We Need To Talk About "The Stretch" (Jeremy Ethier's New Study)
The Jeff Nippard Podcast
Jeff Nippard
4.8 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
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Summary
In this episode, I talk with fellow YouTuber Jeremy Ethier about a new study that he co-authored that compared muscle growth when training with more tension in the lengthened position versus with more tension in the shortened position. We'll cover what these new findings mean, if this changes our thoughts on "the stretch", and how these findings should be applied to training.
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro and Jeremy's new study overview 2:54 - What Jeremy's study did really well 3:56 - Were these results surprising? 7:17 - How much does the stretch actually matter? 9:23 - Stretch implications for exercise selection 13:30 - Big picture takeaways on the stretch 15:25 - Does training experience change the results? 16:52 - Which stretch-biased exercises are worth it? 18:23 - Does science-based lifting keep flip-flopping? 19:20 - Jeremy's main takeaways 20:36 - Final thoughts
Jeremy Ethier's video on the study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJHeGGSp1tQ
References:
Jeremy Ethier's Study: https://sportrxiv.org/index.php/server/preprint/view/660
New Long vs Short Muscle Length Meta-Analysis: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399455789
DB vs Cable Lateral Raises: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40692697/
My Lengthened Partials Study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39959841/
Squats vs Hip Thrusts: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10349977/
Standing vs Seated Calf Raises: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38156065/
Calf Lengthened Partials vs Full ROM: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37015016/
Seated vs Lying Hamstring Curls: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33009197/
Leg Extension Seat Angle: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380457955
Overhead Triceps Extension vs Pressdowns: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35819335/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right, what's going on, guys? Welcome to a new episode of the Jeff Nippard podcast. In this podcast, I'm |
| 0:04.9 | speaking with fellow YouTuber Jeremy Ethier, and we're going to talk about a new study that he co-authored, |
| 0:10.3 | which investigated the effect of training with more tension in a lengthen position versus more tension |
| 0:15.7 | in a shortened position. And so a lot of people are looking at this as yet another study that investigates the |
| 0:21.9 | impact of the stretch on muscle growth. I think it's a really, really cool study. And before I get |
| 0:27.6 | into the conversation, just going to give you guys a really brief overview of what they did. |
| 0:32.9 | So essentially they took 20 subjects and they had them train one half of their body with more |
| 0:38.8 | of a squeeze emphasis and the other half of their body with more of a stretch emphasis. |
| 0:43.4 | And the way they did this was by using prime machines. |
| 0:47.2 | So if you've ever used a prime machine, you know that you can make certain parts of the range |
| 0:50.8 | of motion feel heavier by modifying the setting. Okay. So for one half of their |
| 0:56.7 | body, they had the setting on stretch emphasis. For the other half of their body, they had the |
| 1:00.8 | setting on squeeze emphasis. And the researchers hypothesized that the half of the body doing the |
| 1:07.1 | stretch emphasis should grow better because most of the research to date has shown |
| 1:12.4 | favorable effects from training in a lengthened position. Okay, and that is true. There's |
| 1:17.9 | quite a lot of evidence suggesting that. Most of that evidence isn't beginners, but I'm not |
| 1:22.6 | aware of any evidence that shows the squeeze to actually be better. So going into this study, you would expect |
| 1:28.6 | that the lengthened biased training would see better gains. What they actually found, and I'll |
| 1:35.6 | just spoil the results here, because our discussion is kind of like our interpretation of the |
| 1:41.0 | findings, what they basically found was that for the four muscles they |
| 1:44.8 | tested, there was no difference in growth between the stretch side and the squeeze side. And the |
| 1:51.4 | four muscles that they tested were the pecs, the glutes, the side delts, and the rear delts. |
... |
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