Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2025-06-22

The vast majority of people who lift weights believe it's all about lifting weights. They don't see that lifting weights is the means to an end, they see it as the end. So their training modality is geared toward how much weight they can lift. Gyms encourage this by having people track their reps and weights. Typically, once you reach 12 reps you are supposed to "graduate" to using the next heavier weight. While this sounds good in theory, it is terrible in practice.

One of the effects of lifting with this modality is you go into performance mode instead of training mode. Let's take the biceps curl, as an example. The typical lifter will shortchange the range of motion to use only the strongest 60% of that range. And s/he will recruit other muscles into the lift. Doing it this way, I have curled over half my body weight with one hand. But it's not training.

One of the things sacrificed by this practice is useful strength. When you lift something heavy, say one end of your friend's couch, what range of motion do you use? It's nearly always that part that the typical weight lifter does not train.

I break the biceps curl down into three ranges of motion:

Full contraction. Leverage is most favorable here, so I use a heavy weight. I don't do a lot of work in this part of the range. But it does allow me to get that hard squeeze.
Midrange. This is where the typical gym rat stays, though full contraction might also be used. On back/biceps day, I do three exercises in this range and four sets of each. But instead of doing crazy heavy weight that merely recruits other muscles, I use a lighter weight so I can focus on good form rather than being desperate to move the weight.
Full contraction. This is the hardest to work, and it's where I work the hardest. I do two exercises in this range with 20lbs and one with only 10lbs. The one with 10lbs involves my lying back on an incline and hyperextending my arms in front of me. Strict form is required to avoid injury.

As a result of my full contraction work, my biceps are very thick at the elbow insertions and the tendons there are huge relative to my biceps. I have impressive physical strength in my arms relative to my size, because this is the part of the arms that gets called on when doing things like climbing or moving heavy objects. It's useful strength.

Full extension work provides several advantages:

Greater usable strength.
Better aesthetics.
Stronger tendons and ligaments.
Significantly improved protection against injury.
Greater overall muscle growth versus training in the rest of the range (some studies show a 3X factor).
Greater adaptive response.

Full extension work has these disadvantages:

It takes discipline.
If training in a public place, you will be using a lot less weight than some undermuscled weight slinger, who will then smugly congratulate himself on being stronger than you are.
Sloppy form invites injury, so you have to stop when you need to stop rather than being able to claim more reps. There goes your fake progress on that gym tracking app!
It is really exhausting, and recovery takes longer.

How to incorporate it into your workouts

For large compound movements, don't just go farther down in your bench press or sit deeper in your squats. That can result in injury, if you go down past your individual limit with that much weight. Instead, add a set or two with a lot less weight and do the part of the range of motion you didn't do earlier. For squats, your body weight alone will probably suffice. For the bench press, use dumbbells and adjust your arm angles as needed.
For isolation exercises, experiment with using less weight and increasing the range of motion. Add in specifically limited range exercises where you are doing full extension only (with a lot less weight).
In any training session, do the large compound movements first. Then do the isolation exercises. Always do the exclusively full range sets last. If you get this order wrong, you will have to use more weight where you are most vulnerable to get the same stimulation. Doing things in this order pre-exhausts the muscles, and that allows you to use lighter weight for the same results.

An important thing you need to do in regard to the order of your exercises is put the muscle-lengthening ones last. For example, conclude your chest session with flyes (done from a max of 20 degrees above horizontal to as low as you can go). Flyes "open the chest" and stretch the pecs. This will prevent the subsequent battle between tight pecs and the much smaller teres minor and teres major. Exercises that are limited to the full extension also have this effect, which is another reason you put them last.

Some people say you should warm up with isolation exercises then move to the big compound movements. This is completely wrong, as you can tell from the preceding explanation about the proper order. They do it this way because they can have more fake progress on their gym card. In the long-term, they will be weaker, get more injuries, and sacrifice their aesthetics. Leave the ego at the door, and you will have something that other people admire. Nobody else cares about your gym progress card, and neither should you.

Mindconnection eNL, 2025-06-22

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