Mr. America/Mr. Universe Doug Brignole has some thoughts on my recent musing on stretching and stretch moves for mass.
He makes the observation that some muscles respond better than others to full stretch, and putting some into a full stretch can be dangerous, such as rear delts. Bringing the arm too far across that body can damage the shoulder joint…
And also lats. Here is Doug’s take…
If you tried to do a lat exercise that caused maximum loaded stretch, you’d end up with zero load at full contraction—and it would likely stress the shoulder joint. The cable lat pull-In elongates the lats enough, while still allowing you to have about 20 percent of the resistance upon contraction.
My lat-stretch add-on move is an under-grip cable pulldown, with hands about shoulder width apart. It’s not full stretch, but I feel it provides me more than the pull-in, which is the ideal exercise for lats. The under-grips do not irritate my shoulders at all…
To Doug’s observation, I would add that some trainees are predisposed to injuries in some joints, be it genetic, athletics, or accidents/injury. For example, my friend Bill cannot do a sissy squat. His knees scream.
I cannot do an incline curl for biceps—my shoulder wakes me up that night, yelling, “Idiot!”
So the point is, be very careful with stretch-position moves—and don’t do any that irritate your joints.
One way to emphasize the stretch on stretch-position exercise or the ideals without having to use a heavy weight is the Double-X Overload technique.
For example, on dumbbell flyes, you lower to stretch, raise one-third of the way, lower again to stretch, then do a full rep. It’s like 1 1/3 reps, and you emphasize the stretch with the extra partial “hitch” at the bottom.
Even so, some trainees won’t be able to tolerate certain stretch moves even with lighter weights, like my friend Bill and sissy squats.
Yes, research is showing that the full-stretch and semi-stretch positions are the key areas of the stroke to emphasize for size. But avoid, avoid, avoid if you feel joint pain or too much strain. That will derail gains.
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Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
X-Rep.com
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