle at all, except for.
At the very end range of motion.
Right.
However, in this study, they actually found the opposite of what you would expect. They found that those doing the preacher curls grew about 50% more at the distal portion of the bicep than those.
Doing the inclined curl.
Right.
Now, there's some limitations to this study. We're not going to go into the nuances of it, but nonetheless, it demonstrated something that was a little bit contrasting to what we believe with respect to stretching.
Right.
However. However, the interesting thing here is that even though the biceps was stretched, the long head of the biceps brachii was stretched because it was placed in a stretched position. The total tension applied to the biceps as a whole, the elbow flexors as a whole, was much lower through that initial range of motion. And if you think about it, when you're doing. When you're doing a incline curl, the hardest part of that range of motion is right there at 90 degrees of elbow flexion until you get to the top. Like, that's usually where you'll see people fail that exercise.
Right.
However, on a preacher curl, the hardest part of that range of motion is when those elbow flexors are in their most stretched position. Because usually the hardest part of a preacher curl is right here at the.
Start of the range of motion, and.
Then you get it, and it's a.
Lot easier throughout the rest, right?
So maybe it's not so much that we need to stretch each muscle as much as we possibly can, but rather we just want the impulse, right? The area under the curve of tension to be applied in the most lengthened position throughout that range of motion.
Right?
So big, long winded thing is to say that there are ways, in my personal opinion, and I think, Danny boy, you would agree with this, to do lengthened partial, I call them pseudo lengthened partials without actually doing them. Because like I said, some people, you know, you want that kind of, you know, everything in its box. I can be sure that I did a full range of motion. I'm not worried about inconsistent ranges of motion or anything like that through the.
Manipulation of a couple exercise variables.
And we're going to go through those. Do you want to talk about some, maybe some pseudo Lengthened partials, You know, things like using dumbbell pullovers as opposed.
To, like, straight arm pull downs and stuff like that.
You want to go into that?
Yeah, I think there's definitely ways to set up exercises in order to make them really hard in the lengthened position and very easy in the shortened position. So, as you mentioned, dumbbell pullovers, that stretch position at the end, super hard. Once you get past, like, anywhere near your head, it gets super easy setting up cables to be directly perpendicular. So a right angle to wherever you're actually pulling is pretty much like a lengthened partial. So, for example, lateral raise, where you're the cable set up 90 degrees to your wrist. It gets super easy toward the end, but it's very hard in the beginning. And there's a lot of examples of this. You can set it up with the bicep curl, there's preacher curl variations and so on. But I think one thing to underline, based on what you were saying, is, is that there's two ways to create the lengthened position. One is by putting the joint in a position where there's the most stretch, while the other is making sure that whatever position you're in, the more stretch position is where the exercise is difficult. So you can do both or you can do one of those. So let's just take the hamstrings as an example. The hamstring crosses the hip, and the hamstring crosses the knee. So if you wanted to get the most stretch out of your hamstring, you would put it in a position where there is essentially a seated hamstring curl where you go into hip flexion and you go into knee extension. And so here, that's where the hamstring is most stretched. And I can do a hamstring curl in that position only, but I can also make that specific hamstring curl hardest in the most stretched position. Or I can change the resistance curve of that exercise to make it so that it's easiest in the stretch position, even though the limb configuration makes it so so that it's in a stretch position. So what that study kind of showed us is that not necessarily that making the exercise hardest in the stretch position is more important, but that it's integrally important that just because you put a joint into a stretch position doesn't mean that you're going to get the benefit from that position if you don't challenge the length and position within that joint configuration. So a seated hamstring curl that's super easy in the most stretched position might not be as effective as a seated hamstring curl, that that's at least somewhat difficult. And this is another limitation of the current research. We don't actually know how lengthened we need to go in order to get the most benefit. It's very possible that we don't need the seated hamstring curl to be the very hardest. At the very most stretched position, you can actually stretch the hamstring more than a seated position. We have room there in the, the, at least at the hip to get more of a stretch, but we typically don't super harshly enforce people leaning as far forward as humanly possible because we just don't know whether the most extreme stretch is the most hypertrophic. Maybe later we'll find out that, you know, there's no end to the level of stretch that's necessary. I doubt that that's true, but it's something that is definitely up in the air. So, long story short, make sure that you're stressing the muscle in a lengthened joint configuration. So that means seated hamstring curls overhead triceps, straight leg cab raises, and am I missing any other muscles that cross.
Leaning back leg extensions. Like leaning back leg extensions.
Yeah.
And we'll talk about kind of like some limitations to maybe, maybe there is a way to take the stretch too far.
Right.
Maybe, maybe you shouldn't lean as far forward as you possibly can on the seated hamstring curl. We'll get into that in just a second. But, you know, one, I think that was all really well said, bro, that there's basically two things we care about. One, stretching the muscle, and two, exposing the muscle to the most tension or at least a considerable amount of tension in that lengthened position, regardless if you're stretching that muscle or not.
Right.
And I think that was beautifully highlighted by that preacher gold study. Exactly. And then, yeah, kind of like we were saying, like if, you know, if you, you're, you're apprehensive, if you're a little bit scrupulous, if you will, about, about doing partial ranges of motion because you're worried about, you know, consistency or whatever it may be. There are some exercises that are kind of inherently lengthened partials. Like for instance, you said the dumbbell pullover. It's really hard in the late position and basically not hard at all in the stretched or in the shortened right for the lats. And the same can be true that for like, basically any pressure pressing movement. We do most pressing movements, we do like chest pressing, like bench pressing machine chest pressing, dumbbell Pressing or anything like that. Generally, that is inherently the hardest in the length of position. It gets easier and easier user on the pecs throughout the range of motion.
Right.
And there's ways to set this up, like on a cable, for instance, for flies. You just want to make sure that the cable is directly perpendicular to you when behind you as opposed to to your sides. Because if it's directly perpendicular at the sides, it's going to be the hardest.
And the short condition.
Right.
But you also have things like dumbbell flies. Those are kind of inherently lakehood partials as well.
Right.
So that. With that being said, I think that. And I just heard Milo say that Dr. Milo Wolf say this recently on one of his YouTube videos. Basically, he thinks that the muscles that will benefit the most from doing, like, length and partials and stuff like that are the muscles that are very uncommonly exposed to that. So.
Right.
Like I was saying, most of the chest movements we do.
Right.
Most of the quad movements that we do.
Right.
Like squats, leg presses, lunges, they're already the hardest in the most lengthened position. So there might not be a huge benefit to like, doing, like, impartials on those anyway.
Right.
But you take something like the deltoids, like the lateral delts, Right.
Or the back. Right.
Those are two muscles that are very commonly the hardest in the most shortened position. Those might be the muscles that will benefit the most from doing partial ranges of motion.
Right.
So that's just. It's just an interesting thing to keep.
In mind right.
Before we talk about. Because we're. We're kind of wrapping up here, and before we get into, you know, some limitations, some downsides to some potential downsides to partial range of motion. You want to talk about how you integrate partial range of motion training into your own training or that of your clients and kind of how you go about working these into your program.
Yeah. So I've slightly definitely made some adjustments as research has come out more, I've biased more of the training to exercises we were talking about previously to where it's essentially just kind of a length and partial. So setting up cables correctly, pullovers, things of that nature. But now I've come to integrate partials a lot more. I started integrating them particularly mostly for back movements. And now the way I would integrate them was just after they got to failure, I would have them do partial ranges of motion. But now all, many times within a set, have them do a partial, because I think that makes a little bit more sense from a fatigue standpoint. If it is Truly more hypertrophic. And there's not a whole lot of downside. But I wouldn't say it's changed training too much considering. I think the only thing it's really done is shift some shoulder back and a little bit of bicep movements and that's really about it. So making sure that there's some. Both lateral delt and posterior delt length and stuff, making sure that there's some integrated partials for back movements and making sure that there's some cable movements or preacher curl movements that are challenging that lengthened position for the bicep. But other than that, to Milo and your point, a lot of that was pretty much covered by the typical exercises that one would do in the gym.
Yeah, yeah, we were kind of, we were kind of sold because I mean the, the lengthened portion of the exercise for as long as you and I have been on the, the field has kind of been. We kind of already knew that there might have been something kind of special about that stretch.
Right.
So. Right. Like you said, it kind of didn't change anything drastically.
Right.
Except maybe we're now just turning that dial up a little bit more with respect to spending time in that stretch.
Right now.
You said integrated partials and I think this is an important thing to highlight here.
Right.
Because the way a lot of people do it or did it, and one that does not make a lot of sense to me at all.
Right.
Is what we call, let's call it a lengthened superset. I think that's what Milo called it in one of his recent YouTube videos where you basically, let's say you, you're doing bent over dumbbell rows or bent over rows, and you do a set to as many as you possibly can with the barbell touching your chest in a, in a bent over row. And then when you can no longer do that, you just knock out as many partial range of motion reps like let's say to your knee or, or just above your knee, right. Until you fail. That one doesn't make a lot of sense to me because you're just spending overall less time in that kind of lengthened position. You know, it just. There's not a strong rationale that I've.
Heard with respect to doing in that way.
I was actually thinking about this, not to get off topic.
No, please, please.
But aren't there some studies and it's been a while since I looked at this, looking at force reps that did not show raider hypertrophy, so, so like, I'm not sure if it's a longitudinal study. But that's why on the air, I'm putting you on the spot. Are there studies that for example, in a bench press have one group that just does straight sets and another group that does three, four strips, for example, or like doesn't have to be benched literally any other exercise? I thought, I mean based on the mechanisms it makes some sense that there wouldn't be as much of a, of a benefit because of a lot of the fast twitch motor units dropping out and so on, but maybe based on nothing. Kind of the consensus in the evidence based sphere was that those force reps were more fatigued than they were worth and not more hypertrophic. So if that were true though, then many of that would be essentially more lengthened.
More stimulus. Just more stimulus.
More stimulus in general.
So yeah, when you say force reps, do you just mean like allowing form to break down? Oh no, I'm the individual assisted.
Literally assist you for, for three years?
I don't know. I don't think so. I, I don't, I can't think of any off the top of my head. Golly, what a, what a difficult thing to study too. I mean, why, at what point? Well, it would be, I mean it would be a simple design, but with respect.
Oh yeah. How much did the actual individual help? Yeah, for sure, sure.
That would be, that would be relatively. It would actually, you know what would be really cool because it would be really easy on like some of the newer machines like the tonal, where even.
The tonal that's not consistent, like it'll drop based on.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So who knows?
Who knows?
But back to what we were just talking about with respect to integrated versions. So we were, we just covered how. I don't think that you know, doing like a set extended length and partial.
Is a good idea necessarily.
But what you were saying about integrated partials makes a lot more sense to me.
Right.
So that the opposite. The difference here is that let's say, let's take the same dumbbell row or the same bent over row example here. I would do one rep with a full range of motion all the way down, one rep with a like the partial all the way down and then alternate between those two throughout the course of the set. This one makes a lot more sense to me. Again, this is for those of you that are maybe a little bit skeptical about just using a partial range of motion in general, but this makes a lot more sense to me because it's just again shifting that impulse, that area under the curve of tension to a more lengthened muscle length throughout that, throughout the entire set. So that's one way that a lot of people go about it. I personally, not that Danny Boy asked, but I'll answer my own question. I. I have started using lengthened partials for a lot of different exercises and I find them to be quite enjoyable. Now, I can't say that I've blown up in the last year because I started using lengthen partials. I just started recently doing them, but I do enjoy them. They do give you gnarly pumps. And I don't know if it's placebo, but I do feel it in the distal portion of my muscles a little bit more than the normal. And like I said, I don't know if that's necessarily because I know that it grows the distal portion more. So I feel it in the distal portion more.
But it's just worth mentioning in general.
Unless you have anything else to add there. We can go into maybe some limitations, some downsides, some common, you know, beliefs about why, like the partials might not.
Be a great idea.
Yeah.
Or just some considerations with them in general. But go ahead.
Yeah. One thing I forgot to mention was that calf raises I've definitely done way more partials with, especially because I think the evidence is probably stronger in the calves than maybe potentially any other muscle currently in terms of full range versus partial range, I think there's two or three studies now showing that specifically. So, yeah, I'm not, I don't know, I think I could go out on a limb and say that the shortened range of motion for that cab raise may be very minimally hypertrophic. So I definitely do more partials for calves. One, one, one muscle that I didn't mention during that whole spiel. So, yeah, we can get into it. Limit you eat.
So the first one, the first and in my opinion most common argument against lengthened partials is that it may be hard to stay consistent.
Repetition to repetition.
Right.
And that's to say that, you know, with the full range of motion, I'm very confident that that barbell touched my chest on, let's say a bent over barbell row.
Right.
But you know, did I go above my knee? Am I like 1cm below my knee Was you do length and partials. It's a common argument. However, when I heard Milo say this, because Milo Wolf is basically the leading expert with respect to partial range promotion. And I've kind of been alluding to that this whole podcast. But that's why I Keep referring to him because he is quite literally the expert when it comes to this stuff.
Right.
And he said his argument against the consistency argument.
Right.
His counter to the consistency argument was that in these studies these individuals are lifting with anywhere from one third to two thirds of the range of motion and seeing the same if not better growth. Then you probably shouldn't concern yourself too much with there being an inch or two less on a given rep.
Right.
Not even throughout an entire set but on a given rep. And I think that's a pretty strong argument. But even then I think that it's it, it's pretty easy to tell. So like especially when you're doing stuff like machines, you can pick a landmark on the machine to kind of move to. Especially if you're on like a cable stack, you can say okay, I left until the cable get the, the stack of weights gets to here and then.
I go back down or whatever it may be.
And there's also a notion of like this is not evidence based but you can just kind of feel it. Like you can just kind of feel when you're getting out of that length of position, you can kind of feel when the, the exercise is getting a little bit easier because you're getting into a more favorable position to pull. Basically I'm saying that I think the worry about not being consistent rep to rep is a bit of a non starter. I don't, I don't think that that's really something that you should be too concerned with with respect to integrating like the partials into your, into your program. Do you have anything you want to say there?
Yeah, I think just the Steelman the argument maybe a little bit more, although I agree with you, individuals want to know that they're increasing low week to week and if there isn't a level of consistency then they're not sure that they're making progress. So I think that's the biggest concern that they have. So if you're not. So in your example, if there was one inch less, one day, one inch more the other day, then you're not getting that same level of knowledge clarity, you're actually progressing. Yeah, but my counter to that is on a week to week basis, if you're in the ballpark of that range of motion, which as you mentioned it's fairly easy to do once you've, if you've given it some thought in terms of thinking about your limb in position to where it is on or in respect to your own body. So like a few inches away from my lat or the specific machine and where it's ending, you can figure out some way to make it consistent. And then if you're within an inch, you know, plus or minus, you'll know if you're progressing week to week. Maybe one week you're slightly off, but as long as you're in the back of your head saying, this is the long game, let me make sure that I'm progressing on this exercise over the long term. Those minor differences are going to wash out for sure if you're the type of person that's super neurotic about wanting to know that you're progressing, which even that is an obvious issue because there's way more variables that get help. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And even just gauging progress week to week, as if that is going to be an amazing proxy toward muscle size, is an issue. You can have an off week, sometimes even two off weeks in a row, and then skyrocket after that. So I don't think it is a very good argument, even regardless of that making sure that you're increasing week to week type thing, because one, you can standardize pretty well. And, and two, even if the standardization isn't absolutely perfect, you're still going to get to know whether you're increasing over time. After two, three weeks, it'll be very, very obvious.
Okay, yeah, yeah, I think we're in agreement there. It ain't that big of a deal. With respect to being consistent, the next argument, and this is mine, this is an argument that I will, I do think is valid, is that you can take the stretch too far, theoretically. So they're, they're. They're probably like, you kind of were alluding to this earlier. There might be a point where, you know, you're increasing that passive tension, but you're sacrificing active tension so much that it's ultimately reducing the total amount of.
Tension that the muscle is producing.
Right? So, like, for instance, you often see people leaning really far forward on the leg curl, right. On the seated hamstring curl. Now, aside from just weird hip pain that I don't personally enjoy, it's also possible that you're ultimately putting the hamstring in such an unfavorable position to produce force that you're limiting the total hypertrophic stimuli. Now, this isn't just logical either, right? There is some empirical data to support this. So there was this study where they took individuals, and there's some limitations to the study for sure, but they took individuals and they had them perform leg extensions either at 90 degrees, I believe, of hip flexion, something like 135 degrees. So kind of leaning back and then all the way to, like, 180 degrees, laying completely down. And they actually found that those at. And I'm making this number up. I do apologize. I think it was 135, 140 degrees, something like that. They actually grew the most, which is surprising, because if you take this stretch thing to the nines right in your head, it would make the most sense for them to grow the most in that most stretched position where they're laying back fully. Because, remember, the rectus femoris crosses both the hip and the knee, and it's stretched the most when you're in full hip extension.
Right.
So that's possible. And, Danny boy, maybe you can. Maybe you can tell me why I'm.
So stupid for thinking this.
Go ahead.
Well, I think one is that I'm 99.99% sure that wasn't a longitudinal study. I think you're referring to, like, T2 MRI. I don't think we have.
Was it.
Yeah, I don't think we have a study looking at hypertrophy with different levels of lean or stretch for the rec fem. I would be shocked if that existed, and I didn't know about it.
You know what study I'm talking about, though, right?
Yeah, that was T2 MRI. What they were looking at ascent. They were using a proxy for tension muscle swelling, basically.
Right?
Yeah, yeah. T2 MRI is not really swelling, but, yeah, it's. It's another fairly weak proxy, in my opinion, at least at the moment. I think that study was the one that convinced me that it was a weak proxy, just based on the fact that there was so much noise, like, stuff that you would expect was not occurring because they. They also measured the vast eye, and you would expect if it tracked with hypertrophy, that you would always see a Greater amount of REC FEM T2 MRI signal. But that wasn't the case, depending on the angle and so on. So there was just a lot going on in that study that made me think, this is not tracking with what you would expect, even in areas where we know what should happen. So, yeah, I thought what you were getting at there, and I haven't seen these numbers, was that the load that they lifted in the most lengthened position was less, but even that wouldn't necessarily be the strongest.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't.
You can lying hamstring curl far more than you can see in hamstring curl, but that's. Man, I have to go back and look at the study. I do apologize to our wonderful audience for, for misinforming there or being misinformed there, but I'll have to go take a look at that. We'll maybe hopefully put it in the show notes how I was being such an idiot. Anyway, regardless of that particular study, it is possible that you can take the stretch too far, no less, where you can ultimately sacrifice the amount of tension the muscle is able to produce to a point where it is not outweighed by the fact that the muscle is being stretched. So I think the biggest takeaway, biggest giveaway for this is if you're like the and Dave boy, you and I have experienced this and discussed this where if you are, let's say, leaning forward as far as possible as you can on the seated hamstring curl machine, you'll feel this like really weird hip impingement, kind of like uncomfortable feeling that doesn't allow you to like finish the set.
Right.
Were you about to say something?
Yeah, I just think that people should go by comfort if you're feeling significant discomfort in the position. Trust me, the stretch mediated hypertrophy is not worth it. Likely it's not going to benefit you anymore. And even if it did, you don't want to be in pain. Slash out for, you know, being out of the gym is way more likely to cause decrements in your physique than not being in the most stretched position. For sure. Especially because of what we talked about before where we don't know the amount of stretch necessary in order to create the most hypertrophy. And honestly, every single study I want to say on this topic is not in the most stretched position. I don't think there's any study that exists that was comparing the most stretched position. Maybe. No, not even the meow study with the overhead.
Because you could make the argument to say that. Yeah, 11.
Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, we're not really comparing the most stretched position versus the most shortened position or any. We're just comparing a more stretched position versus a more shortened position. And the more stretch position has come out on top. So where on that spectrum we stop getting that benefit, we don't know.
Yeah, that was really beautifully said, bro.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Okay, so one other limitation or consideration is that some might argue, maybe erroneously so, or at least unfoundedly, that these lengthened marshals are more injurious than using a full range of motion.
Right.
And one, I don't think there's any evidence to Support that you could make a logical argument for why that might be the case, but you could make a logical argument for why that wouldn't be the case. For a lot of these exercises, you have to use less weight than you.
Would normally normally be using for a full range of motion. Right.
And some you can use more, but most. Most aside from like the back and.
The delts, you end up using less weight.
Now, I remember when I initially started doing length and marshals, I started with the leg extension, and I did notice they felt fine, they were gnarly, and gave me a dope pump. But the next day, I kind of felt some weird pain in my knee, like the anterior portion of my knee. I was like, okay, that's a little weird. A little weird. Nothing crazy. A little weird. And then I did it again and again and again, and the pain just ultimately went away. Something that, as long as you are, in my personal opinion and the built with science TM opinion is that as long as you're exposing yourself to these things gradually and not aggressively over time. So like, don't go and switch every single exercise you're doing with lengthen partial. It's. I. I personally think that it's unlikely this is more injurious than. Than using a long range of. But like, with everything, just work up gradually to it. Anything you want to say?
Yeah, I'm. I'm definitely Team Antif fragile. I think most of the things that many would consider to be injurious is more about grading exposures, making sure that you start small and building up. So, yeah, I'm definitely in the camp of our bodies are strong, resilient, and able to tolerate a whole lot of bs, so don't nocebo yourself into injuries. And two, I don't know if you guys are familiar with my boy Max here, but the guy has some joints, so don't go by his anecdote or.
Sure. So that's riddled with injuries. Did you just come up with Team antifragile? No.
There's an individual on Instagram that is like making shirts and I think his name is Alec Banis or Bennis, who is starting that movement, which. Which I wholeheartedly support.
So, yeah, yeah, I'm on Team Anti. That's incredible. I love that. Team Anti fragile. That's incredible. Okay.
Yeah.
Well said. Well said to you. Take. Take anything I ever say with respect to personal injuries with a grain of salt because my parents done me with the worst connective tissue possible in all of my joints. But fortunately they Also gave me horrible.
Muscle building genetics as well.
Okay. And the last thing, not the last thing, there's some other things, but my last thing, because most of these other limitations or downsides are yours, is safety with respect to failing. So just like with drop sets, you probably want to do most of your length and partial work with machines, dumbbells, and, or at least have a spotter with you at all times. Because if you are, if you, if you get very close to failure on, let's say a bench press, it's okay, you just finish that rep. If you think you have one more, just play it safe and don't do it, put it back. Right. But when you're doing lengthen partials and you get really close to failure, it's possible that you're, you may be able to finish another partial range of motion rep, but you're so fatigued that you might not actually be able to finish another full range of motion rep. So it's better to do things like again, how to spotter, use a Smith machine that you can rack anywhere or use dumbbells that can just fall to the floor, stuff like that. That's just, just one concern, especially with the fact that, and there's no data on this, but personally I found this to be the case with myself and my clients. It's really hard to gauge proximity to failure with lengthened partials. It's just new. It's just a new thing. So anytime you do something new, there's.
Like a learning curve there.
But there seems to be something like failure seems to creep up pretty quickly with respect to length and partials, in my opinion. So it's just important to always play it safe.
Right.
You got anything you want to add there?
Yeah, I was just going to say. Exactly. Sometimes it sneaks up on you where you're like, oh crap, I can't move the load anymore. And it seemed like you could have done a couple more. So for sure, just, I think safeties, even if you're going to use free weights that you can't drop, just make sure the safeties are in the right position and be good to go. Leg press. Yeah, but the safety's in the right spot.
You have here one, how long is long, question mark. And then two, potentially an additive effect with higher volumes. Do you want to touch on those?
Yeah. So we went over the how long is long situation.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We don't know where that benefit will end, so we don't need to belabor that. But the additive effect part is interesting. Where most of the studies on the subject are essentially just looking at comparing two exercises or comparing partials of an exercise where that's the only exercise in the program. There are a couple of exceptions, I think, one or two studies, but the majority are just comparing a very minimalist program and looking at this specific question. But in the real world, we all have a non minimalist minimalist program where we're doing a whole bunch of exercises for each muscle group. So my question is this. Does the length and position create a higher ceiling for the amount of growth or is it just more efficient at getting you to that ceiling? So said, in another way, can we grow more by using the lengthened position on more exercises, or are we just able to grow the same amount from less sets or less volume by using that lengthened position? Conversely, it's possible that together the lengthened dominant exercises and shortened dominant exercises could have different mechanisms that themselves raise that ceiling. So it's possible, although this is extremely speculative, that making sure that you keep some shortened exercises allow for you to have that low fatigue cherry on top while doing more lengthened positioned exercises or all lengthened position exercises would probably benefit the person who's trying to be a minimalist and just do the least amount of sets, not try to get the absolute most gains possible from their training. So until we have studies that compare both with volumes that would typically be seen in the gym, I'm not going to completely write off particular range of motion. But this is, as I mentioned, very speculative. But just some things to throw out there because of the fact that the subject is very new and very little studies exist. And I think I spoke about this with Milo actually on the Chasm Cas podcast, where he basically agreed that it's possible but very speculative. So I think that's something to mention, while also the consideration that we have tons of muscles and those muscles exist on different parts of the length tension relationship, where doing 20% of your volume in a position, that's harder and the shortened position is probably covering your bases to some extent for those other small muscle groups anyways. So I think from a pragmatic standpoint or a practical standpoint, what the typical individual who's being evidence based would do is probably covering most of their bases unless they're being super dogmatic about one thing or another. So every single exercise is a lengthened partial and so on.
Yeah, no, that's really beautifully said, bro.
There's also something to be said about the fact that. Oh and well, so let me say this. We don't have to speculate about that for much longer because Milo does have this incredible multi site study that's going to come out where he is looking at like a realistic, like very ecologically valid program training a bunch of different muscles using either full range or LinkedIn partials. So that's going to be a really cool one and it's going to have a huge sample size.
I'm really, really looking forward to that.
So we don't have to speculate any further. Anything else you want to say with respect to limitations before we wrap this bad boy up?
Yeah, so I left this out in the mechanism section, but I'll just throw this out there for some of you muscle nerds. There are other things that could potentially be going on from mechanistic standpoint that I kind of want to cover. One is that because certain muscles could potentially produce more force in certain ranges of motion, they could be favored in that exercise. And that could be the reason why certain particular muscles are benefiting from a particular range of motion. That is speculative, but something that could pretty easily be studied. So I'm sure we'll have some data on that soon. And the other thing is that many people make the claim that lengthened partials are just more hypertrophic because of the fact that it's constant tension. Many of the exercises that are not lengthened partials, there's a very big drop off in the amount of force needed to be produced. So they think that that constant tension is producing more growth. But you could make just as good of an argument on the other side where if that mid range position was more hypertrophic, you're actually giving it, giving the muscle a tiny bit of rest and allowing them to produce more tension in a potentially hypertrophic position. So it's what. Basically what I'm saying is it's not clear at all that keeping tension on the muscle is more hypertrophic. So while the argument stands, it's not based on anything robust. So just throwing those out there in case people were wondering about the common gripes about what's going on and why from a length mediated hypertrophy standpoint.
Any other limitations you want to cover before we wrap this up?
What did we say here? Limitations. I think that's good. I think we covered things for the most part.
Sweet. Cool. Awesome. Okay, so with respect to muscle length training, remember ladies and gentlemen, listeners, guys, gals and non binary pals of the Built With Science crew, all muscles pull. And the way that muscles work is by pulling one bone closer or further.
Away from another bone.
Right.
And generally speaking, you want to expose the majority of the tension in an exercise to that length of position, which generally can be easily thought of as.
The beginning portion of an exercise.
Right.
Or just when the muscle feels the most stretched. That's another kind of easy colloquial way.
Of going about it.
Right.
And it's probably a good idea to use or integrate lengthened partials, remember, which is just a partial range of motion in that lengthened position into your training.
If you're looking to get as maximally jacked as possible.
However, if you are someone who's maybe a little bit worried about not being able to consistently measure going to the. To standardizing your range of motion, there are ways to set up exercises. So they're what we call pseudo lengthened partials.
Right.
Things like dumbbell pullovers, any. Basically any free weight chest exercise that you do. Doing lateral raises with the cable at the height of your hand, as opposed to a dumbbell.
Right.
There's a bunch of different ways that you can do length and partials without doing a length and partial, if that makes sense.
Right.
Kind of not a whole lot to say here. It's not. It's one thing that's probably important to say that this is not going to revolutionize your physique by any means. We're talking about a maybe 5 to 10% increase in hypertrophy across all of the studies that have looked at it. But the one thing that we can be sure is if you're interested in doing partial range of motion in general, make sure that it's in that lengthened.
Position and not in that shortened position at all.
Right.
Anything else you want to say with respect to summary?
Yeah, I think the only thing from a practical standpoint is just make sure that for muscles that cross two joints, you do some work in that most stretched position by putting the muscle in the more lengthened position with respect to both of those joints, and at the same time, make sure that the exercise is harder in that lengthened position. So there's two categories there that I think people need need to be considering. One, put the joint in the position where the muscle is getting the most stretch, and two, make sure that the exercise is harder in the more stretched position, regardless of where the joint is.
Sweet. Awesome.
Beautifully said as always, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to the Built With Science podcast. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us at Instagram at Built the Science. And of course, if you have anything that you like covered, Please. Again, feel free to reach out to us at Built with Science on Instagram. Peace.
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