Full Range of Motion

When you're working out, whether it's weights or body weight, I strongly recommend full range of motion. If you can hyperextend any joints, don't. That's bad for your joints.

Now what exactly is full range of motion? It's pretty much just using all your range of motion... like, in a Bicep curl, you want to start with your arm at 180 degrees, and then your curl it to as far as you can go: Your forearm should touch your bicep.

So what does this do? It works all the muscles in that motion. A pushup is a good example. If you didn't go all the way down, you're using so much less muscle than if you went all the way. I prefer going past 90 degrees on my pushups, because that way I get even more range of motion in there.

Now, I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think that if you don't use full range of motion, you'll probably lose some flexibility in that area. Your muscles would get used to doing work in the motion, and then it you try to use full range of motion later, it may strain your muscle.

Another benefit of full range of motion is that it's much more challenging than doing half range of motion. Challenging=muscle growth=good.

In some exercises you just can't do full range of motion. Like a wide pushup, or a wide bench press. So if you're doing some of those, make sure you're also doing some other exercises with full range of motion.

There are a few exercise you probably don't want to do full range of motion with. One is dumbbell flys. If you're on a workout bench (so your arms can go below your body), you don't want to do full range of motion if your can bend your arms much past your core. I usually stop when the weights in my hands are at or just below my core, or even with the bench. Depending how you think about it. Going much farther could strain or pull some muscles. If you're using a weight that is kind of light for you, then you could go a little farther and hold for a second if you want a good stretch. Which some people like after or before bench pressing.

So usually full range of motion is better for your joints, builds more muscle, and helps a little in flexibility! So why not do it?