Dr. Andy Galpin

You're going to be put into positions likely where the muscle needs to contract when it's shortened, when it's extended, and many other positions.

And so we want to train that somehow across multiple range of motion.

The first is similar to what we talked about with muscle quantity, and that is all ranges of motion.

You want to be strong, fast, and have great endurance when your muscles are both shortened, when they're extended, and when they're in various positions.

As always, we don't ever want to put a joint into a bad position, and then we definitely don't want to load that or contract that.

But as much as we can, we want to force human movement in a high quality through a large range of motion.

The second one here is being intentional.

So where this differs than, say, the muscle size issue is

is muscle quality is about eliciting an improvement in human movement.

Whether this means we're more efficient, whether we're producing more power or speed, we've got to move in a certain way.

And so now we're talking about

a quality that extends outside of the muscle itself and into a human movement.

And so we want to be incredibly intentional about how we're moving.

Our technique, our rhythm, our timing, our tempo, what should be moving, what should be relaxed, what should be contracting is all critically important to moving better.

If you ask any sprinting coach, they're going to talk about things like rhythm and timing and tempo.

And what they're really talking about is this stuff.

How this applies to everyone else is simply understanding when I'm trying to contract, say, my pecs or my shoulders for a bench press, what should my glutes be doing?

Should they be contracted all the way?

Should they be totally off and relaxed?

Should they be halfway?