Pre-exhaustion

[Riccardo]

I see a lot of guys on here talking about pre-exhaustion to bring up lagging body parts, so I guess anecdotal evidence suggests that this method works. However I have read numerous articles/studies as well as my own experience and experience from others to suggest that all pre exhaustion does is fatigue the muscle you are trying to isolate such that more work is performed by the secondary muscles in the movement. Ill use a classic example:

Pre-exhausting the chest with dumbbell flies prior to benching:

From my experience all this does is fatigue my chest to the point where I can feel my triceps and delts doing more work than my chest.

AmIdoin'it right?

This article is an interesting read: http://www.musculardevelopment.com/arti ... -myth.html

Extensions before squats:

muscle pre-exhaustion with leg extensions before the leg press resulted in a decrease in muscle activity of the quadriceps muscle during the leg press, compared to no pre-exhaustion.1 Pre-exhaustion has been touted for many years to increase the number of fibers activated during an exercise— but the research showed it decreased fiber activation.

Flies before bench press:

Because the chest muscle was fatigued, it relied on activation of the triceps to move the weight. This research is in alignment with other studies where scientists reported a significant (33.67 percent) increase in triceps muscle activation during bench press exercises with pre-exhaustion.

As I mentioned earlier, pre-exhaustion didn't result in an increase in pectoralis size but instead increased the size of the triceps. This was due to the fact that the triceps had to work harder to compensate for the fatigued chest.

Maybe pre-exhausting the triceps would be more beneficial to bringing up the chest? Curious to hear from both guys who swear by pre-exhaustion as well as those vehemently opposed to it lol.

[HarryB]

Interesting thread Riccardo and interesting to note people's personal findings when trying pre exhaust.

I wouldn't suggest pre exhausting your triceps before chest to make your chest training more effective but you try it and let me know how it goes...

I personally like pre exhaust as a means of training. What I find for me is that if I say do flyes first I can isolate and hammer my chest so that I don't have to use as much weight when I am doing pressing and I feel it working right from the first rep.

I don't find lower rep ranges particularly effective when pre exhausting because then it is harder to maintain form and all your effort goes into just shifting the weight with little or no thought to how your muscles are feeling the exercise. So for me I like preexhaust a lot and find it very effective when using a higher rep range.

[I Declare War]

Don't really like the idea of per-exhausition myself - likely because I'm not at the level where you are Harry. If you haven't got injuries and aren't working with dangerously heavy weight then I'd suggest you don't pre-exhaust - work with the heaviest weights that you can handle with good form.

I always feel my chest working if I hit it with an appropriate weight. Choose a weight where form isn't the best and other muscles come in to play too much and you end up struggling and not getting a good contraction in the chest.

I pretty much always do my exhausting after my main sets as I strip the weight plates off the barbell I do some extra sets until there's nothing on the bar.

Same with the Pec deck. After my pressing I'm all fired up and just jump in at full stack and just do as many reps as I can then I might do a quick drop with half stack. Chest is fried after that.

From the sounds of it you've been following a similar approach but haven't seen results. If you've got dominant arms/delts then it would be worth trying to pre-exhaust first. In bodybuilding it's sometimes a mission trying to find out what works, but once you do you can get rid of what doesn't!

[Riccardo]

I would have a similar training style to you IDW, However my arms do dominate pressing movements so looking at pre exhaustion to get the chest working a bit more. I guess the theory behind what harry does is the summation of motor units, getting to threshold quicker so you have all those pec motor units working BEFORE you start benching such that the chest is primed and rearing to go.

This probably means that the pre-exhaustion sets are not strictly an exhaustion but 'primer sets' to get the muscle firing and that the sets must be done with a low weight/medium-high rep range as harry said. therefore focusing on mind-muscle connection and getting the chest to fully contract would be the primary goal of the pre-exhaustion.