Short or abridged lifting movements can be highly effective for bodybuilders focused on shaping specific muscles for symmetry and aesthetics. While these exercises target small muscle groups, they aren’t as crucial for general fitness or other sports. For most people aiming to build strength and functionality, utilizing full-range motions and maintaining balance in workouts is key to promoting long-term health and coordination.

Tailoring workouts to individual goals is essential, especially for athletes in different sports like tennis, golf, or swimming. Core strength and balance play a critical role in injury prevention, particularly as people age. For female athletes, regular pelvic adjustments can help prevent knee injuries by ensuring proper alignment, making specialized care an important aspect of their training regimen.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:40 – Tailoring Exercises by Sport
01:35 – Bodybuilding Focus on Muscle Shape
02:49 – Importance of Full Range of Motion
04:15 – Workout Design Philosophy
05:46 – The Dangers of Falls in Elderly
07:21 – Sport-Specific Training & Core Focus
08:44 – Female Athlete Considerations
09:59 – Chiropractic Adjustments for Athletes
11:28 – Short Range of Motion Summary

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:03] Tijani asked one of my patients I that today is watching bodybuilding videos and you asked me what I thought about short or abridged motion. So that full range of motion is the last third of the first third of emotion. That lifting style depends greatly on your goals. There’s a lot of things that I would have a quarterback to. I’d have a wide receiver do or I’d have, you know, a lacrosse player or a soccer player or tennis or whatever. There’s exercises that have those individual players do because of the their sports. Like, one of the things I have racket players do is hold a hammer and rotate a hand back and forth like this to build up the rotational piece of their elbow so they don’t get golfers all over to swallow very easily. I wouldn’t necessarily have a bodybuilder or an interior lineman do those exercises because that’s not really an issue we need to protect against in their sport. So depending upon the sport, you’re going to you’re going to do different exercises to either maximize your function or increase your protection function. So the hammer things would protect a function for racket players and golfers. The shorter abridged motions I again, in the beginning or the end of the motion for bodybuilders is specifically to. Work on a very small pieces of muscle.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:35] It’s believed that if you work on small pieces of muscles, you can shake them differently. Shape is extremely important for bodybuilding. Having big muscles is one thing. Having cut muscles is the next piece, and then having very properly shaped muscles is the piece that distinguishes the winners and the losers. So it’s very, very, very important in bodybuilding. Now, if you’re bodybuilding, I would recommend you look into that. Identifying pieces that are not symmetrical, implying little pieces that you want to tone up or perk up in a specific area or the range of the muscle is hypercritical. It’s not important on any other sport. You can make the argument if you’re just trying to look good, it’s beneficial and I’m not going to argue that point. And if you want to, it’s not going to hurt you. It’s just going to develop the muscle differently. But if you’re looking for power, if you’re looking for something like that, it might not be the best workout for you to do. A lot of times what will you do will go up. Just to clarify this on my football players is if you’ve been doing squats down to parallel.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:49] A lot of times I’ll have people come down because have to build the last range of motion. I can go after grass all the way to parallel. And that last piece of that range of motion, we will do exercises there to build up and equalize the entire range of motion. Same idea with knees over toes sort of stuff for the ankles functionality range motion, but that’s more of a rehab issue. So. Again, it’s great for rehab. It’s great for a specific purpose. Like, again, the way you’re listing needs to be in direct line with your goals. So, you know, that would be how I’d I’d put that. I know that’s not the best answer in the world, but that’s how you put it. Does a normal person need to focus on first, third or last third range of options? Not really. I would I would be very I would lean harder. That’s like the last 5%. If you’re if you’re looking for how should a normal person left person who’s just trying to be, you know, strong and functional, healthy things like that, full range of motion is always the way to go. Slow reps and then, you know, push yourself one more rep every time. That’s standard. You know, 12 to 17 that I set up is basically how we do it now. The way I design my workouts for everybody is I designed them as long term balance coordination function model.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:15] The idea that one day you will be old. However, whatever that number is for you, one day you will be there, you will be hopefully you will be old and balance, coordination, you know, ligament to intend strength. Those are all super important as you get older. Falling down is really, really bad. There’s been lots and lots and lots and lots of times where we have some an old who’s, you know, active and vibrant and everything’s great and they fall and they break their hair or they do something and they break their hip. And because they didn’t become sedentary for X amount of time, it ends up killing them. There’s like, you know, with blood clots or, you know, after, you know, after grandpa broke his hip. He was just never the same like that type of stuff. So balance and coordination long term is extremely important. So I will build mine with that in mind. We also, where I build my exercises, Rebel is every single thing you’re doing is based around a core function. So biceps are going to build, core triceps are going to go, the core back is going to build core. The only thing that really doesn’t, of course, specifically is going to be some of the chest work we do, but shoulders, every single thing we do is based around the idea of I want to grow this muscle and I want to activate the core the entire time. One of the reasons it’s hard to do that with just because you’re laying down most of the time, if you’re going to work with chest working or bilaterally is one of the.

[00:05:46] If you’re going to work with Jesse or work bilaterally, that’s the only real differentiation there. But everything every single thing we do, I’ve designed around building your core as well. So again, goals. Right. So my my goals for the way I design my workouts are for balance, coordination and long term functioning. So that’s that’s how my design, if you like, I want to have the strongest, you know, six inch squat in the world. Those goals are different. And so you’d want to train that six inch range you’re trying to go. And I try to do seven, but that’s just a little bit more your goal. I would that’s where that’s where you do that, that corner squat or whatever because that’s that’s your goal. Like my goal is to have this piece of the muscle really, really strong. Okay. So that’s then to focus on that specific fact. One of the problems I think we get into with a lot of people who are latching is they don’t really have a goal. They have the, you know, like I want to get bigger and stronger. Great. Then I’m going to put you in the category where I put everybody else, which is we’re going to work on individual musculature with a second with a primary emphasis on core function. But, you know, if you sit down and I hear my actual roles, I’m a quarterback, I’m a cornerback, I’m a linebacker, I’m a soccer player, the point guard about whatever it is. What is your goal? What are we trying to do? Now, the other side of that, you can tell me any sport you’re in and I can tell you what we need to work on to protect you swimmers.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:21] We’ve got to work on your pulse of your adult lives. Why? Well, because you have to work in the muscle that opposes the pectoral measure. Because every single thing in swimming is a pulling motion. It’s here. It’s here and back. And so we’re doing things that are rowing us forward. And so we need to do things that expand this back to balance the shoulder towns. We don’t care for shoulders, runners. There’s a ton of stuff. You got to do most of this around the post because what happens is that you have to recognize that the pelvis is actually your core and your femurs tie into the pelvis. And so if your pelvis has issues, you will have knee issues and you will have deep mental issues because your base from where everything is moving starts actually at the pelvis, not at your feet. You know, there’s an argument for fear, you know, for orthotics to make sure the foot is balanced, the foot strikes properly. But a lot of the foot striking thing is neurological. It’s, you know, how do we teach ourselves to write? And then, you know, the rest of it is just if the pelvis is messed up, the ilium, so that when people call their hips, it’s a joint, the ilium, the actual bone, the one that you can feel when you put your hands on your waist. It does this in the circumstance. The center does that. Well, if these are going like this, the femur is actually come up and down and they’re tied into the Liam’s at the hip.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:44] And so if one gets four like this, the femur is going to come up and rotate. Well, the femur is one solid down. So if it rotates, they have to rotate the knee. So we’re having knee issues from running or from jogging or for any normal use trauma to the knee to put a face mask underneath that. And it hurts totally. Or sorry. But a lot of the stuff that we’re seeing is because of the pelvis, female athletes. The big, big issue is there are two angle is 30% larger than men. And so the forces on the knee are substantially higher to begin with. Then the pelvis gets out oftentimes during the muscle cycle or the way they sit on it or they slip on their side or whatever pelvis gets out, femurs come up and femurs often rotate. But the additional torsion of the knee and then they blow their knees up. So getting those knees, adjusting the pelvis adjusted and maintaining neurologic tone to the hamstrings is even as possible, is a really, really big to extend to socially also are going to be your big pieces that you want to look for and female athletes to save and protect their knees. So if you have female athletes who are not getting adjusted on a regular basis, you need to go find. I can do it. Some of the sports guys can do it. But if you have a female athlete and you’re worried about her knees.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:59] Find a pediatric pregnancy specialist because a pediatric or pregnancy specialist knows the pelvis really, really, really well. They might not know the knees. If I don’t know the musculature, they might not know the the functionality of the sport, but they know the pelvis really well. And so, you know, you’re going to have less screw ups, even if they don’t understand the sport, even if they don’t understand the musculature. Balancing the pelvis is so important that I would tell you that find a pediatric specialty can balance the pelvis is your primary. If you find a sports guy who understands all the functionality and works on the pelvis, then that would be your best bet. But if you’re just in an area and you can’t figure out who to go see, check out the ICP, the Internet Chiropractic Association, find their website and people who are up to date and who are ICP certified with Webster and stuff like that. I would I would start there. We have female athletes, so like I learned more about the pelvis from my pediatric friends. I did from the entire sports survey that I went through. So which I’m not supposed to talk about anymore because I didn’t pay them their $400 a year to maintain my title. So I’m not supposed to tell people I have that title. So there you go. But yeah, I would find a be personally specialist. If you’re not in an area where my office can deal with you. If you are, I would in here because.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:28] You know. I’m the one giving the advice. I know that I know how to build things together. But that would be that would be the thing I would do for female athletes is make sure they get adjusted. But that’s kind of be my my opinion on the on the short range of motion. They’re great for a specific goal. Again, goal setting, tracking and monitoring for your goals is going to be hypercritical no matter what you’re doing. So if you’re not working with somebody who sets goals properly, who sits down with you and figures out what your goals actually are, how to track them, and how to view your return on investment of that goal so that you know how to change what you’re doing. Then that’s really where you need to start, is really setting out what your goals are and how to track them. So that’s more of a mindset thing. All right. The questions are the questions that monster.com or dropping in the comments. Thanks for your time.

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Dr. Matt Chalmers

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