Range of motion Part II, compensatory acceleration and other arcane, obscure exotica
24 May 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
The purposefully normal ROM is what most people who practice progressive resistance unwittingly perform. The path of the bar travels for a normal distance and no conscious effort is made to exaggerate or reduce the distance of the rep stroke. Be it a curl or a bench press, an overhead press or a pulldown, the repetition is done without modification. On exercises where the user determines the rep length (squats, cleans, shrugs, leg press, etc.,) a moderate stroke length is utilized, mid-way between the two extremes. Leverage using normal ROM is better than in the purposefully reduced ROM, yet not as advantageous as the reduced ROM. The shorter the rep stroke the more poundage you can use.
Poundage and repetitions strategies are as varied as the stars in the sky for the normal ROM. One concept that I try and stress for those using a normal ROM is to routinely (not exclusively) practice the subtle art of compensatory acceleration (CA). The idea behind CA is to consciously move the poundage over the length of the rep stroke as fast as possible. This sounds easy but the doing is surprisingly difficult as the slightest lapse in concentration will result in a less-than explosive effort. If you are not alert and have your head into the immediacy of the exact instant, the push or pull weight does not move at maximum velocity. The exact second that you cease to concentrate and tell yourself to push this mother-huncher poundage as fast as humanly possible guess what? The body stops pushing or pulling as fast as possible. This explosiveness is only applied on the concentric, loaded, portion of the repetition. The eccentric lower phase is done with great care and precision.
Combining normal ROM with CA accelerate results. By moving the poundage fast a greater muscular inroad is achieved. CA is a learned skill and great care must be taken not to use rebound or bounce at the rep turnaround in order to jump start CA. Acceleration need be developed from a dead stop to be maximally effective. A rolling start that involves bounce or rebound to get the weight started is potentially injurious and defeats the purpose: the idea is that by starting from zero and immediately trying to move as fast as possible, additional muscle fiber is recruited and fibers contract harder.
CA is akin to a car being accessed in a 0-60 mile an hour time trial. By commencing from a dead stop and then demanding the body move the poundage as fast as possible immediately the ability to move explosively is developed. This builds usable athletic strength, the kind that translates to the tennis court, ball field, ring or mat. Give CA a test ride and write in.
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