Tip: Continuous-Tension Dumbbell Bench Press

Tension builds muscle. Stop your reps just short of lockout if your main goal is hypertrophy. It's a good finisher after your full ROM sets.

Working your muscles through a full range of motion is almost always a good idea. It'll develop your muscles to their greatest potential and accelerate your gains. However, there are a couple of things you must consider.

It's important to keep tension on the working muscles and increase the time under tension for each and every set. One advanced method to achieve this is called continuous tension sets, which is a technique that defies the time-honored tradition of locking out every rep. Just stop right before the weights are locked out at the top and proceed directly into the next rep.

In the book Supertraining (Mel Siff, 2009), continuous tension sets are defined as, "Any set in which each repetition is done smoothly without ballistic bounce, cheating, or significant pause at either end of the motion. Characteristically, the movements are executed fairly slowly without the joints locking completely at any stage of the exercise."

Michael Warren won the UK Personal Trainer of the Year award (2014). He is the owner of Michael Warren Performance Education, and has trained a number of professional athletes and teams. Follow Michael Warren on Twitter