
Diving down into a range of motion and squat study.
The science of health and fitness should always be your gym guide.
Right now, if you enter any given gym, the wonderful world of barbells will conjure up as many opinions as there are fitness girls on Instagram, no matter the subject.
And plenty of opinions are exactly that, personal opinions, formed by peer pressure in the gym, on social media, or by fit vixens looking to make a bigger following by posting daily stuff which may or may not be factually correct.
There are out of date school gym coaches still living in the past, badly informed parents, friends, big brothers, big sisters, commercial interests only looking out for the next conference call, as well as uninformed writers working for big tabloids which just happened to draw the assignment to make a puff piece on fitness.
So let us instead look at science and what it actually has to teach us about the range of motion for any particular exercise. And for the purpose of this article, let us focus on a Squat centric use case since legs and ass are thankfully all the rage anyway :).
And to do this, we´ll load up some decent weights on a barbell and take two groups of people and have them train squats seriously 3 times per week for 12 weeks in total.
And while they do this we´ll measure not just strength development but actual hypertrophy and lean muscle mass progress too before we make a nice little summary at the end of it all.
2050AD, the ugliness of humanity.
[ Oceans run the risk of having more total weight of plastic than fish.]

The only difference between these two groups is the length of the actual squat.
One group will do a full range of motion squat, sitting as far down as 120° of knee flexion, while the other group will reach their bottom level at roughly 60° of knee flexion.
In reality, when you are at the gym doing your own squats this would mean that the 120-degree group would have their upper thigh (femur ) parallel to the floor, which is about as low as you should go. There is really no need for most people to do ass to the grass squats as far as hypertrophy and strength development goes unless you have a specific sport related reason to go ass to the grass.
There is most of the time nothing wrong with going that deep, except that doing ass to the grass squats can increase injury risk by a little bit, and while we all love progress and pushing it in the gym, injuries are best left alone, not to mention that they have a tendency to flatline your progress so to say. As such, my own recommendation for the deepest part of the squat is for most clients about the 120-degree mark.
The outcome?.
The full range of motion party increased their strength with 20% across the entire range of motion, and the other group increased their strength with 36% across the more limited range of motion ( but only 9% across the entire range of motion ).
Other measurable observations are that the full range of motion group increased lean muscle mass in the entire quadriceps to a higher degree than the limited range of motion group managed to do.
Quote
"Training deep squats elicited favorable adaptations on knee extensor muscle size and function compared to training shallow squats."
Making it more or less a clean sweep for the full range of motion group, right?.
Yes, almost.
And that almost is equally important to take with you when we conclude the scientific reason why the range of motion matters when you are at the gym and why you should probably include both. So continue reading to get the low down of it all.
The conclusion
Most of the time you should thrive to do your exercises with a full range of motion because it forces the targeted muscle(s) to develop their strength and fat-free muscle mass in the entire range of motion and the entire muscle itself.
Which is obviously not just good for your progress but it also eliminates weak points in real life movement and thus, lowers the risk for injuries to develop.
But, this is where the proverbial but shows up.
And this time our cute little two folded but has to do with a few things.
First of all, there is the fact that the limited range of motion group managed to increase their strength levels within that limited range of motion far more than the full range of motion group did ( while developing their strength in the full motion range to a lesser degree ).
In other words, there are obvious but highly specific strength gains to be made from training with a limited range of motion for certain periods or just a few sets per workout.
But do not do so at the expense of getting your full range of motion reps in, unless you have a very specific use case tailoring your workouts, perhaps lifting weights is just one compound in your pro sports career, and in that case a limited range rep might be what suits your specific sport the best.
One such example could be an ice hockey player.
And in that case explosive and heavy high rep squats with a limited range of motion such as Anderson squats in combination with a seriously overloaded barbell might very well push your fitness levels and explosive strength through the roof in ways that would benefit your ice hockey-related performance in a useful way, far better than doing full range of motion squats might ever be able to do.
But even ice hockey players should make sure to get some full range of motion sets in their workouts too, just to make sure they develop their entire range of motion strength and decrease the chance of developing injuries and muscular imbalances. After all, injuries will shorten any pro career no matter talents, genes, stubbornness, and sport.
So, the conclusion is: Most people should almost always do full range of motions exercises, but everybody can benefit from some amount of limited and even heavier, range of motion training.
And if you have specific sports or health-related needs that also factors in.
Yes, let us focus on those health-related needs for a few sentences.
When talking about mighty full body exercises such as squats and deadlifts, there is another factor at play. We are all slightly different in our interior anatomy and health. Angles and length actually vary from person to person. And so do our actual physical health.
So when some people at the gym is trying hard to tell you that you are doing it wrong and need to do it exactly as they are, chances are that this person doesn't actually fully comprehend the difference in human anatomy. Even Pt´s and gym coaches are far too often guilty of this.
Case in point the deadlift, women should not avoid the deadlift, because it is such a phenomenal kick in the butt for our health & fitness, but for the safety of their health, they should not do the deadlift all the way from the floor when they load up more weights for heavier sets. Doing lighter sets with a full range of motion is perfectly fine for women too, but doing heavy deadlifts from the floor will increase the risk of developing an interior prolapse due to the difference in human anatomy between men and women.
But due to minor differences in internal angles and length of our bones, the same kind of difference applies even for men, some guys just shouldn't squat as deep as others or make use of the same uper body angles while squatting and deadlifting.
So always remember that the exact way we should train depends on our unique health and fitness goals, and our unique anatomy.
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As long as we still have a functional world, I´ll be out there, grinding it out in the gym, lifting heavy as fuck weights. Eating healthy vegetarian food and enjoying nature and wildlife, while I marvel at the beauty of Scandinavia and "höga kusten" right here in Sweden as I produce gorgeous Nordic fine art products, complete with our ancient Viking soul and Scandinavian natures uniquely calm and quiet wild charm.
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Because no matter how advanced your society is, no matter how sustainable and healthy it is, no matter how far ahead of the global curve your society might be, we all can do much more. We all need to do much more. Because even the best of societies on this planet are still so far from achieving the healthy kind of society we all need to create.
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