The Partial Power Program!
The key training principle that we will be using in this training program is the use of partial range of motion repetitions. There is a huge debate within the Iron Game about the topic of partial range of motion reps verses full range of motion reps, and like a lot of things there is no “right” or “wrong” answer.
There are some die hard muscle heads who swear by full range of motion reps, and they say that using anything less than a full range of motion on every single exercise is a complete waste of time and the lifts won’t count. Then on the other side of the coin you have some fitness gurus who go to the other extreme and say that as long as you lift the weight it doesn’t matter what range of motion you use, and they only advocate the use of short range of motion partial reps.
Well, as you can probably guess with my style of training, I could care less about these stupid debates and worrying about what such and such an expert thinks. I just look to real world results and make my decisions on that. If it works, then I’ll incorporate it into my workouts. It’s as simple as that.
One of the most important key principles when it comes to strength training and building muscle is that “Everything Works, But Nothing Works Forever.” And this philosophy fits in perfectly with partial range of motion reps.
What Is Partial Range Of Motion Training?
Before we go any further we need to clearly define what exactly is Partial Range Of Motion, because there is a lot of grey area here. Some people refer to partial reps as “burns” done at the end of the set as a way to train beyond failure. Others refer to it as strong range of motion “lockout training”, as in doing power rack lockouts. And then some others refer to partials as working in the mid-range of an exercise where you don’t go all the way down and don’t go all the way up, but rather just pump out short reps in the middle while keeping constant tension on the muscles at all times.
Which style of partial reps you do greatly depends on the exercise(s) you are doing and your training goals. For example, a lot of bodybuilders will use the “burns” and short mid range reps to help get a better muscle pump, while powerlifters will often do power rack lockout reps to help condition their bodies to handle maximum weights.
Within the Partial Power Program we will be incorporating all styles of partial reps in order to maximize your overall strength and muscle mass gains. I’ll cover all this in more detail when we get into the actual workouts in the PDF file below.
How Partial Range Of Motion Reps Can Help You Build More Muscle
The whole idea behind partial range of motion reps is they allow your muscles to perform a bigger workload (i.e. lift more weight or do more reps).
Power Rack Lockouts
One of my personal favorite styles of partial range training is power rack lockouts. To perform these you would set the safety pins in the power rack so that you only have to lift the bar in the top 1/4 range of motion. Starting with the bar resting on the safety pins you would lift it up, lock it out, then lower it back to the safety pins.
This type of set up can be used for several of the big basic compound lifts such as; bench press, squats, deadlifts, shoulder press, etc.
The reason for this is because you can “lockout” much more weight than you can lift through a full range of motion. It’s quite common for guys to literally handle as much as 50% more weight with a power rack lockout then they can lift in a full range of motion. Now as you can imagine lifting 50% more weight will place a tremendous amount of muscular overload on your body, causing it to adapt and grow in response to this new stress.
To put some real world numbers here as an example, if you can currently bench press 200 pounds, imagine how much more stimulation you would provide your muscles if you were to perform power rack lockouts with 300 pounds on the bar! Even though you are lifting in a shorter range of motion, your muscles, joints, tendons, and ligaments are still lifting and supporting this much heavier workload.
The Drawbacks Of Partial Range Of Motion Reps
Now if this is your first time hearing about partial range of motion power rack lockouts then you may be wondering why everyone doesn’t do this style of training. If this is so great for stimulating muscle growth then why would we even bother doing full range of motion reps, why not just stick with partial range of motion reps?
While there are some “fitness experts” who think this way, the main drawback of doing only short range of motion partial reps is that the strength gains made do not always carry over into your full range of motion strength. Partial reps tend to overload certain muscles to a greater degree and place less workload on other muscles.
For example, in a squat the lower you go the more your hips, glutes, and hamstrings come into play. If you only do ¼ range of motion squats then you are not going to fully activate and develop these muscle groups.
With the bench press, the bottom half of the lift places more stress on your chest and the top half places more stress on your triceps. So if you only do top range of motion bench presses it’s good for overloading your triceps, but not so great for stimulating your chest.
So rather than thinking of partial range of motion reps as the bee’s knees or the “best” method for building muscle, think of them as simply another weapon in your training arsenal that you can use in your quest towards building your ultimate muscular body.
The good thing about partial range of motion reps is that with time and practice you can literally work a heavy partial range of motion rep into a legit full range of motion rep. But that’s a topic for another program… For now we are just going to focus on how incorporating partial range of motion reps in your workouts can help you quickly pack on some muscle mass!
Partial Range “Burn” Reps
Another method of using partial range of motion reps is to use “burn” reps to extend a set past the point of muscular failure. This method is more often used among bodybuilders and works great for smaller isolation type exercises. Whereas the power rack lockouts are more popular among powerlifters and tend to only work for big basic compound barbell lifts.
How this works is let’s say you are doing a set of dumbbell curls for your biceps and you pump out full range of motion reps to failure. At this stage you can’t perform another full range of motion rep, but have you gotten to the point where you can’t more the weight at all? Not really, chances are that you’ll still be able to continue pumping out short range of motion partial reps, only curling the weight about a 1/3 of the way up from the bottom and continue going for another 5 or 6 partial range “burn” reps.
The benefits of this style of partial range rep training is that you can extend your sets beyond the point of muscular failure and get that extra muscle stimulation in at the end of your set, when under normal circumstances you would have just quit when you couldn’t perform another full range rep.
Now while this is a great advanced training technique, it is a doubled edged sword that can cut both ways. Partial reps can be easily abused and cause you to over train and burn yourself out. This style of training is very stressful on your body because you are hitting failure twice in one set, once with the full range reps, then again with the partial range “burn” reps.
These should be saved for only one or two sets of an exercise, and even then this technique should be cycled in your workouts. It is not something that you would use all the time for every exercise because it would just be too demanding and hinder your recovery.
As with the power rack lockouts that we discussed earlier, the use of partial range “burn” reps are just another tool in your toolbox. You have them at your disposal to help you along in your muscle-building journey.
Click The Link Below To Download The Full Partial Power Program Workout Schedule:
–>> Full Partial Power Program – PDF
–>> Partial Power Program Print Workout Charts- PDF
If you have any questions or comments about this workout program,
please post them in the forum and we’ll chat there 🙂