Workout Intensity Part III: Pre-Exhaust

Last Friday I mentioned how working opposite body parts together can help generate lots of workout intensity. Today I thought I would talk about one of my new favorite training techniques; pre-exhaust. Pre-Exhaust refers to fatiguing a muscle with an isolation or single joint exercise prior moving on to a compound or multi-joint exercise. For example, on a day when you are training the chest, as I did yesterday, you might complete a set of light, concentrated dumbbell flyes until failure or close to failure, pumping as much blood into the pecs as possible before moving on to a compound movement like barbell bench press. This way, you will fatigue the chest before your assisting muscles such as the delts and triceps during the barbell bench press. Once the chest is fatigued, your delts and tri's can act as a "spotter" to help you with a few forced reps allowing muscle hypertrophy in the chest so it can grow harder, bigger, and stronger. Pre-exaust is a great way for someone who trains alone to reach the proper level of muscle fatigue to enduce body changes. Good luck with Pre-Exhaust!