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Range of motion (ROM) seems to invade every discussion about lifting.
I’ve noticed this since entering the “fitness industry” years ago, and our discussions about ROM continue to be as painful as ever.
As of late, I’ve also noticed that the most common questions I get when I post a video of an exercise - regardless of what the exercise is for - are all about ROM. They usually look something like this:
“Why aren’t you using full ROM?”
“Why aren’t you locking out fully?”
“Why aren’t you going all the way down"?”
And so on.
Today, I'll do my best provide a framework for how to understand ROM.
What is ROM?
ROM (Range of motion) refers to the distance something travels in any movement.
Most people speak of only one kind of ROM, but there are multiple types of ROM that need consideration in the context of lifting:
Implement ROM is usually what people mean by "ROM" implicitly. Implement ROM refers to how much an external object - like a barbell, DBs, cables, etc. - travels during an exercise.
Joint ROM refers to the range through which a specific joint or joints travel during or outside the context of an exercise. Many physical therapists use this kind of ROM testing outside the context of exercise, which we will discuss later.
Muscle ROM refers to the range a specific muscle lengthens and shortens during an exercise. Muscle length change is often non-uniform throughout a joint range.
“Passive” ROM is a subcategory of joint and muscle ROM that refers to the range a joint or joints can be moved by an external force (typically a person, but it could also be an implement) when an individual is not attempting to move.
“Active” ROM is a subcategory of joint and muscle ROM, which refers to the range a joint or joints can be moved via active contraction by the individual alone. This is typically tested with no added external load.
All of these different categories are intimately related.
However, when attempting to understand ROM in the context of exercise, it is important to make these distinctions for reasons that will soon become clear.
Implement ROM
Implement ROM is the most discussed yet least relevant category to consider.
The range through which you choose to move an external object should always be a secondary consideration.
One of the clearest examples of arbitrary implement standards comes from powerlifting and the bench press.
Athletes and lifters are taught early on (usually in high school or before) that touching the barbell to the chest is super important.
But telling an individual to touch the bar to their chest pays no mind to what an individual’s joints, ligaments, tendons, and muscles have to say about the amount of force and motion that person experiences.
Nor is it directly relavent to the indivdual's goal - what muscles are they attempting to target? How should the joints be aligned?
Depending on an individual’s joint structure, amounts of muscle or fat, connective tissue status, muscular strength, and skill, touching the bar to one’s chest may or may not be appropriate.
Some individuals may be comfortable touching the bar to their chest, while others might never be able to do it without some complication or weird feeling in their shoulders, elbows, and wrists.
This is not something you can generally predict but should be investigated on an individual level.
Are you not convinced about the arbitrary nature of something like touching a barbell to your chest?
Think about the barbell deadlift.
Who decided what the diameter of a 45-pound plate should be (17.72 inches)?
Whoever did (thank you, whoever you are) accidentally decided the amount of ROM that everyone who deadlifts should use.
Imagine the diameter of a 45-pound plate was twice its current length. Everyone would be deadlifting with the bar (most likely) starting above their knees—which we’d call “partial ROM” if someone deadlifted that way now.
Implement ROM should depend on all the factors listed above and the individual’s goal with a given movement.
Remember…prioritizing implement ROM is ultimately arbitrary without defined goals. That doesn’t make it irrelevant (and in some cases, this can be a helpful strategy to put boundaries on ROM), but it does mean that it should be considered after the other kinds of ROM we’ll discuss.
Joint and Muscle ROM
Joint ROM is specific to the contact surfaces between bones, while muscle ROM is specific to the length of a given muscle.
For example, the elbow can straighten to an average of 0Âş (where the upper arm and forearm are roughly parallel). When we assess ROM at the elbow, we are describing how the contact surfaces of the upper arm and forearm relate to one another.
If the elbow is at the 0Âş (straightened) position, all three triceps are relatively short in length (maximally contracted or "squeezed").
But if the arm is raised above the head while the elbow is still at 0º (straight elbow), the long head of the triceps—the one that attaches to the shoulder blade—will lengthen to increase its ROM into the stretched position (while the other two triceps will remain the same length):
I can perform a triceps push-down with the same amount of elbow bending ROM that I do an overhead triceps extension. However, in the overhead triceps extension, the muscle ROM utilized in the long head of triceps is completely different from the former scenario.
So although joint ROM at the elbow remained the same in either case, the length at which the long head of triceps is trained is distinct (longer or more stretched in the case of the overhead extension).
Of course, the joint ROM at the shoulder is changing between these examples, but that's part of the point - depending on the muscle, length change can depend on multiple kinds of motion (and not all motions of the shoulder in this context would equally lengthen the long head).
So - joint and muscle ROM are directly related but should be examined individually when analyzing exercise.
Another example is lowering the bar to my chest during a barbell bench press, which will lengthen most of my pecs to a large degree.
However, where the individual directs their arm path - a wider press versus a narrow press - will influence which pecs lengthen the most and, thus, which pecs are trained through the largest ROM.
For example, if someone performs a wider grip bench press, they will lengthen the upper pecs more than the lower pecs per degree of upper arm motion backward.
If someone performs a narrower grip bench press, they are likely to lengthen the middle and lower pecs more than the upper pecs per degree of upper arm motion backward.
The shoulder joint may reach an end-range extended ("lowered") position in both cases, but the muscular influences between these positions are quite different.
Implement ROM may look identical between cases - imagine the bar touches the chest at the bottom in either case, yet the muscular stimulus and joint forces are distinct.
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Non-Uniform Muscle Length Change
Muscle length changes also often occur non-uniformly throughout a given joint range of motion.
Imagine the lats during a pull-down, for example: much of the muscle length change occurs in the top 50% of the motion compared to the bottom 50%.
The same holds true across many different muscles and motions. So although each case would need individualized attention, it is worth understsanding that 10% of a joint's range of motion does not always - and often doesn't - equal 10% of a muscle's length change.
Joint ROM Considerations
The structural components of the joint in question define an individual’s ROM in any given context.
For example, the glenohumeral (GH) joint of the shoulder can, on average, move through 160-180º of flexion (raising the arm forward and upward). But the elbow can only typically move through 120-150º of flexion (bending), depending on the structure of one’s elbow and size of their arms and forearms.
Is this a bug or a feature? Should the shoulder move the same as the elbow?
Or is this simply a structural feature of these joints?
In addition, not all joints move the same way, and some have structural limits that prevent them from moving in specific directions.
For example, the GH joint can effectively move in any direction (with eventual limitation), but the elbow can only move in one direction.
Again - is this a bug?
No. This is simply the nature of these joints and how they are meant to move - and we should look at variance in joint ROM between people in a similar way.
Active VS Passive ROM
Active and passive ROM are two additional kinds of ROM that are often too generalized to be helpful. Why?
Any time you measure active ROM, you do so against a specific force.
This force has a magnitude (an amount) and a direction.
Active and passive ROM may also change if either the magnitude or the direction of resistance changes during any motion.
For example, imagine you tested shoulder ROM into the overhead position, and you did it in three distinct ways:
- Lying down on a table facing upward.
- Standing up.
- Lying down on a table facing downward (arms hanging off).
Each of these three scenarios presents a different physics equation.
And yet we’re taught that assessing one of these has more merit than the others? This is nonsense.
The active ROM we display between these three scenarios - with the weight of our arm alone - may be substantially different.
In addition, when we load the shoulders with cables, DBs, etc., this again will change—not only in terms of magnitude and direction of the force but also in variables like tempo, stability, and how force changes through the motion.
Passive ROM ends up being as generalized as active ROM because the amount of passive ROM we display is directly proportional to the magnitude of the force pushing us into a passive position.
For example, someone can 1) forcefully shove my arm overhead or 2) carefully raise it, stopping when they feel strong resistance to the action.
In the context of lifting, the amount of passive ROM we display scales in proportion to the amount of load we use on any exercise.
A clear example of this is displayed in powerlifters who can only squat “to depth” (another arbitrary standard which has leaked outside of powerlifting) when a substantial amount of their 1-rep maximum is put onto the bar.
Many elite powerlifters have trouble squatting down to the positions they do with heavy loads because the additional force completely changes how the body interacts with the barbell (center of mass changes, passive range in joints may change, active range of control may change, etc.).
So while active and passive ROMs are definitely a thing that exists, in the context of exercise, it's impossible in some sense to distinguish between them.
Exercise ROM
How much range of motion should you use during any exercise?
For anyone who’s been subscribed to this newsletter for some time, you’ll probably guess that the answer is…it depends!
But what does it depend on?
The goal! We must start with the end goal and work backward from there.
Let’s go over an example involving two kinds of barbell squats…
In this scenario, imagine two types of goals: one to target your quads and the other to target your glutes.
Should these two squats look the same? If they should, how have you come to that conclusion?
The way we’d load the quads is substantially different from the way we’d load the glutes—they are completely different muscles that surround different joint structures and require different loading directions to target maximally.
While there is obvious overlap between glutes and quads in any squatting motion (and you need to use both groups to complete any squat), these squats should look very different.
To maximize quad recruitment in a barbell squat, you LIKELY need the following:
- The torso is relatively more upright.
- Heels are elevated.
- Knee bend is maximized.
- Load direction goes through the ~middle of the femur.
To maximize glute recruitment in a barbell squat, you LIKELY need the following:
- The torso is relatively more bent over.
- Feet are likely flat on the floor (but heel elevation may be necessary).
- Hip bend is maximized.
- Load direction falls closer to the knee than to the hip.
Here are two photos that illustrate these concepts:
While these two squats don’t look completely distinct, many individuals will have drastically different-looking knee and hip-dominant squats.
For example, the relationship between the femur and the ground (almost parallel in both variations above) usually ends up being very different, wherein the quad-dominant squat looks much more “folded,” and the glute-dominant squat looks more like a deadlift (less “folded,” more “hingey”).
Can we say that one of these two variations is better than the other based on the range of motion we observe externally?
No!
The forces and joint positions are distinct and muscle length and tension will be different as a consequence.
If you have not identified the goal of the exercise, you should not make claims about one of these being better than the other.
So, although the glute-dominant variation looks like it has “less total ROM” than the quad-dominant variation, the glutes actually experience much more tension than the quads, and as a consequence, the glutes are trained to a greater degree.
Conclusions
Hopefully, the message is clear here.
ROM is an important variable - there’s no doubt about it.
But how much ROM one should use ultimately must be traced back to two simple questions: What am I trying to do? What range is available to me, based on my individual anatomy and the scenario at hand?
Our goals inform the ROM we use - the ROM we use should not create our goals.
-Ben
P.S - if you want to master the science behind lifting, you should check out my lifetime mentorship program.
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