Do partial lifts build muscle like full lifts?
The effects of lengthened-partial range of motion resistance training of the limbs on arm and thigh muscle cross-sectional area
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Muscle growth in trained individuals was so small it was nearly undetectable—even with 297 participants.
Most people assume advanced lifters keep growing fast, but this study confirms muscle gains slow to a crawl after initial progress—making tiny method differences nearly impossible to detect.
Practical Takeaways
If you're a trained lifter short on time or dealing with joint pain, you can safely use lengthened-partial reps for hypertrophy without sacrificing results.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Muscle growth in trained individuals was so small it was nearly undetectable—even with 297 participants.
Most people assume advanced lifters keep growing fast, but this study confirms muscle gains slow to a crawl after initial progress—making tiny method differences nearly impossible to detect.
Practical Takeaways
If you're a trained lifter short on time or dealing with joint pain, you can safely use lengthened-partial reps for hypertrophy without sacrificing results.
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Claims (5)
When people who already work out build muscle, they don’t get much bigger very fast, and the gains slow down over time—so to tell if one workout plan is better than another, you’d need to study a lot of people.
Doing partial-range weight exercises with a longer muscle stretch can build arm and thigh muscles just as well as doing full-range exercises, as long as you’ve been training for a while and do it for 12 weeks.
If you're already fit and lift weights, whether you do partial reps with the muscle stretched or full reps, you'll gain about the same tiny amount of strength after 12 weeks.
Scientists use tape measures and skin pinches to guess how much muscle people gain from weight training, but these methods aren’t precise enough to notice small muscle gains.
A lot of workout studies don’t have enough participants to notice small but real muscle gains in people who already lift weights, so their results might be confusing or wrong.