STOP Using Tension As An Excuse To CHEAT!

We see it at the gym every day. It’s a horrible sight to see. Our fellow gym members are under the impression that they don’t need to train in the FULL Range Of Motion (ROM) of an exercise because stopping halfway keeps more tension on the muscle. Who came up with this belief why and why does it still exist today?

There are many professional bodybuilders like Jay Cutler who believe that you shouldn’t train in the FULL ROM because the “tension” excuse is real and will help you with your gains. Then there are others like Kai Greene who believe that you should ALWAYS train in the FULL ROM to maximize your gains! Who should you believe? They are both huge and compete at the Mr. Olympia level, but at the end of the day you are going to have to make a choice. As for me, I train in the FULL ROM and believe this “tension” is just a myth to boost the ego of your average joe trying to justify that he can bench more than he really can and here is why.

In my experience "tension" is used to help you perform more reps. So you might be lifting more weight, but the load you are putting on your muscles is much less than if you were to stop at the bottom of a movement and then reengage.

Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

Just in case you are still wondering what “keeping the tension in the muscle” is referring to, it is when you do not fully extend your arms / legs during an exercise. For example, when performing a bicep curl you may notice the some people don’t bring the bar all the way down to their thighs and fully extend their arms.

In fact, most people are already transferring energy into anticipating bringing the bar back up to their chest halfway through the movement. This allows you to use a bit of momentum to make it easier to curl the weight as objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Now, if you were to fully extend your arms and let the weight touch your thighs, you would see that it is much harder to re-engage the curl. This is because it takes more force, or in this case you need to recruit more muscle fibers to re-engage and curl the bar back up to your neck.

Think about it like this. Have you ever had your car stuck in a ditch and had to rock it back and forth to be able to push it out? You may have noticed that the initial push is always the hardest. But once you get the car moving backward and forward the pushing becomes much easier due to the momentum you are creating. When applied to body building, that “momentum” is the “tension” you are keeping in your muscles by not training in the FULL ROM. Or what I like to call, “The Slingshot”.

What is “The Slingshot” and how it destroying your gains?

The slingshot is the method I refer to when bodybuilders utilize the “tension” in their muscles to do more reps. By keeping a slight bend in the elbows you are preloading your biceps and preparing for the next rep as you descend.

There is a reason why it’s much harder to fully disengage your biceps at the bottom of a curl with a full extension and then have to re-engage when compared to keeping the tension in the muscle.

My argument is, when trying to maximize both strength and muscle gains, why would you turn to the method that requires you to utilize LESS muscle fiber by avoiding the sticking point?

What is the “Sticking Point”?

The sticking point is the hardest point in any lift or the point where you tend to fail.  Once again, I am going to use the bicep curl as the example exercise. The sticking point here is just after you fully extend your arms and then have to re-engage to perform another repetition.

Sound familiar?

This is the part of the movement you skip if you decide to keep the “tension” in the muscle. By avoiding this part of the exercise you are able to utilize the slingshot method and curl more weight. But in order to maximize your muscle and strength gains you need to train and improve your weakest points and the “sticking point” is exactly that!

Final thoughts on the “Tension Excuse”.

In conclusion, any range of motion that you DO NOT train in you will always be the weakest. Now that you know this, why would you ever want to train in such a way that leaves so many weak points in your body?

Therefore, the next time you hear someone say,

“My friend got huge by keeping tension in the muscles and not doing FULL ROM on their exercises.”

Your response should be,

“Just think how much bigger and stronger they would have been if they trained through their sticking points with FULL ROM!!” #HTH #SHFAthlete