Pre-exhausting target muscle

[vegas_warrior_nz]

after my three sets of squats and my leg extension superset to failure I thought Id jump on the seated leg press and give that a go,

WOAH IT BURNED BADDDDDD!

so I jumped on the leg extension again and did it again

today my legs still ache with really really BAD/GOOD DOMS,

anyone else tried pre-exhausting target muscles with isolation then on to complex movements?

[Luigi]

[*]

[Bobsta]

The pre-exhaust principal is always done with an isolation movement 1st followd by a compound, the idea is to fatigue the muscle you're working on directly 1st and then using a compound movement you take that muscle over and beyond exhaustion with the help of other muscle groups, ie. you pre-exhaust the chest with dumbell flyes which isolates the pecs with little help from any other muscle group to failure, then you jump onto barbell bench press which allows you to further kill the chest because now you have your triceps and delts helping out.

Its a great way to increase intensity but should not be used all the time.

[lazyeye]

i like skull crushers into closegrip benchpress (ez curl bar)

good times, but you have to go heavy

[boostinggtir]

Hmm so doing breacher curls, then say barbell curls, would be a good way to smash the biceps.

[lazyeye]

try doing reverse curls with ez curl bar to near failure (6-8 reps)

then flip the bar over into supinated curls (your a little bit stronger) and then rep out again for another 5 or so reps

smashes the upper arm goooood

[agent86]

pre exhausting will only limit the amount of weight you can lift and so limit the amount of muscle growth. If you want to pre exhaust legs why not run a marathon beforehand that will work.

[Foundation]

Doesn't this "pre exhausting" thingee depend on what your trying to achieve? I'm new to this but have been told and read on many occasion that lifting heavey will eventually make me stronger, so I do a warmup that doesn't pre exhaust then go thru the working sets.

What is the purpose of pre exhausting? and when would you apply this type of workout, ie strength training, toning, breaking the plateau etc

[lazyeye]

you can use it to target a particular muscle in a compound movement

ie, when doing chin/pull ups the biceps are always going to fail before the lat....by performing a set of cable pullovers that isolate the lat beforehand and prefatiging it

then when you come to do chins, you know that you are going to hit lat failure and not biceps

this can be applied to any compound movement

skull crushers before close grip bench (tricep)

flies before bench (chest)

lateral raises before military press (shoulders)

the previous poster is right in that by performing the preehaustion exercise your limting the amount you can lift, but thats not the point...the point of it is to isolate a particular muscle in a compound movement

[agent86]

Pre fatiguing will definitely exhaust your chest before bench press but will do nothing for muscle growth. You will still be lifting less weight. If you want to isolate chess then just do flyes and forget the bench. Even doing flyes you will have a certain amount of shoulder involvement.

Do the compund movements first and then to cover all bases do flyes last.

If this was a way of breaking a plateau surely we would use it all the time.

Forget about pre exhausting and supersets and do the basics. Even flyes should be done as heavy as possible.

[vegas_warrior_nz]

for the sake of argument, if pre-exhausting the muscle before a compound exercise does nothing for hypertrophy then why do my legs ache with DOMS for a full week when I do this?

If you are correct, ( and you could quite well be) then does that mean DOMS has nothing to do with hypertrophy?

I actually hypothesize that DOMS has more to do with lactic acid build up than actually work done, what do you think about that?

I however, always do my heavy compounds before I isolate then hit it again with lighter compounds.

[agent86]

If I went and played soccer I would have DOMS for days as it is something my muscles are not accustomed to. If I do a different exercise or stretch something that hasn't been stretched for awhile I will get DOMS. If I miss a week and then train again I may get DOMS for a week.

DOMS does not equal muscle growth. In fact I would expect someone to grow and not have DOMS as long as the increases in weights are gradual.

The real proof is whether you are getting stronger,bigger and putting on weight.

[Android]

i think (for what it's worth) that saying you did Squats and Leg Exts as a pre-exhaust to Leg Press is incorrect.

You really just did Squats and Leg Extensions followed by Leg Press and you found Leg Press (in your words "WOAH IT BURNED BADDDDDD!")

As far as a pre-exhausting method goes, it's something isolated like Leg Extensions and then something compound like Leg Press or Squats as said above.

It's a bit over the top to say this: but NO-ONES body is the result of a single exercise or style of workout. We all just throw together combinations of tactics over the years to keep growing. Do what you are doing regardless of what it might or might not be called mate, (it's not pre-exhaust it sounds like supersetting, but who cares as long as you G R O W )

Good for you throwing things up a bit btw

[Bobsta]

Gaining strength continuesly is not only impossible (and can cause injury if you're forever chasing the bigger weights) but also its not the only factor for gaining size, if it was power lifters will always have bigger muscles than Bodybuilders and we know thats not the case.

Other factors that influence hypertrophy are Volume of work done and more importantly TIME UNDER TENSION. This is where the whole categorizing of rep ranges comes from i.e. 1 to 5reps= Strength, 6 to 10= Hypertrophy etc...

Now pre-exahstion is just one of the ways to increase the time under tension for a particular muscle and a very usefull technique for shocking the muscle into growth. But as i said earlier it should only be used sparingly for most people. The mainstay should always be the basic straight sets, striving to get the poundages up

[knock knock]

I've used this teqnique with good results. The point being the isolated muscle is worked first, when you do the compound exercise you are not being held back by the other muscles (e.g. tris/shoulders on bench), so you pecks would be working as hard as they could rather than the other fresher muscles. Sure you don't lift as much but you isolted mucle would be getting hammered. Ideally your failing as only the pre exhausted muscle cannot do any more.

[recent addict]

I find that I reach exhaustion/failure on most chest exercises, particularly barbell benchpress, before feeling any real 'burn' on my pecs, and my chest never gets much (if any) post workout soreness.

As I want to target my chest I tend to go for those exercise first, while I'm fresh and can put the most intensitiy into it.

From reading the discussion above, it sounds like this is the opposite to what might help. Does this pre-exhaustion technique mean that working triceps and shoulders before my chest will engage my pecs more?

[recent addict]

Whoops! I just re-read that post and realised it doesn't make sense. The aim would be to isolate my chest first (dumbell flys?) and then do the compund exercise right?

But given the problem I've described is there any other tips you might be able to offer.

[Fshboy]

Bobsta is bang on here. Hypertrophy is not solely related to total weight lifted and getting stronger does not necessarily equal hypertrophy either. I have worked for over 12 years with elite athletes in NZ and the UK (Olympic and Professional) and we regularly worked specific strength (which is primarily neural development, not structural) so that we would increase overall power-weight ratio's - thus looking for maximal strength increases with minimal hypertrophy (primarily power based sports). Pre-exhaustion is actually a good way to 'shock' the muscles and increase hypertrophy. If we also look at total load lifted by the muscle it can actually sometimes be more than a single isolated exercise i.e. Pec Flye followed by Bench, compared to bench alone - when both added up can come to more with regards to total volume lifted. I think it's important to understand what you are trying to achieve, especially when it comes to neural vs structural development, as they are quite different with regards to training and recovery following. It is also important to understand what pre-exhaustion can do to stabilisers and joint integrity as it does put the muscle-tendon junction under alot of stress, and due to the actual muscle fibres adapting faster than the tendon, injuries can occur (especially to those who do not have a large training history, or have not done much specific strength related training).