If you're already experienced with lifting weights, doing exercises where your muscles are stretched out—like lowering a dumbbell all the way down or just partway—gives you about the same muscle growth as going all the way to the extreme stretch. So you don’t need to stretch your muscles to their absolute limit to get big.

If you're already strength-trained, doing full lifts (like fully curling a dumbbell) won't make your muscles grow more than just doing the stretchy part of the movement—so maybe stretching your muscles under load is the real secret to getting bigger.

If you're lifting weights and stretch your biceps and triceps really far—like at the bottom of a curl or overhead extension—you'll build muscle just as well as if you move all the way up and down, as long as you get that deep stretch.

Even if you don’t move through the full range, doing the exercise where your muscle is stretched the most (like halfway down in a squat) builds more muscle than doing it where the muscle is bunched up (like a shallow squat).

Training muscles through a full range of motion or lengthened partials produces greater hypertrophy than training through shortened partials, particularly in distal muscle regions.

When you stretch your muscles fully during workouts, the ends of the muscles grow more than the middle parts — the stretch makes the muscle ends bulk up more than the center.