Recently I was asked a lot about the range of motion that we should have in training. “why do we use exercise A rather than B?” etc. Here is what both clients and personal trainers need to know about range of motion.

You need to know that there are three different ranges of motion (ROM).

• ROM of the muscle
• ROM of the joint
• ROM of the exercise

While it is not possible to go through every possible exercise, lets use the common bench press as an example.

When using a barbell, the full ROM of the exercise is until the bar touches your chest. However, the main muscles used (prime movers) are the deltoids, the pectorals and the triceps muscles. The joints involved are (mainly) the shoulder and elbow joints.

When the bar is at the bottom, touching your chest, is your shoulder or elbow at the end of its ROM? No. Are your triceps, pectorals or deltoids stretched fully? NO.

For example the clavicular portion of the pectorals (the “upper chest”) would have a fuller range of motion in a elbow in line with ears fly. And the triceps would have a fuller range of motion for example in a lying dumbbell triceps extension.

The shoulder and elbow joints would be at their end range when doing one of the many possible flexibility tests for those joints.

So, whenever you think about ROM, you need to know which ROM you are talking about. And also note that it’s not possible to get full ROM in everything all the time. If you did so, you would dilute the benefit of the exercise you were trying to perform by using too light a weight, or by risking injury.

This means that the key to success and complete development is variety of exercise structured into your program. This is how we help out clients succeed in both our group bootcamp fitness programs and our personal training programs. Science based variation of your exercises for maximum results.