 All right, first question is from Dance Girl. I know a full range of motion is best, but is there ever an appropriate time to incorporate partials? What are the benefits of doing partial reps? Yeah, it's a good question because we talk so often about how your full range of motion that you own is the best range of motion to train in. But when you watch high level athletes lifting weights, like if you watch basketball players doing, they'll do quarter squats, they'll do trap bar deadlifts from an elevated position. There's value in those because they're training specifically for a range of motion. They're gonna be in using the most power and the most performance in during their game. Maximizing and generating power where they're most likely to do it, and that's not necessarily in the bottom position of a squat. That's right, and now it's not to say they don't do full range of motion training, but when you're at that level, partial rep training can be beneficial because you can specifically target a range of motion. And it's risk versus reward. That's right, that's right, because it's less risky, right? That requires less stability. The other way I would use partial reps is, and what I mean by partial reps is not going through the full range of motion is when I'm training someone who's hyper-mobile. And I haven't had a lot of clients like this, but I have had a few where they don't lift weights, they come and hire me, their joints are lax, they're super hyper-flexible, and I don't push them as low as I can. I stop them short and have them create tension to try and make themselves stronger before we even attempt to go into the deeper ranges of motion. This is something I feel like is being discussed on social media a lot right now. In fact, I was reading a tweet that Smitty just posted out. I saw Eugene Tao talking about something the other day, I saw Shallow talking about something the other day, PJ Performance. There's this, and it's a good question for us to address where we stand on this conversation because I think that I don't wanna draw a line in the sand of, oh, we are a team, astagrass squats, and that's how everybody should be squatting, and there's gonna be exceptions to the rule, and there's gonna be a major individual variance by everybody that you train, so the goal for me when training a client that doesn't have specific needs like an athlete, like an NBA basketball player if I'm training that person, you're the 1% of the 1%, so I'm not talking, I'm talking about the general population I'm training, how do I decide if I'm going to squat with them to just 90, a little bit below 90, or astagrass, and that is if they have the capability to go there, and a lot of people, because they hear us talk about and promote deep squatting, assume that, oh, that means everybody should just go in deep squat after listening to us talk about it, and the reality is some people haven't done the prerequisites to get to a really good deep squat. Sure they can get there, but their mechanics are awful getting down there, and they're risking more by injuring themselves by doing that, so the end goal is to be able to do an astagrass squat if you're a general pot. It doesn't mean that you should be doing one right away. It means that the goal is to be able to do one with really good form, and if you are doing a really good squat down to 90, and then as you get deeper into 90, sure you can still do it, but form breaks down, you don't have any business doing it yet. Your goal then should be to work on mobilizing things like most likely the hips, thoracic mobility, ankle mobility, addressing the areas that you lack mobility in, and that's why the form doesn't look pretty at the bottom of the squat. You want a pretty squat, if you're gonna astagrass, you want to have a pretty squat, and so there's this big debate of should you or should you not between all these coaches and trainers that are out there, and the reality is that everybody should try and work towards taking a joint through its fullest range of motion. That is what's going to benefit us the most long term. Now as coaches and trainers, I have to assess somebody and decide are they ready for that full range of motion right now? And when I assess them, some people are, a lot of people are not. That doesn't mean that I want to justify them doing partial reps or not going through full range of motion because they can't right now. It's okay, we can't do it safely yet right now. My goal now is to give you the tools to work towards that. Yeah, because I think you need to specify, like what that means when you say, we want to use the fullest range possible or to their capacity. That doesn't mean that, okay, if I can get to the bottom of a squat, then that means I do a full range of motion squat. So that's not what we mean. Because a lot of people listening may say to themselves, oh cool, let me just go and see how low I can go. And then, oh, that means that's the bottom of my squat. No. When we say capacity, what we mean is, use the fullest range of motion that you have complete control over. Not the fullest range of motion period. So most people don't have full control and stability in perfect form all the way down. Most people break down once they get to a certain point. Then the goal is to increase that range of motion with control, which takes time, which takes mobility work, which takes correctional exercise work. That's the goal. Now what do the studies show? The studies show that if you want to gain the most, if you want to gain the widest spectrum of strength and you want to build more muscle or more muscle effectively, full range is superior to partial range. All things being equal. In other words, full range with good control versus partial ranges with good control. In fact, years ago, and I want to say it was in the 90s, there was this bodybuilding book that came out and I can't remember the name of it. It had Paul DeMeo on the cover. It was a late bodybuilder. They called him Quadzilla back in the day. And the book was selling partial rep training. And this theory was, hey, full range of motion is good, but partial rep training is better because you can use so much more weight. So it's like a full range of motion squat with 250 pounds is better than a 250 pound partial rep squat. But what you want to do is overload the partial rep. Then you're using 400 pounds and because of all that overload that's on the muscle, you're going to build more muscle. Okay, that book was published. A lot of people bought it. A lot of people tested it. And what they found was it doesn't work. It actually doesn't work at all. Full range of motion is superior, even with lighter loads for building more muscle. And again, that wide spectrum, wide ranging type of strength. And again, when we're talking about the average person, I'm trying to prepare them to be strong in the most full ways possible. We're not specifically training for a sport. We're not trying to get you to be the best at one particular thing. I'm trying to get you really good generally because that's the best for longevity. There's so many individual variances that you need to consider. And I mean, when talking about athletes in general, for me, like they build compensations. That's like really what an athlete does is build these patterns and hone in and fashion these patterns to get better and better at these very specific movements that they apply to their sport. And a lot of times you try and train to have carryover for that, for general strength and for power output. But in terms of the actual mechanics and power output, there are more advantageous ranges to work with. And so that's why you will see maybe some shortened levered squats or shortened angular movements that might actually have more benefit to that specific athlete. Well, and I think it's when we're talking about things like partial reps, I think that, you know, and this reminds me of like Eugene Tao's post that I wanted to comment on about the leg press. And what I love about Eugene is there's a lot of things that he says that I think is counter to a message that we tend to present on the podcast. Yet when he presents the information, the application behind how he presents it matters so much. For example, he was making the case like how valuable the leg presses. And, but when he's talking about how he utilizes it, towards the end of a workout after he's done, heavy compound lifting and his muscles are fatigued, it allows him to push without the risk of really hurting himself, doing something like a more, you know, challenging exercise like a squat or something else that's more complex. And so, and here we are guys who's talking about, oh, the leg press is terrible. Well, yeah, for the most part, for the average person who hasn't even learned how to squat very well, a less risky way to build volume in your workout. Exactly, and that was his case that he's making. And I can agree with that, even though we're the same guys that will turn around and say like leg pressing for most people, you should spend most of your time learning how to, just because we know how long it takes to learn how to squat really well, the benefits that you'll get just from working towards that and the average person, are you really consistent, are you consistent long enough to be great at squatting and grade at everything else in the gym? No, so, yeah, I understand where he's coming from and I also understand where we're coming from. I think that's important that people always are careful about when they get into questions like this and they wanna divide the fitness space up and oh, these people are pro this, these people are anti that. Listen, everything that we've ever heard of, of like different training tools, there's a place for it. There's a place for training and failure, there's a place for a leg, there's a place for a Smith machine, there's a place for leg press. When you hear us talk about these topics on this show, I'm always thinking about GP. I'm always thinking of the general population, the people that I saw day in and day out for two decades and what the information that I provide is I'm trying to give them the most value as possible. I am not trying to- And long-term benefits. Right, I am not trying to make an argument with some other very intelligent person in our space and say he's wrong, I'm right or she's wrong, I'm right. I don't give a shit about that. I don't give a shit about drawing a line in the sand about modalities and who I'm trying to think of what I've been training my entire career and I've got a fucking ton of people to pull from as examples of when you teach this, this is what normally happens and I care about helping the majority, not the small 1% of people that might find value with something. It's like debating the performance benefits of the bathing suit that you wear when you go swimming when you're talking to a bunch of people who aren't swimming, need to learn how to swim or are not Olympic level swimmers. Right, great point. It makes no sense. It doesn't make any sense to debate that because why? What's that gonna do for you? It's not gonna help you. So partial rep training aside from correctional purposes, there's not a ton of value for the average person. For athletes at super high levels, there's a lot of potential value. Now what about single joint movements like in comparison to compound movements? For partial repetitions. From a correctional exercise standpoint, I can see potential benefit but partial rep, I mean partial on a single joint, single joint movements typically, you can use a fuller range of motion with them and you can get a scratch. Well, as an interrupter I would say. Well, a bodybuilder chasing the pump, if you're programming well and you're in a hypertrophy phase and all your desired outcome is to just get a massive pump, partial reps will do that. It gets the similar benefits as like blood occlusion. So there is a person in a category where in a time, we're okay, that can make sense. Have I ever done a small pumping bicep curls or tricep push downs? Because that's what I'm looking for right there. I already lifted the heavy weight before, now what I'm trying to do is to pump as much blood as I possibly can in this muscle, feel that burn and then I'm out of there because I'm looking for suckle plasma hypertrophy, that's the benefit I want. But again, to the point we're trying to make for the average person, it's very short-term benefit, if any. And little, and very little, very little splitting hair type of argument. Most people should be sticking to the basics, getting better at the basics, trying to break down why they can't do the basics to the fullest range of motion, working towards that. Those things are gonna still build tons of muscle for you, tons of benefit, tons of body fat you're going to burn because of that and when you think of longevity, that wins for sure.