There is a concept that almost nobody in mainstream fitness
talks about, and it's not because it's complicated.
It is not because the research isn't there.
It's because training it is not comfortable, it doesn't look
impressive on camera, and it doesn't produce the kind of
numbers that people love to post about.
And it sure doesn't sell well. It's called End Range Strength,
and it is without question the single biggest gap in how most
people train. If you've ever wondered why your
body keeps breaking down despite consistent and dedicated
training, this is the episode that explains it.
Picture the bottom of a squat. Not 90°, the actual bottom.
Hips below parallel, full depths, ankles loaded.
Everything is working at its limit.
Beautiful. Most people have never spent
meaningful time there under any kind of load.
Because this baby is uncomfortable.
Because the weights feel lighter.
Because it exposes weakness in a way that mid range training
never does. Because nobody programmed it So
the body treats this position like a threat.
The nervous system flags it as unfamiliar territory.
And the moment that life puts you there unexpectedly, such as
carrying something heavy, landing from a jump, moving fast
in a direction you didn't choose, the system has nothing
to draw on. There's no strength, no
stability, no tissue resilience. There is no nervous system
confidence in that range. And that is end range
vulnerability, and it exists in almost every joint in your body.
If you've ever been following a conventional training program,
let me define this clearly. End range strength is the
ability to produce or resist force at the extreme ranges of a
joint's motion. The bottom of a squat for hip
extension. A completely overhead reach.
Deep external hip rotation. Full shoulder flexion.
Spinal flexion under load. Most programs never go there,
into these positions, because those positions are
uncomfortable. Because the ego doesn't get fed
at the end range. Because there is no impressive
number to track. But your body's capacity in
those ranges is exactly what determines whether it holds up
or breaks down when life puts it somewhere it didn't expect to
go. And here's the thing about life.
Life doesn't program your movements in advance.
Life doesn't warm you up, it doesn't give you a spotter, it
doesn't care about your comfortable range.
That thing just puts you in the position at random moments under
whatever load happens to be present, and your body either
has the capacity or it doesn't. I want to pause here and get
philosophical for a moment because I think there is a
fundamental question that most people never seriously ask about
their own training. What am I actually training for?
If you ask most people, they will say aesthetics,
performance, health, feeling good, and those are all
legitimate answers. But underneath all of them, if
you go deep enough, there is something more fundamental.
Training is preparation. It's preparation for the demands
that life will place on your body, known and unknown, planned
and unplanned. And if that's true, then the
most important quality that your training should develop is not
the ability to perform in controlled conditions, it is the
ability to perform in uncontrolled ones.
Resilience, adaptability, capacity at the edges.
This is what the ancient idea of antifragility means in a
physical context. Nassim Taleb's concept.
Things that get stronger under stress, rather than just
surviving it or breaking under it.
A body trained only in safe, predictable ranges is fragile.
It performs beautifully in the conditions that it was designed
for, and fails exactly when the conditions change.
A body train through its full range, loaded at the edges,
challenged in uncomfortable positions, exposed to demand
that it hasn't encountered before.
That body gets stronger under stress.
And that is the goal. Not just a body that looks
capable, A body that actually is capable.
Here's what I want you to sit with.
Most people train their whole lives inside a comfortable
range. They get stronger, their numbers
go up, they look better in the mirror, and then one day they
reach for something at a weird angle, or they take a step off a
kerb wrong, or they pick up their child without thinking and
something snaps and everyone calls it a freak accident.
But it wasn't a freak accident. It was a gap.
A gap that had been sitting there for years, completely
invisible inside the gym, completely exposed.
The moment that lies, step outside of it.
So you see, it's not about bad luck.
That's the logical consequence of training a partial body.
And the fitness industry will sell you recovery tools and rest
days and band exercise and ice packs forever rather than just
saying the honest thing. You need to train the full
spectrum. Not just the comfortable part,
not just the part that looks good on camera.
You need to train all of it. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Let me bring in the research, because this isn't just
philosophy. The evidence here is clear and
it's been building for years. Studies comparing muscle
hypertrophy in full range versus partial range consistently shows
greater muscle growth when exercises are performed through
a full range of motion, and specifically when muscles are
loaded at longer lengths closer to the full stretch.
And it isn't just a marginal difference.
Some studies show significantly greater hypertrophy from full
range training, particularly in the deep range, compared to
training that only works in the mid range on connective tissue
like tendons, ligaments and joint capsules.
They adapt specifically and only to the mechanical demands placed
on them. The adaptation is site specific,
so if you never load a structure at end range, it never builds
capacity there, full stop. The nervous system also shows
that joint position sent your body's ability to know where it
is in space and respond appropriately.
This is significantly enhanced by training through full ranges.
Joints that have been trained through their full arc have a
better neuromuscular control, faster response times, and
greater stability under load. Which means that end range
training isn't just about building strong tissue.
It's about building a smarter, more responsive nervous system.
One that can catch you when something goes wrong, rather
than being the reason that something goes wrong.
So let me help you make this concrete, because philosophy
without application is just entertainment.
So here's how to actually start building and range strength.
First, we need to stop training movements and start training
ranges. Every exercise you do, ask
yourself, am I going to the actual end range of my position
here or am I stopping where it gets uncomfortable?
That awareness alone will change how you train.
Think about the key movements. Things like Jefferson curls,
things like full range split squats, things like extending
your hips under lobe, things like locomoting and moving your
body through ground in control, instability and through
strength. And all of these positions you
would start with just body weight.
You would first learn how to move through the four range of
motion, slow down or speed up those ranges of motion, and then
start to load them. And over time, if you work it
just as you would strength training, you progressively
overload the pattern. You add more time under tension,
more reps, more sets, more load and you get stronger, you get
more flexible and you protect your joints long term.
And you really have to focus on moving out of alignment.
It's not just about up and down, side to side, sitting on
machines and training in gym settings.
It's about moving your body through all of the planes, all
of the directions with control and stability.
It's about moving out of alignment and teaching your boy
that it is safe to do unconventional movements because
that training and that preparation in training is going
to make you resilient and protect you in the real world.
And you want to treat this like skill work, not conditioning.
So you want to make sure it's slow, deliberate, full attention
on the positions. The goal is not fatigue.
The goal is exposure and progressive loading.
Let me handle the most common objective I get to this
training. Loading in range sounds
dangerous. Isn't that how injuries happen?
This is almost perfectly backwards.
Injuries happen at N range when there is no capacity there.
When the body gets forced into a range it's never trained before.
Progressive loading at N range, with appropriate load,
appropriate progression, and full attention is exactly what
builds the capacity to handle those positions.
You don't protect a range by avoiding it.
That just preserves the vulnerability you protect by
developing it. I've been doing 4 range squats
for years. Doesn't that cover this
partially? A well executed 4 depth squat
does train end range hip and ankle.
That's real and that's valuable. But the squat is 1 pattern in
one plane. It doesn't cover your hips
capacity in rotation. It doesn't address your
shoulders and range strength. It doesn't train spinal flexion.
Full range in one movement is a start.
A complete end range practice covers every joint in your body
systematically. My joints make poppy noises at
enrage. Should I still train there?
Joint noises? Clicking, popping in the absence
of pain is almost always benign. It is normal tissue mechanics.
Pain at end range is different. That's a signal worth listening
to and worth getting assessed. But I would say that noise
without pain. Train through it progressively,
carefully. The noise often decreases as a
joint develops capacity and confidence in that range.
How long does this take to actually make a difference?
Nervous system at a feeling more confident and controlled and in
ranges happens relatively quickly within a few weeks of
consistent practice that you will notice positions feel less
threatening structural tissue adaptation is a little slower
tendons and connective tissue remodel over months.
Real resilience, the kind that holds up under unexpected
demand, takes three to six months of consistent work to
build a meaningfully. Which is often exactly why most
people don't build it, because it requires patience and
consistency in something that doesn't produce fast, visible
results. But the people who do the work,
who build it over six months, a year, 2 years, those are the
people whose bodies hold up for decades while everyone else
keeps cycling through the same injuries.
Can older people do this? Is it too late to build and
range strength? This might be the most important
question of all. The answer is absolutely yes.
The research on tissue adaptation shows that connective
tissue retains its ability to remodel and strengthen
throughout life. It of course happens more slowly
as we age, but it does happen. And frankly, for older people
and range, strength training is arguably more important than for
younger people because the margin for error shrinks because
the consequence of a fall or an unexpected movement become a lot
more serious. The goal of training as you age
shouldn't just be maintaining muscle mass, it should be
maintaining full, functional, resilient range of motion.
And that requires exactly what we've been talking about.
Most programs build performance in the middle of your range,
which produces a body that performs in the middle of its
range. And that's fine until life asks
for the, and it always does, eventually, without warning.
So train the full arc, Load the positions that feel challenging.
Own the ranges that you currently only borrow.
That's end range strength. That is the missing piece in
your training. That is a difference between a
body that holds up and one that doesn't.
And it's the foundation of everything inside of my Moves
Method toolkit. If this episode landed for you,
share it. Leave a review if you're
listening on Apple or Spotify, it genuinely helps more people
find this work. Now start moving and I'll see
you in the next video.