Pre-exhaust training is when you fatigue a muscle, first with an isolation (single joint) exercise, then with a compound (multi joint) exercise, targeting the same fatigued muscle without rest. Pre-exhaust training is an advanced weight training technique that helps you improve weak areas of the body and is also useful for breaking plateaus in training.
If you have been lifting weights for a number of month/years chances are you will have strong and weak areas of your body. It is important to improve weak areas of the body, not only for your physique but for stability and balance of opposing muscle groups. For example, lets say you have a strong chest but the opposing (antagonist) back muscles are weaker, this could cause imbalances between the two muscles and could potentially cause the muscle being targeted (agonist) to not work to its full potential.
To combat this a pre-exhaust set will allow you to work the desired muscle and then go straight into a compound movement targeting that same muscle. Effectively you are working the muscle twice as hard on the compound movement, which will allow you to recruit more fibres and strengthen the weaker muscle.
When to use Pre-exhaust Training
You should not use pre-exhaust training with every workout, or if you’re new to lifting weights. Over use of pre-exhaust sets can lead to over-training, so use it when you are reaching plateaus in your workout or whenever you need to improve weak areas.
I personally use pre-exhaust sets when I can’t increase the weight or reps for a given exercise. A typical sticking point for me is the barbell bench press, normally I do okay on bench but there are times when I reach plateaus and find it difficult to increase the weight/reps, this is where pre-exhaust training has helped!
The Technique
Okay, now you know why its good to use pre-exhaust training and also when you should use it, now I will show you how to perform pre-exhaust sets in your workouts. Using an example of a pre-exhaust set for the chest:
Muscle to target: Chest
Isolation Exercise: Cable cross over
compound Exercise: Barbell bench press
Before you begin the pre-exhaust set you must setup your workout area, because you will be moving from the isolation exercise straight to the compound exercise without rest.
Setup the cable cross over machine with the appropriate weight that you can manage your desired rep range, aiming for between 10-20 reps is a safe bet. Now setup the bench press with the appropriate weight, remember that you wont be able to lift the same amount of weight on the bench press because your chest will be full of blood, I recommend dropping the weight you normally lift by around 25-40%. Once the area is setup correctly you can begin the set.
Now, start the isolation set with cable flyes, perform around 10-20 repetitions with a moderate weight that you can handle without using other muscles to move the weight, once you feel pumped enough you can move onto barbell bench press. Once you begin the compound movement, in this case bench press, you must do this to momentary muscular failure, If that takes 10 reps or 50 reps it doesn’t matter, as long as your muscles fail to lift the weight on the compound movement that’s all that matters! If the bench press does not have safety catchers on it you must, must, must have someone spot you, ready to catch the weight when you fail.
Once you have completed that seeming last impossible repetition on the bench press you can rest. Take the minimal amount of rest required for your ability (see my section on rest between sets), once you are physically and mentally ready you can do it all over again, only resting after the compound exercise.
I recommend 3-4 sets on both exercises will be enough (so this is 3-4 sets of cable flyes and 3-4 sets of bench press in this example), once all your sets have been completed your done!