By Tony Dare
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Everyone knows about the Big
Six lifts - squat, deadlift, bench press, row, overhead press
and pullup - but your options for training are more varied
than that. You can take these lifts and ramp them to a new
level simply by limiting the distance you move the weight.
I'm going to talk about partials today.
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What the Heck is
a Partial?
A "partial" is taking one
of the big lifts - typically bench, squat, dead or overhead press
- and only doing part of the movement mostly the top part. Many
people do them inadvertently in commercial gyms and then claim domination
of the weight as though they had done it for the full range. There
is, however, a place in one's training for this type of work.
We've all hit the wall on a certain
lift at some juncture in our training careers, reached a point where
we just can't get another 5 pounds on our bench. A partial bench
press may be just the ticket for breaking through that limitation.
Powerlifters make it a regular practice to do "board work"
- which is simply placing some screwed-together 2x6's on your chest
and benching to those - and "rack pulls" - doing a deadlift
in a power rack with the bar resting on the support pins which are
set some distance off the floor. These are the strongest human beings
on the planet for squat bench and dead and if they are doing it,
there must be a good reason why.
Weak-Point Training
Why would one do only a portion of
a muscle or strength building movement? The main use for partials
is to address weak points in a lift; weak-point training. The challenge
of weak-point training is in first identifying what actually is
the weak point. These generally don't show up in an obvious manner
until you are approaching limit weights - 1 rep maxes. Some folks
are strong off the chest when benching, but fail as the stress moves
to the triceps, while others can lock out any weight that gets 4
inches off their chest. Some squatters have a weird hitch about
halfway up in the squat that stops them but never have a problem
turning the bar around at bottom. Other squatters die at the bottom.
Some deadlifters can lock out anything they get past their knees
and others - while able to pull massive poundages off the floor
- can't reach altitude.
You have to know where you fail and
why in order to pursue weak point training. Armed with that knowledge,
partials can then be an effective tool in attacking those weak points.
Top-End Partials
The body is a funny organism - you
may have noticed that pushing a weight often becomes easier as the
weight is further away from the body. This is because the leverage
improves as limb angles increase. The muscles have less of a corner
around which they have to pull (we're talking about joints - the
musculo-skeletal system can be modelled as a system of pulleys and
levers). The greater the joint angle, the more directly force can
be applied.
What would happen if you loaded more
on the bar for that portion of the movement? Because of the way
the body is wired, you generally get stronger. The reason for this
is that the nervous system, which drives and mediates all muscular
contraction in the body, now perceives that there is a bigger weight
than before trying to crush it's vehicle (your body) and it adjusts
it's nervous output accordingly.
Try this sometime: Do a partial bench
press for a single (after warming up of course) with about 10-15%
more than your usual bench press weight. You might even be able
to do reps. After a short rest period, take your usual BP weight
for a single. What you'll likely find is that the weight you're
used to now feels lighter as you hold it. This is the nervous system
potentiating its response to inputs upward - that is: it's changed
it expectations of what feels 'heavy'. This is a temporary adaptation.
You will actually likely be able to press the same weight for a
rep or two more, or press more a little more weight for the same
amount of reps.
If you do this on a regular and or
for reps, a la board presses or high squats, the full range movement
becomes easier over time, due to the brain and nervous system increasing
electrical output to the muscles and causing them to contract harder.
You can generate more force...also known as getting stronger. The
heavier weights also obviously encourage the body to add more muscle
tissue. These are the more permanent adaptations.
The Other End
Partials are also useful for strengthening
what is typically the weakest or hardest part of a movement, where
a joint or series of joints are near or at full flexion. Try doing
a half-squat from the bottom sometime. What about deadlifting to
your knees for reps? Bench pressing from the bottom up to about
4 inches off the chest? With proper loading and volume, I'd wager
you'd see a boost in your starting or turnaround strength. Bench
pressing from pins is very productive as is squatting from pins
set such that you are in the deepest part of the squat. You have
no momentum to help you and have to use sheer muscular power to
move the bar.
Ordinarily, your muscles store elastic
energy as you lower a weight and then release it as you're coming
back up, much like a rubber band. This is in addition to the actual
force you are attempting to apply to the bar. It's this extra little
"kick" that can enable you to turn the weight around at
the chest in the bench press or gets you out of the bottom of a
free squat.
By taking this stretch reflex out
of the lifting equation, you train the nervous system to generate
more force in the muscle - again: you get stronger. This is not
a popular strategy because 1) it is very hard and 2) you have to
reduce the amount of weight you lift. A full range squat is easier
than what is called an Anderson squat (named for Paul Anderson -
an American gold medal Olympic weightlifter and famous strongman
- who made liberal use of them) which is simply doing a squat from
the bottom up. It's not unusual to have to reduce your poundages
at least 10% and that is bruising to many people's egos - BUT: they
are brutally effective at increasing the standard squat. This strategy
works similarly for bench. It's the perfect sort of training for
those weak off the chest or who fail in bottom of the squat("the
hole").
Finding Middle Ground
Another area partials are good for
strengthening is that changeover point in the middle of a lift.
For bench, it's where the triceps start taking over from the chest.
In squatting it's the spot (for some) where the front of the thigh
comes more into play, typically 2/3rds to 1/2 of the way up. The
deadlift has a common troublespot somewhere between the middle of
the shins and the top of the knee, a place you usually rocket through
due to the speed you developed coming off the floor. There's a couple
of strategies for dealing with these trouble spots, one of which
is to develop more speed from the bottom...but that's a different
article.
If you're strong enough to accelerate
the weight through the trouble spot, it's not a trouble spot - but
as the weight approaches maximum poundages the lift can slow to
such a degree that you can't make it through that range due to weakness(now
exposed) or lack of coordination (yes, the muscles have to coordinate
with one another even in a slow lift). Working specfically in those
trouble ranges helps you to develop a smoother and stronger bar
path. You can work that range for controlled reps, trying to develop
both strength and coordination, drilling in a bar path that becomes
automatic.
Honestly, I haven't heard of many
powerlifters or weightlifters actually doing this. More often, lifters
will simply take the sticking point of the lift as the turnaround
or starting point and work top-end partials from there. There seems
to be an application for it in bodybuilding and a whole website
devoted to the concept - it's even been copyrighted and trademarked...and
shall remain unnamed here.
The Immovable Object
There was (and still may be) a contingent
of lifters that liked to combine the latter two types of partials
with isometrics, or pushing and pulling into pins, such that the
weight could no longer move - no matter the force applied. I haven't
heard much about them in recent strength articles, but strongmen
and weightlifters of the 1960's,-50's,-40's and before made liberal
use of isometrics. They would set the bar on one pair of power rack
pins at a height below their sticking point and push/pull the weight
up into the bottom of a second pair of pins right at their sticking
point for a period of 6-10 seconds. The claim was that they were
able to develop more strength AT the sticking point and so surpass
it through this method . Isometrics do develop strength, but only
within about 15 degrees of the specific joint angle at which you
train with them. However, this is perfect for getting your problem
lift through the sticking point.
Caveats
Now, applying some of these strategies
is taxing on the body (with the exception of isometrics, strangely
enough), so partials have to be rotated in and out of your program.
You are basically leapfrogging intervening weeks or months of development
you might have gotten from doing solely full range movements and
the body will likely need more time to recover than usual. Most
people have gotten good results from doing 2 weeks of partials or
as little as two training sessions of the same movement before switching
back to full range again. If you attempt to do only top-end partials
with overloading, you will find yourself burning out quickly and
stalling as a result. The nervous system is being sent into overdrive
and it can't do it every training session without negative results
accruing.
Top-end partials can also be hard
on the joints if done too long. Joint attachments (tendons and ligaments)
recover much more slowly than does muscle due to their construction:
they receive a much-reduced blood supply as compared to muscle and
so get stronger more slowly. So partials have to be used intelligently.
You can institute a rotation of lower-weight, higher rep exercises
into your program to increase blood flow through the joint to mitigate
this effect somewhat. It's a good thing for older lifters to do
in any case.
Here is a partial list of partial
movements:
Deadlift Variations
Elevated deadlifts from boxes
Rack pulls
Bench Variations
1,2,3,4,5-board bench press
Bench press from pins
Squat Variations
High box squat
Half or three-quarters squat
Squat from high pins
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Overhead Press
Variations
Overhead press from pins
Seated overhead press from pins
Push press
High pressouts
Olympic Lifting
Variations**
Low clean or snatch pulls
High Clean or snatch pulls
Speed deadlift
Deadlift
**The Olympic variations
are unusual in the respect that the lowest part of the movement
is considered the easiest
Summary
Used judiciously,
partials can get you past a sticking point, take you out of
a rut, or speed up the results being gained from an already
successful training program. Rotate them in and out, or alternate
them with full range of motion exercises session to session,
remember to take appropriate recovery measures and I think
you'll see a beneficial effect on your strength.
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