North Coast Miller
Level 9 Valued Member
There is surprising little literature re this, but yeah - studies that used a range of angles demonstrated greatest strength for using a stretched position.Reading “Relaxing into Stretch” right now and came across this
View attachment 15343.
Even from an isotonic standpoint, would you expect to get stronger doing repetitions using the bottom 1/3 of a squat ROM or the top 1/3. We normally think of this as just mechanically disadvantaged but is also at the longest length. Ultimately this region defines the functional limit of your strength for most movements.
I wonder about activities like rows however, where the last bit of contraction also equals the toughest part of the ROM and the longest moment arm. Wouldn't it make sense that if you had the most strength at the toughest part of the movement, you'd have better dynamic strength through the entire range? You can take this further using the squat analogy - would you get stronger doing only the last 1/3 of a pull up or only the first 1/3?
Not sure I want to test that just yet, but even though it violates the "longer muscle length" rule, it makes a lot of sense...
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