PRE-EXHAUST: Good or Bad???

[palehorse51]

I personally have always liked the pre-exhaust training principle. Either done without rest between sets (delts: laterals immediately followed by presses) or just hitting a muscle with an iso excersize for sets then moving to the compound movement for sets (chest: flyes followed by presses.) Makes sense to me that the target muscle will get blasted and therefore give out before the stabilizing and secondary muscles do. However alot of guys are saying the pre exhaust is shit, and that it just builds endurance??? I thought i would ask the pros. What do you guys think???

 

[JR Ewing]

I'm no pro, but my opinion is that as long as it is working for you, keep doing it - regardless of what others say about it not working for them.

Having said that, I personally don't care for preexhausting. I find that if I prefatigue the target muscle with an isolation exercise, I actually don't get much out of the compound movement. Not only do I have to lower the weight on the compound exercise, but I also find that I start changing my technique (without realizing it) to the point that the "stabilizers" and "secondary muscles" are doing most of the work.

A couple of examples would be doing laterals before overhead presses or flyes before bench presses. If I use preexhaustion, I find myself using too much triceps and traps in the shoulder example, and too much tris, delts, and lats / upper back in the chest example - I seem to lose the "feel" for the target muscle - even when using light weight.

But the bottom line is to do what works for you. Everyone is a little bit different, and I don't think anyone has ever actually developed a "one size fits all" training program, despite what many "gurus" have claimed over the years.

 

[palehorse51]

Thanks

^^^^^^^

 

[palehorse51]

Anyone else.

Anyone else got an opinion on pre exhaust?

 

[Big Danny]

Anyone else got an opinion on pre exhaust?

My question is: are you happy with this method? How much you gained since you start practicing this method?
Because if you feel just good pump, and nothing more my advice for you is to shift to a more classic bb training.
Read this post , may found it interesting:
http://www.professionalmuscle.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1158

 

[TooPowerful4u]

Anyone else got an opinion on pre exhaust?

Well alot of us are extremely knowledgable and have tons of experience... however we are not pro's so we cannot answer you. Maybe a pro will help you.... haha

 

[Big Bapper]

I think its good for chest for people with strong Tris and Delts. So after you pre-exhaust. You move on to compound exercises for chest, your chest will fail before your Delts and Tris. So its good in that way.

 

[edge250]

i always like it for legs. leg ext supersetted with leg press or squat. i feel it is a nice break on the connective tissue from using heavy ass weight on those movements. allows me to hit failure without using a ton of weight

 

[Shelby]

i always like it for legs. leg ext supersetted with leg press or squat. i feel it is a nice break on the connective tissue from using heavy ass weight on those movements. allows me to hit failure without using a ton of weight

This is what Dorian Yates did. He didn't superset, but he did leg extensions as his first leg movement, then he did hacks and leg presses.

 

[abadseal]

I'm not a huge fan of pre-exhaustion techniques for some of the reasons listed above like having to use much lesser weight for compound exercises. I do however use supersets and occasionally tri or giant sets for a muscle group which I feel is superior to pre-exhaustion because if you put the compound movement first and isolation exercises second and third then you can still use heavy weight for the first exercise recruiting the highest threshold motor units and the bulk of your fibers then annihilate whatever survived with the following 2 exercises. But I'm not a pro so take this post with a grain of salt.

 

[palehorse51]

PROS ONLY!! LOL!

Thanks but I wanted Jay Cutler to respond ....Just Kiddin guys, dont be offended when I said I wanted to ask "the pros". My point was that there are alot of jackasses on other forums that dont have a lot of training knowledge so they bash a technique out of ignorance. I knew I would get a lot more "professional" responses here, and thats what I'm gettin. Yeah, good points on both sides.

 

[Tom]

my 2 cents

Sometimes when you're in a training rut and you don't want to take a week off, change is a better option. After changing to pre-exhaust for 6 weeks or so and you go back to more coventional training, you'll find you are able to bust through your previous plateau and a fresh new attitude surfaces along with it.

 

[Putin]

I'm using pre exaust now for chest, since I hurt my shoulder doing heavy bench on the bar. It's good for the recover phase and I can actually feel the muscle more using lesser weight, and still getting a good workout.

For legs I do extentions first, that way I'll take less weight off my knees and back when doing presses.

 

[mike1107]

I think its good for chest for people with strong Tris and Delts. So after you pre-exhaust. You move on to compound exercises for chest, your chest will fail before your Delts and Tris. So its good in that way.

Amen my friend !

when second muscular groups are stronger than the targeted one then pre exhaustion is the way to go !

 

[oldfella]

I do a lot of pre-exhaust movements for quite a few body parts. I find it is producing excellent results. My take on muscles and exhaustion is this. if a muscle has a certain capacity for work then you must overload it to make it stronger and bigger. One way to do this is by pre-exhaust. if you force a muscle to do more work than normal, as in while it is in fatigue, it will recruit more of the dormant fibres to cope with the extra load. The result is a more complete training of all the available fibres which should then increase growth and strength. Some times it sounds too logical, but then sometimes simple is best!!

 

[thenatural3456]

i feel pre exhaust def. has its place in work out routiunes, depending on the body part it can really help imho...

i use p.e. for shoulders with lat. raises and some rear raises, i love them doing pull overs for back becuase i feel it get alot of blood flowing and a great pump chest i like to be fresh same with legs....

but pre exhausts are great but for going heavy you need to be at peak strength.....


agian that is just me

 

[Conan21]

My opinion

I think it has its place for bodybuilding

If you're a strength athlete or just someone who is very into power/etc it's not a good method to use often though.

 

[Bent_O_Bar]

Getting around injuries is sometimes better using pre-ex and I used this quite a bit with a shoulder injury to get back on track.

It also works well for long limbed guys where the stress of a compound movement coupled with bad leverage just doesn't let you 'get' to the muscles you want (chest, delts, etc). Doing pre-ex first and keeping the limbs fresher, and then bombing with a compound movement lets you get further with that muscle group.

Chest, delts, quads, etc. are hard to get to if you have really long arms/legs. Doing flyes, then presses will get you deeper into the chest than doing just presses.

I tried incline dumbell presses for a long time but just couldn't feel the chest being worked enough, yet my triceps and delts would be whacked. I'd end up terminating the exercise without even a pump in my chest.

I incorporated flyes first for a few sets, then incline presses and my chest was hit hard, with amazing pumps and far better development over time.

 

[mike1107]

I think it has its place for bodybuilding

If you're a strength athlete or just someone who is very into power/etc it's not a good method to use often though.

it has his place in a powerlifter routine too, just depends of how close of a competition you are
for my strength athletes, I incorporate some at certain period of the year

 

[maldorf]

This is what Dorian Yates did. He didn't superset, but he did leg extensions as his first leg movement, then he did hacks and leg presses.

this is what I have done now for about 6 months, and feel that I have gotten some good results. It is a nice way of decreasing the force on your knees becuase the weight you use on your compound movement is considerably lower. Your knees are also well warmed up, so I only do one warm-up set of squats before moving on to working sets. My quads looks noticebly larger and better shaped now. At first I had to decrease my squats by about 60 pounds or so, but after just 3 weeks I had built my strength on them back to what I was originally doing when I did squats first! You really feel it in your legs too, takes your lower back and ass out of the equation.