Working All The Angles

The Little Changes of Small-angle Training Can Make a Big Difference.

- Greg Merritt

WE THINK OF MUSCLES as parts. But skeletal muscles themselves consist of many thousands of tiny parts called fibers. Crucially, fibers—which are one to four inches long—rarely run the length of any muscle you train. Therefore, an exercise that stresses fibers near a muscle’s top won’t activate fibers near the bottom. Diverse angles of attack are necessary to stimulate as many fibers as possible and goad them toward growth, and no methodology hits your muscles in more ways each workout than small-angle training.

SMALL-ANGLE TRAINING

Over the past four decades, Charles Glass has established himself as bodybuilding’s preeminent trainer with what is popularly called angle training. This is a constantly morphing assault using subtle changes in the positioning of bodies and equipment. But what if you took that and cranked it up to 11? What if no two sequential sets were ever alike, and your overriding mission was to hit fibers from as many angles as possible? Welcome to small-angle training.