How about making muscles fail by stretching them under load?
I trained myself to do pull-ups using this method, repeatedly lowering myself in a controlled motion from the top position while I was too weak to actually pull myself up.
But after that people started experimenting and researches started publishing a lot of interesting findings. And found a lot of applicable things that are based on the original SMH research and that is partly/fully explaining new findings.
Like is was found that it having only the partial range of motion, training the one when the muscle is lengthened is clearly better than training in a position of a shortened muscle.
Moreover, some research even found that doing such "lengthened partials" is better that doing the full range of motion.
Therefore, people try to utilize more of the lengthened portion of the movements (especially if it is impossible to work the muscle in both the lengthened and shortened positions, so one has to choose anyway), while some go as far as getting rid of the shortened portion altogether.
One would also expect it not to do as much for strenght, since adaptations are somewhat specific to the training.