Do partial lifts grow muscles as well as full lifts?
Lengthened partial repetitions elicit similar muscular adaptations as full range of motion repetitions during resistance training in trained individuals
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Lengthened partials matched full ROM for muscle growth despite using less total joint movement.
Most prior research on untrained people suggested full ROM was superior — this flips the script for trained individuals, showing adaptation is driven by muscle stretch, not movement volume.
Practical Takeaways
If you're experienced, try doing 2–3 sets of lengthened partials (e.g., lat pulldown from chin to mid-chest) on one exercise per muscle group per week to save time and reduce shoulder strain.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Lengthened partials matched full ROM for muscle growth despite using less total joint movement.
Most prior research on untrained people suggested full ROM was superior — this flips the script for trained individuals, showing adaptation is driven by muscle stretch, not movement volume.
Practical Takeaways
If you're experienced, try doing 2–3 sets of lengthened partials (e.g., lat pulldown from chin to mid-chest) on one exercise per muscle group per week to save time and reduce shoulder strain.
Publication
Journal
PeerJ
Year
2025
Authors
Milo Wolf, Patroklos Androulakis Korakakis, A. Piñero, Adam E. Mohan, Thomas Hermann, Francesca Augustin, M. Sapuppo, Brian Lin, Max Coleman, Ryan Burke, Jeff Nippard, P. Swinton, B. Schoenfeld
Related Content
Claims (6)
It doesn’t matter if you go all the way down or stop halfway — as long as you stretch your muscles fully at the bottom of the movement, you’ll build just as much arm muscle.
Whether you do half-reps or full reps when doing lat pulldowns, your ability to do more reps with the same weight improves about the same amount after 8 weeks of training.
If you're already experienced with weightlifting, doing half-reps at the stretched position works just as well for building arm muscle as doing full reps — neither is clearly better.
If you're already strong and experienced, you can choose to do either full reps or half-reps at the stretch — both will make your arms bigger and stronger about the same amount.
Going all the way up and down doesn’t help you build more muscle than just going halfway down and staying in the stretchy part — the stretch is what matters, not the top part.