Welcome Back Van!

Yesterday was a pretty memorable day at the FC we tackled "Murph" (1 mile run, 100 Pull Ups, 200 Push ups, 300 squats, 1 mile run). I was very impressed with everyone's tenacity, effort and support. It was really great to see early finishers cheering people on and running extra laps with the later finishers. "Murph" is quite a load and I propose it to be an FC St Paddy's day tradition, I'll bring beer next time but not the green stuff that's just wrong.

Yesterday also marked the return of Van Yoak to the FC. Van is an accomplished martial artist, athlete and instructor. You will see Van around a lot as he will be helping with both programs and host of other things. Welcome back Van, its good to have you. Below is an article he wrote on Range of Motion.

ROM

So I was going to open this post by poking fun at those guys in the gym who do 135 degree squats, or pull ups that don't even go to 135 degrees of arm extension, but then I realized, funny as that might turn out to be, it'd be like seated calf raises: too easy (and what's the seat for anyway? Calf raises are probably the easiest exercise on the planet to do machineless. But I digress). Lots of people know to perform repetitions with a full range of motion (ROM), even if they don't always do so. Perhaps it's unclear why full ROM is so important; maybe if people understood the why, they would always perform complete reps.

Utterly unrealistic to the point of being unbalanced wishful thinking aside, let's deal with the obvious answer first – namely, that you should work for complete and even strength throughout the entire movement. Which is true. The intuitive reasoning happily holds weight.

But wait! Like a late-night Bowflex ad, there's more. Since we are now a merry new Crossfit affiliate, let's don their Crossfit-tinted lenses for a view of the world according to Greg Glassman to discover the hidden ROM rationale. The CF founder has said that he only cares about one thing for his athletes: work. “Well of course,” you say. “What are the WODs if not spleen-torquing, vomit-engendering work-a-thons?”

I'm sure Mr. Glassman would gruffly respond, “Nothing,” but then he'd proceed to remind you of the technical definition of work. Like so many concepts in physical training, work actually means something beyond the everyday usage we toss around like so much unfettered grapefruit. Technically (laypeople brace yourself for a multiplication sign, engineers brace yourself for gross errors of a basic nature), work equals force times distance, which in turn equals mass times velocity times distance. Sorry, I promised scary symbols:

W = F x d = Mass x Velocity x Distance

Blah blah, physics, blah blah, so what? Well, work is obviously the quantity we care about, but mass just happens to be that kettlebell or sandbag or whatever you're holding (or your own bodyweight), velocity happens to be the speed at which you're swinging/walking/squatting, and distance happens to be rather obviously the distance you're moving your implement or yourself (“or whatevers” applying to the last two categories as well as the first). So to maximize the amount of work you do in any session, you have to maximize the weight you're moving, the speed at which you're moving it, and the distance you're moving it.

Wait an SI unit of time, what was that about distance? Ah yes, to maximize work, you have to maximize the distance you're moving the weight – i.e., the range of motion (and you thought I'd never get back to it). Ergo, you're more effective and accomplishing more when you squat past parallel or when you get that chin over the bar

Remember, however, that you have to maximize the product of the three components combined. Thus, if you bench press 300 lbs. but only get it 35 inches closer to your chest, you shortchange yourself a hella lot of work if you can press 290 lbs. but can get it all 40 inches to your chest – 10,500 joules versus 11,600 joules. So without having a frame of reference for what these numbers mean – without even knowing that a joule is the unit of work – you can see that you do about 10% more work per rep with a full range of motion. That may not sound like much, but think about how much more work you can accumulate over a workout by bringing the bar all the way down. To continue with our imaginary numbers, that's 100% more work over the course of 10 reps, and 1000% more work over the course of 100 reps. Those sorts of numbers add up, especially over the long-term. And that's not even taking into account the speed increase you'd likely achieve with the lighter load.

Which isn't meant to be an argument for using lower weights. Obviously I constructed the example for effect, but the principle of increasing work by increasing ROM still applies even with loftier loads. One could argue similarly regarding speed – doing those squats more quickly and getting a better WOD time is pretty meaningless if you decrease the total work you do by not breaking parallel and then returning all the way to a full standing position.

So now go forth and perform your workouts, secure in your understanding of the importance of range of motion, and fulfill my dream of never seeing another pathetic half-rep in a gym again. And of never seeing another man, woman or child on a calf raise machine.

***Shout out to Grey Cook and his excellent book Athletic Balance Body in Balance for driving this concept home for me.