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So what about pre-exhaustion—you know, supersetting an isolation movement, like cable crossovers, with a compound exercise, like bench presses, to force the target muscles to work harder, and, supposedly, grow faster?
It must work. After all, Arthur Jones built his Nautilus empire on that theory, merging the two-exercise pre-ex combo into many of his machines. For example, he had a leg extension/leg press, a pec flye/decline press and a lateral raise/overhead press, to name a few. And today a lot of bodybuilders use pre-ex to specialize in an attempt to bring up a slacker muscle (crossovers supersetted with bench presses, for example), but we say it’s not so efficient—and so does the research (there are some good things about it, and perfect times to use it, which we’ll get to in a moment):
A study on the effect of preexhaustion exercise on lower-extremity muscle activation during a leg press exercise was published in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research (Augustsson, J., et al. (2003) 17:411-16). The researchers used leg extensions and leg presses for their pre-ex superset analysis. Conclusion: “The results showed that activation of the front-thigh muscles was significantly less during pre-exhaustion compared to doing a single exercise.”
How can that be? By isolating the front-thigh muscles with extensions and then immediately moving to a compound exercise, like leg presses, aren’t you smacking the quads harder by involving the stronger glutes and hamstrings on that second exercise? No, and here’s why...
When you do that first set of extensions to failure, you saturate your front thighs with fatigue products, like lactic acid, without training a lot of fast-twitch fibers (isolation exercises are inferior in that regard to multijoint movements; that’s why our Ultimate Exercises are multijoint movements). If you do a set of leg presses immediately after that, your quads will not only be weaker—you have to use less weight than if you did leg presses first—they will fail way early due to residual fatigue. You simply won’t get enough fast-twitch overload on that key second exercise because your quads can’t fire effectively.
Now fatigue isn’t all bad. In fact, you should chase it toward the end of a bodypart workout (we’ve talked about the effectiveness of drop sets on isolation exercises after your compound move). But at the beginning, you want to focus on the Ultimate Exercise that hits the majority of fibers with extreme overload (heavy weight). For quads that means some sort of multijoint leg press or, better, squat. For chest, that means some type of bench press or wide-grip dip.
But wait! Isn’t there a weak-link problem when you work some bodyparts with compound moves—like the smaller, weaker triceps crapping out before the pecs on bench presses? Well, your triceps may fail first or your nervous system may hit the wall first. It doesn’t matter. When you can’t get another full rep on bench presses, you lower the bar to the pecs’ strongest position, below the midpoint, and continue to rep out with power partials. It’s almost like automatic pre-exhaustion, if you will (have a partner help you with these if you’re unable to do those short partial on your own on some exercises). The pecs still have plenty of firepower at that max-force point, and your triceps won’t interfere—the movement is almost all pec mass, and the partials keep the fast-twitch fibers firing for more mass stimulation.
Sure, there may be some fatigue from the full-range reps, but not nearly as much as what’s created by a preliminary isolation exercise. Plus, the full-range reps are much heavier and therefore tax more fast-twitch fibers, and the partials extend that mass stimulation. Plus, keep in mind that when we say “full-range reps” we really mean almost full range: You should not be going to lockout on those multijoint exercises (watch Ronnie Coleman’s “Redemption” DVD and you’ll get the idea). That way you’ll get continuous tension and maximum fiber activation, an anabolic double-whammy. If you need more tension time, like when you’re specializing, follow your two sets of your Ultimate Exercise with a contracted-position move (leg extensions for quads, cable flyes for pecs, etc.) and do drop sets to amplify the continuous-tension effects. You could also add a stretched-position exercise to complete the chain (we’ve discussed the importance of stretch overload in previous articles).
Oh, we said there were good things about standard pre-exhaustion. If you’re using a heavy/light system, where one workout during the week is heavy and the other is light, you can use the pre-exhaustion-superset technique on light day. It’s an excellent way to force yourself to not overextend on your Ultimate Exercises—plus it helps build neuromuscular efficiency for the heavy day.
When you want to attack the target muscle with as much overload as possible, along with important continuous tension, do your Ultimate Exercise first, nonlock style for continuous tension, and add partials. Then you can follow up with isolation work, which doesn’t activate as many fibers, but it does do an excellent job of frying the muscle with continuous-tension occlusion, which builds the mitochondria of the type 2A fast-twitchers.
It must work. After all, Arthur Jones built his Nautilus empire on that theory, merging the two-exercise pre-ex combo into many of his machines. For example, he had a leg extension/leg press, a pec flye/decline press and a lateral raise/overhead press, to name a few. And today a lot of bodybuilders use pre-ex to specialize in an attempt to bring up a slacker muscle (crossovers supersetted with bench presses, for example), but we say it’s not so efficient—and so does the research (there are some good things about it, and perfect times to use it, which we’ll get to in a moment):
A study on the effect of preexhaustion exercise on lower-extremity muscle activation during a leg press exercise was published in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research (Augustsson, J., et al. (2003) 17:411-16). The researchers used leg extensions and leg presses for their pre-ex superset analysis. Conclusion: “The results showed that activation of the front-thigh muscles was significantly less during pre-exhaustion compared to doing a single exercise.”
How can that be? By isolating the front-thigh muscles with extensions and then immediately moving to a compound exercise, like leg presses, aren’t you smacking the quads harder by involving the stronger glutes and hamstrings on that second exercise? No, and here’s why...
When you do that first set of extensions to failure, you saturate your front thighs with fatigue products, like lactic acid, without training a lot of fast-twitch fibers (isolation exercises are inferior in that regard to multijoint movements; that’s why our Ultimate Exercises are multijoint movements). If you do a set of leg presses immediately after that, your quads will not only be weaker—you have to use less weight than if you did leg presses first—they will fail way early due to residual fatigue. You simply won’t get enough fast-twitch overload on that key second exercise because your quads can’t fire effectively.
Now fatigue isn’t all bad. In fact, you should chase it toward the end of a bodypart workout (we’ve talked about the effectiveness of drop sets on isolation exercises after your compound move). But at the beginning, you want to focus on the Ultimate Exercise that hits the majority of fibers with extreme overload (heavy weight). For quads that means some sort of multijoint leg press or, better, squat. For chest, that means some type of bench press or wide-grip dip.
But wait! Isn’t there a weak-link problem when you work some bodyparts with compound moves—like the smaller, weaker triceps crapping out before the pecs on bench presses? Well, your triceps may fail first or your nervous system may hit the wall first. It doesn’t matter. When you can’t get another full rep on bench presses, you lower the bar to the pecs’ strongest position, below the midpoint, and continue to rep out with power partials. It’s almost like automatic pre-exhaustion, if you will (have a partner help you with these if you’re unable to do those short partial on your own on some exercises). The pecs still have plenty of firepower at that max-force point, and your triceps won’t interfere—the movement is almost all pec mass, and the partials keep the fast-twitch fibers firing for more mass stimulation.
Sure, there may be some fatigue from the full-range reps, but not nearly as much as what’s created by a preliminary isolation exercise. Plus, the full-range reps are much heavier and therefore tax more fast-twitch fibers, and the partials extend that mass stimulation. Plus, keep in mind that when we say “full-range reps” we really mean almost full range: You should not be going to lockout on those multijoint exercises (watch Ronnie Coleman’s “Redemption” DVD and you’ll get the idea). That way you’ll get continuous tension and maximum fiber activation, an anabolic double-whammy. If you need more tension time, like when you’re specializing, follow your two sets of your Ultimate Exercise with a contracted-position move (leg extensions for quads, cable flyes for pecs, etc.) and do drop sets to amplify the continuous-tension effects. You could also add a stretched-position exercise to complete the chain (we’ve discussed the importance of stretch overload in previous articles).
Oh, we said there were good things about standard pre-exhaustion. If you’re using a heavy/light system, where one workout during the week is heavy and the other is light, you can use the pre-exhaustion-superset technique on light day. It’s an excellent way to force yourself to not overextend on your Ultimate Exercises—plus it helps build neuromuscular efficiency for the heavy day.
When you want to attack the target muscle with as much overload as possible, along with important continuous tension, do your Ultimate Exercise first, nonlock style for continuous tension, and add partials. Then you can follow up with isolation work, which doesn’t activate as many fibers, but it does do an excellent job of frying the muscle with continuous-tension occlusion, which builds the mitochondria of the type 2A fast-twitchers.
