PreExhaustion

[Chemo]

Pre-exhaustion, Doing it right...?

I want to try pre exhaustion for my chest and back workouts, whats everyones experience with this?

Should I do a few sets of say bicep curls before moving onto rows or pulldowns? really hammering the arm muscles first.

Or perhaps superset every set of rows with some curls, to semi fatigue the arm muscles before the rows, etc.

Do I want to fatigue the biceps/tris completely or just wear them out for the compound move. I also want to go back to a 5 day split and get an arm day back in there, with the arm day could pre exhaustion be too much?

[PeterDolan]

You've got the concept of pre exhaustion completely wrong mate!

What you are talking about is working your arms harder, just train arms twice a week, once on their own day and once after another body part

[soundsgood]

Actually Pete, he is sort of on the right track

Pre exhaustion is fatiguing the secondary muscle group using isolation exercise before doing your compound lifts. So to pre exhaust your quads you would do a few heavy sets of leg extensions before squatting, or in your case you would do a few sets of cable crossovers before benching to pre exhaust the chest etc.

Obviously you won't be as fresh and you will just be targeting the main muscle group you are trying to work on your compound lifts. So you won't be lifting as heavy, but you will be engaging more fibres and consequently more growth. Ive thrown it into my workouts from time to time and its been effective.

[knock knock]

The example he gave though is pre-exhausting the wrong mucles, he said chect or back but is working his arms. e.g. If you want to pre-exhaust you chest, you would do the cable crossovers, but not tricep extensions or shoulder press. Your aim is to exhaust the chest first so when you later do some chest press, the chest muscle fail before you tri's or shoulders fail.

[Chemo]

But if i work the chest (flys) , say before bench wont my arms get more involved as I come closer to failure, and then do more of the work?

If pre exhaustion means exhausting the muscle you want to work before doing compounds I may as well just do isolation movements after, which is what i do anyway.

[mike27]

why pre-exhaust?

whats the purpose?

[PeterDolan]

Actually Pete, he is sort of on the right track

Pre exhaustion is fatiguing the secondary muscle group using isolation exercise before doing your compound lifts. So to pre exhaust your quads you would do a few heavy sets of leg extensions before squatting, or in your case you would do a few sets of cable crossovers before benching to pre exhaust the chest etc.

Obviously you won't be as fresh and you will just be targeting the main muscle group you are trying to work on your compound lifts. So you won't be lifting as heavy, but you will be engaging more fibres and consequently more growth. Ive thrown it into my workouts from time to time and its been effective.

Exactly SG, he said curls before back not pull overs

[Bobsta]

But if i work the chest (flys) , say before bench wont my arms get more involved as I come closer to failure, and then do more of the work?

If pre exhaustion means exhausting the muscle you want to work before doing compounds I may as well just do isolation movements after, which is what i do anyway.

Ok to pre-exhaust a muscle group, say chest, what you want to do is just that pre- exhaust the chest ( the main muscle not the secondary muscle SG), i.e tire out your pecs with an exercise that isolates them like flyes or crossover, during this isolation exercise your chest works hard but your triceps stay fresh, which is exactly what you want.

Then you move onto a compound movement like bench press, at this point your chest is pre-exhausted and your triceps come in to help as they're fresh and fatigue your chest even further than you could have done if you had just done the bench press by itself where both your chest and tri's would have fatigued at the same time, and hence stoping the set then and there.

For back again you would do an isolation movement for the back not biceps, somthing like straight arm pulldown or pullover before moving onto some sort of rowing or pulldown where then your bi's come in to help to further fatigue your back

[Chemo]

So really, pre exhaustion is really using a relatively isolated movement before doing a compound, for the targeted muscle group. Something like flys before a press.

If so yeah that was not what I was thinking at all. :oops:

Mike: I wanted to get more back involvement with my rows and pull downs, I thought taxing the biceps would force my back muscles to pick up slack and do more work. If this is the case it sounds like pre and post exhaustion are very very similar.

Why not just lift more compound sets to failure, rather than pre exhaust, then if needed use isolated/post exhaustion movements later?

[Chemo]

Ok so I want to pre-exhaust that targeted muscle and then later push it past its normal limits, relying on my arms to do most of the work?

[Bobsta]

I wanted to get more back involvement with my rows and pull downs, I thought taxing the biceps would force my back muscles to pick up slack and do more work. If this is the case it sounds like pre and post exhaustion are very very similar.

The problem with that is that since biceps are a smaller muscle they normaly fatigue earlier than the larger stronger back muscles, they are the weak link so to speak, so to fatigue bi's 1st you would make it even harder to work your back muscles fully, you want to fatigue back 1st then use the biceps help to further kill them.

[Bobsta]

Ok so I want to pre-exhaust that targeted muscle and then later push it past its normal limits, relying on my arms to do most of the work?

You got it buddy

[Chemo]

Ay got it!

Cheers, ill start adding some correct pre-exhaustion in now, interesting to see how it goes. I don't know how I feel about not lifting the same weight, but meh development is what im after.

How does pre/post exhaustion work for strength gains?

[train hard]

Ay got it!

Cheers, ill start adding some correct pre-exhaustion in now, interesting to see how it goes. I don't know how I feel about not lifting the same weight, but meh development is what im after.

How does pre/post exhaustion work for strength gains?

you wont be able to lift the same weight the point of pre exhastion is to isolate a certain muscle to make sure that muscle fails before assisting muscles do for example when doing a barbell bench press if you pre exaust with flys first your chest will fatigue on the bench press first not your assisting muscles ie shoulders and tris so you have trained your target muscle to complete failure which is the goal im not a big fan of it but i do use it every now and then and only for lats, quads and chest no point doing it for smaller muscles

[Monarchking]

only for lats, quads and chest no point doing it for smaller muscles

hey, what exercises do u use to pre-exhaust your lats?

[train hard]

only for lats, quads and chest no point doing it for smaller muscles

hey, what exercises do u use to pre-exhaust your lats?

you can do dumbel or cable pullovers really squeez your lats or you can try super setting low cable pulley with lat pulldowns to start first, your lats will feel pumped and then move on to some serious bent over rows and you will really feel your lats working during the bent over row

[PeterDolan]

no point doing it for smaller muscles

You can do it for smaller muscles though if you find that you cheat or synergistic muscles work too hard