So today we’re going to be talking about how much range is enough.

Range of Motion

When we talk about range, we’re discussing range motion – whether that be passive or active – is something we’re going to dig into today and basically get you to understand as a coach or clinician, what the goal is behind improving range of motion.

Why it’s necessary, and ultimately why it’s a key facet within the world of physical training, physical fitness and something that has to be considered.

As always, if you’ve got any questions, you can always get in touch and leave a comment below anything like that, and we’ll be able to open up the discussion a little bit more.

So when we talk about range of motion, the first thing we need to do, gain a little bit of a consensus and define what it is that we’re talking about.

As a general overview, range of motion would be classed as “the capability or the capacity of an individual joint to go through its complete spectrum of movement” (Roberts, 1999). So whether that be flexion and extension, circumspection, obviously it’s dependent upon the joint that you’re looking into, but it’s basically the capacity of that joint to move through those movements.

However, we can dig a little bit deeper and we can obviously see there is active and passive range of motion. Passive range motion would be a scenario in which the practitioner, the coach, the clinician manually moves and manoeuvres the joint through those ranges of motion. And then the active range motion would be requesting that the client or the patient do that themselves (Roberts, 1999).

So really quick example, a lying leg lift. If the coach was to lift the leg, keeping the knee straight, that would assess hamstring range of motion, but in a passive context. And then the “active” would be getting the patient to lift the leg (Davis, 2008). 

It’s key to distinguish the difference between the two, because obviously it’s not as simple as passive. When we’re looking at an injury, when we’re looking at tissue tolerance, when we’re looking at the simple capacity of a joint to be able to move on a morphological level or an anatomical level, then yes, passive range of motion is key (Wilk et al., 2014)

And that’s what birthed a lot of these tests. E.g. The Thomas tests, all these different parameters of assessing range motion, but ultimately we’re more interested, from a movement capacity standpoint, in active ranges of motion because that will be influenced by things like reciprocal inhibition, the strength of the agonist within the muscular couple.

Mobility

And overall, it will influence the thing that we’re actually going to talk about today which is: mobility.

Mobility can be defined as:

The coordinated capacity of a segment of the body or of the body as a whole to move through a range motion. And it’s nine times out of ten go into a movement specific.

So if you haven’t already come across this in practice, you’ll find that someone that can’t necessarily achieve the sufficient squat depth? As a compensation for that problem, chances are they will have a hypermobile hinge pattern so they’ll be able to disengage certain supporting muscle groups that would normally restrict the range of motion about the hip so that they can continue to complete tasks.

And again, being able to identify that this is movement specific is a crucial aspect of developing your skill base as a practitioner, when you look at improving range of motion for each individual that you work with.

So now that we’ve established that, why would we want a longer range of motion within any exercise? Why would we want someone to squat lower? To deadlift from a deficit or to be able to do a full range of motion pressup? Why would we want that?

Benefits of Range of Motion

Well, there’s a couple of different benefits. We can separate them primarily into an anatomical benefit or practical benefit.

1. Muscle Architecture

From an anatomical level we’ve seen with quite a lot of the research, and it’s pretty much unanimous at this stage, that we see favorable changes to muscle architecture. So whether that’s alterations in the fasicle length (Valamatos et al., 2018) or the number of sarcomeres in series, all these different muscle architectural changes tend to be more beneficial for improvements in strength (Valamatos et al., 2018) and improvements in tissue resilience when we work through a longer range motion (Oranchuk et al., 2019).

On top of that, we’ve seen particularly within isometric training, we’ve seen that strength gains show greater positive transfer to the entire spectrum of the movement when they’re trained at larger joint angles (Thepaut-Mathieu, 1988; Weir et al., 1995; Noorkoiv et al., 2014)

So, if we take an isometric squat as an example, if that individual builds up the capacity to produce force in a deep squat position, you’re going to more than likely get favorable changes over to a more shallow squat position.

Yet if the individual trained a shallow position, it doesn’t necessarily improve a deeper position.

2. Mechanical Work

And then another one that we’re interested in, its greater mechanical work.

So whether you sell that to the client that you’re working with as, “Its greater energy expenditure, so it’s more favourable for body composition changes”, or whether you just have that as a program from a standpoint of improving things like tissue resilience, greater mechanical work is always something that’s going to be beneficial.

3. Task Specificity

Now, from a practical standpoint, we want to look at improving range motion within exercises because primarily – it’s task specific.

So let’s just step to the side for a second and introduce the notion of being “task specific with a movement”.

So human beings are hardwired to understand that “moving from A to B is more important than how we move from A to B”. It’s the whole “path of least resistance” approach, and it introduces this whole notion of compensatory patterns when we look at movement. If we keep that in mind, that the human body is hardwired to focus on the completion of the task rather than its execution, you begin to unearth a lot of these issues that we see when people will compensate within different movement patterns.

And again, when we’re looking at training an individual, we want to be able to build a larger range of motion capacity because it means when they then go and perform these tasks in everyday life that they’re not going to be thinking about, such as, picking the child up off the ground, carrying shopping, tying the shoes, all these different really remedial tasks…

…The larger the range of motion capacity you have, the greater the spectrum of movement you can do with in everyday life, in a safer context (Buckwalter, 1997; Musich et al., 2018).

4. Building Flexibility Strength

Which ties into the next thing, something that we talk about in the Consulting Strength Curriculum, which is the notion of ‘flexibility strength’. A derivative of strength, “which is the ability to maintain tension or the ability to produce force at end ranges of motion”. If we build that flexibility strength – Not only does it relieve tension in muscles and like we said, give us a greater capacity to go through everyday tasks in a safe manner – but it also improves posture and overall well-being.

There’s a reason why something like yoga has lasted for a couple of thousand years, depending on the reference that you look at. And yes, it might be bastardized in a certain context now and performed differently.

But ultimately the human body likes to go through “stretches” and it likes to have a large capacity of mobility.

Problems with Increasing Range of Motion

So following on from that, what are the issues? Why is it something that has to be discussed? Why is it something that we have to develop our understanding around?

Well, ultimately, the first point is:

The range of motion within exercise and range of motion with nature are two different things.

And you’ll see when you look into the industry as a whole, that there are people that might favour “animal flow training”; they might favor “functional work” as a means of trying to make “primal” movements and “natural” movements – all these different capacities…

But ultimately, as we just touched on there with task specificity in exercise, exercise is a standardized, controlled method of movement in which we undergo the 4 Laws of Training.

1) Consistency

2) Specificity

3) Individuality

4) Progression

And as a whole, in order to create that consistent pattern, range motion is one of the factors that makes exercise standardized.

Range of motion is an arbitrary thing. For someone to be able to squat full depth, it’s going to be individual across the board. So it doesn’t mean that we have to conform to this “arbitrary standard”.

Now, if you’re working with an athlete that will go through certain ranges of motion, even if it’s something as simple as a powerlifter that has to squat to a certain depth, or it might be something like a hockey player that is going to be performing the majority of their sport in a slightly flexed position – then yes, the range of motion goal and the range motion standard that you work towards becomes a little bit more measured and a little bit more important.

But keeping in mind that specific to that exercise – an arbitrary range is just that. It is arbitrary.

The barbell is a certain height off the ground when you deadlift with Olympic plates – that doesn’t mean that that’s the most suitable position that the individual has to deadlift from.

Sometimes they should deadlift from a higher height. Sometimes you want to build on that range of motion so you can actually perform it from a deficit. Being aware of that uniqueness between exercises and that arbitrary standard is just that, starts to unearth a couple of the issues that we need to approach when we look at range motion.

Two Types of People

So keeping that in mind will lead into two types of people that you tend to see. Now, these aren’t cut and dry, these aren’t black and white. It’s more of a spectrum that people tend to exist upon. And again, it is unique to that specific movement.

We tend to see people that are either tension-biased, or positionally-biased. So tension-biased people are people lack appropriate mobility regardless of what you seem to do with them. So you can coach and coach and coach, you can introduce environmental constraints such as a box or get them to squat facing a wall, you can elevate their heel slightly – Everything you seem to do doesn’t seem to improve their range of motion on an “acute basis”.

So you can get them to stretch and you can get caught up into this web of thinking – Why can’t they move that way? What’s the problem? But they will always tend to bias tension.

Now, on the flip side, you get these other people that are known as positionally-biased people. And these are the people that no matter what you say to them, no matter how hard you try, they will always go to the range of motion that they “think” they should be going to. So in this instance, a lot of the times you actually have to flip the narrative and get them to reduce their range of motion within certain movements. And this is because typically, just because someone can get into a position, just because they can move from A to B – doesn’t mean they’re doing it in a safe and effective manner.

So these people are actually just as likely, if not more likely, prone to soft tissue injuries because they’re moving in positions that their body isn’t strong enough to stay stable within (Briggs et al., 2009). 

So when we’ve got these two types of individuals, and we know that range of motion is arbitrary based on the exercise in question, and that we have to link it to the task in mind (rather than the exercise).

Practical Application

We’re looking to the individual and there’s a couple of questions that we need to go through. This is your take-home practical implementation.

When you look at assessing the range of motion within an exercise relative to that individual and relative to the task that they need to improve their capacity to perform, the first thing is:

…Morphological Restrictions?

Has the individual had a knee replacement? To use an example when I tore my ACL, there’s a little bit of research to show that tibial internal rotation can occur and that when a graft is put in place, it doesn’t necessarily correct that.

So I will always have a slight issue with my ankle joint when it comes to ankle range motion in this context. You’re very much in a situation where you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.

It goes back to what we talked about in the evidence-based practice discussion and the notion that just because something can work doesn’t mean it’s the best protocol for that individual.

So in this situation, rather than fixating on that one joint now has the morphological restriction, although that is something you would seek to improve over time, what you’d be better off spending your time doing is what’s called “Fortifying the Framework” so you would fortify the musculature that will take up the slack in that context.

Real World Example

A classic example: a client that I work with. She’s had a bilateral knee replacement and a hip replacement on one side. Now, her hip replacement actually has very little restriction in range of motion, again, based off the tasks that she would normally perform. So she doesn’t notice that as much when she’s doing when she’s sitting down in the chair as much as she does with a knee replacement.

And in that situation, rather than fixating on both of those issues, what we’ve done is strengthen her hamstrings, strengthen the lateral stabilizer of her hip, strengthen her lower back in particular, like her erectors, her QL and all these different supporting muscles to give her the best chance of being able to tolerate and have a larger “margin of error” – when we look into these task-specific movements that she will perform.

And that’s something that you need to keep in mind, is fortifying the framework around any morphological restrictions that might be present.

The next step.

After you’ve taken into account the individual you need to assess: what is the goal?

Is it down to the specific task that you’re needing to work towards improving? Or is the goal that you have set the arbitrary range of motion based on the exercise? We know from what we’ve just talked about that it should always be the former, it should always be based on the task for that individual rather than the arbitrary standard of the movement.

The next question after that. OK, when we’re looking at improving the range motion is – is it needed?

Does that individual “have to” improve the range motion within that specific movement? Because if it isn’t, taking into account the psychology of the patient on the claim that you’re working with, you can very much be in a situation where the return on investment is so low that they lose “buy in” because they don’t see the point of it. You can get caught up in this “dissonant state” where you think that the individual, they’ve got restrictions in their ankle = Their ankles have to be mobile = There has to be something that we can work on there.

Where in reality you would actually be better off spending time, like we just said, fortifying the framework or just working on something else that generates a little bit more return on investment, a little bit more motivation and adherence from the client throughout the course of any exercise intervention that you’re doing or throughout the course of time when you’re coaching them.

Tying all this together, you need to keep in mind what’s known as the: Mobility-Stability continuum.

So the idea that typically when a movement has “greater mobility”, it tends to have slightly “less stability” just on an inherent basis. We tend to see that stability is challenged when we’re in really extra “hyper-mobile” positions.

And the key in this scenario is to always prioritize stability.

Going back to the benefits, we said right at the start:

• The favourable changes in muscle architecture.
• The improvements in strength gains
• Greater mechanical work…

All these different parameters – They are based on the notion that the muscle is under tension throughout the course of that range of motion.

Just because an individual can squat all the way down to the ground, full depth doesn’t mean that the muscles that you’re trying to load (or the pattern) is the thing that is “taking the stimulus” in that situation.

A classic example of this would be Posterior Pelvic Tilt (A.K.A ‘Butt Wink’). Now we won’t go into too much detail with it…

But if an individual showcases a significant amount of posterior pelvic tilt, chances are they’ve got a lack of an “abdominal brace” (T-Nation, 2018). There’s too much mobility going on in the pelvis. So they start in in anterior pelvic tilt – tucking under into posterior pelvic tilt in the bottom position – the glutes aren’t under tension there (Neumann, 2010).

 In which case if you’re utilizing the squat to strengthen the lower body, you’re not strengthening and you’re not providing overload to the key prime mover within that movement.

So, this is where range of motion starts to become very individual. And you have to take into account whether or not it is a stable position that the individual is in, to make sure that the muscle remains under tension throughout the course of that movement.

So I hope that makes sense. Again, a lot of information!

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below. You can direct straight to me through social media and we can have a chat about these different topics.

So Episode three will be coming up shortly as well. Going back to a little bit more of an industry overview, but again, today was how much range of motion is necessary and what factors do you have to consider as a coach or clinician?

Reference List

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2. Buckwalter, J. A. (1997). Maintaining and restoring mobility in middle and old age: the importance of the soft tissues. Instructional course lectures, 46, 459-469
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