Researched
and Composed by
Jacob Wilson, BSc. (Hons), MSc. CSCS
As I sit here and type this, I feel
like someone has beat me with a baseball bat. Before last night I hadn't
used the pre-exhaustion training technique for about a month. I am a
superset man myself, I absolutely love the blood pumps that they produce.
Why pre-exhaustion? Simple, I use this method of training whenever I am trying
to literally bring a muscle up. You see most of our workouts center around
the bench press, squat or
bent over row. This is because we not only can work heavier with these
types of movements but we can also target the most muscle fibers at once.
For example the squat works your quads, hamstrings,
glutes and to a lower extent it works your calves. Yes, these exercises are an
absolute must in anyone's routine; however, because you
incorporate so many muscles at once you are bound to have further development in
some then others.
For example, you may have great front delts
and triceps, but your chest might be lagging. This could be because when
you reach failure on the bench press your shoulders and triceps have really gone
to failure, where as your chest till has something left. Pre-exhaustion
does exactly what it says it does. It literally exhausts the target muscle
with a direct assault before you even use a compound exercise. If I need
to bring out my quads more I might do several sets of leg extensions before I
perform squats. This way my more powerful quads will fail at the same time
that my hamstrings and glutes fail. By the way guys, don't ever pre fatigue
your glutes, you will end up not being able to fit your behind through a
door! Anyway,
I've decided to give everyone an example of pre-fatigue used on the chest
muscles.
Ok Here is my fast pace bench routine, who
knows maybe you are in a hurry and need a quick one.
Go to the gym fired up because you are going
to need to be! After warm up perform 3 sets of fly's each of them you
should pick a weight in which you reach failure at around 15 repetitions.
Now go over to the bench press and perform
three sets of 10, 8, 6 repetitions to failure with one rest pause for each
set. What I mean is this, once you reach failure, set the weight up and
rest for about 20 seconds and then attempt to eeek out another repetition.
Nope your not done yet roll over to the smith machine and do the exact same
thing except now you are performing incline bench presses. By this point
you should have some problems lifting your arms. And of course your chest
is on fire!
Last set is heavy incline flys. Flys
again? Yes, because by now your chest is simply shattered. Wait, if my
chest is shattered then why am I still working it? You have pretty much
exhausted your muscle fibers in your chest. However you want a chest that's
thick and full where it attaches to your sternum so you will finish with two
sets that will target that area. Two straight sets of heavy fly's, with reps
kept between 6-8, and you are done my friend!
This is a perfect example of pre-exhaustion
for your chest muscles. And workouts like this one can do wonders
for your chest!
Remember our goal as bodybuilders is
to create hypertrophy and pre-exhaustion is one of my favorite methods for
sparking this type of magic response. If you have any questions concerning
this article feel
free to write me directly or in the forums.
Until we meet again
Jacob Wilson
jwilson@abcbodybuilding.com
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