So, on the N1 Education instagram, they talk a lot about hitting a muscle in its shorted, lenghened and midrange postion. In your experience, is this really required to optimize growth?
It works great for arms. People have been training that way or writing about training arms that way forever. Everyone who lifted in the 90s knows about ā21āsā for biceps.
Iām sure that lots of dudes train other muscles this way too, just without thinking about it.
2 Likes
I donāt think it is required but it gives you a lot exercises to choose from if youāre someone who gets bored doing the same exercise over and over.
I like different ranges of motion for arm, delts, and calves.
On back, chest, hip, and legs, it always leads me to an injury.
1 Like
Ok, so lets say for biceps, if im hitting the midrange with a barbell curl, the shortended with a cable potty curl (basically you squat down and curl with your elbows resting on your knees) and the lenghened with a face away cable curl, and i train those with high effort and apply progressive overload over time, is there anything that could be missing?
Your dignity?
6 Likes
For seriously though, donāt forget some kind of hammer curl for your brachialas.
x2 makes a difference for arms Focus on the stretch and āstretch movesā are huge if arms are stubborn and/or stumpy
āMissingā is a tough term - for example, you could train with your shoulders externally and internally rotated and it would hit different parts of the bicep.
At the same time, you can build big biceps with BB curls, rows, and pull-ups, and you can fail to grow at all with 7 different exercises, so variations are just a tool, not a blueprint, if you catch my drift.
Iām not discounting variations that put you in a loaded stretch, by the way - incline DB curls are phenomenal, and mixing up resistance curves in general is a good idea, I just wanted to caution you against worrying about whatās āmissingā.
3 Likes
Not everyone who lifted in the 90ās 
21s have been around before even the 90s
1 Like
Did you guys do āPotty Curlsā back in the day?
Anyway, Iāve been playing around with more peak/stretch/midrange stuff in my workouts.
Pec Deck, Dips, then some kind of benching is an OK chest workout. Since Iām trying to hit the Peak Contraction with the pec deck, I donāt let it stretch the shit out of my pecs at the bottom. I kind of eliminate the last 25%of the ROM.
Cable straight arm Pulldown (like a pullover motion), chins or pulldowns then 1 arm rows is OK for lats.
I like mechanical dropset-ish stuff with the pec deck - doing a set of 10 focusing on a big stretch, and then doing a set of 10 in the top 50% of the rom, focusing on the squeeze.
1 Like
Versatile use of movements and equipment! I like that.
After dips for the stretched position of pecs I tried out super short ROM dip lockouts for peak contraction of triceps. Or to emphasize the short head of the tricep, right above the elbow. That was pretty cool.
1 Like
I like it. Sometimes if Iāve done a bit too much pressing, just setting up in the locked position of a dip will make my triceps cramp up - I bet those mini ROM dips are brutal for a finisher.
Stealing these!