Pre-Exhaust Technique

Pre-exhaust technique is a variation on the superset where an isolation exercise is performed prior a multi-joint or compound exercise for that same muscle group or muscles involved in the exercise movement. The point is to fatigue the muscle being trained with the isolation exercise so that it becomes the weak link in the multijoint exercise. This may work the one muscle group intensively, but also encourages other muscles to act strongly as accessory muscles. For example, if fat dumbbell flyes are performed before a bench press, the pectoral and anterior deltoid muscles are pre-exhausted and the triceps are forced to become more vigorously involved.

An example of the pre-exhust technique for the deltoids would involve is pre-exhausting the deltoids with a single-joint exercise, such as the dumbbell lateral raise, followed immediately by a heavier, compound movement such as the dumbbell shoulder press. The reason for this is that the compound exercise involves the targeted muscle as well as at least one assistance muscle. During the shoulder press, the deltoids are assisted by the triceps. While this helps to lift more weight on the compound exercise, it can limit the muscle fatigue the targeted muscle receives. This is especially true if the assistance muscle is much weaker than the targeted muscle. If this is true, then often the exercise ends when the assistance muscle, not the targeted muscle, has fatigued.

Pre-exhaust technique may also be utilized for the purpose of bringing up assistance muscles in a movement or where a muscle is dominant in the particular movement. The pre-exhaust technique can be used to fatigue the dominant muscle prior to the movement to allow the other muscles in the movement to potentially have a greater rate of recruitment.

Writing in Program Design

When writing pre-exhaust sets in your program we utilize the Letter/number method as done with supersets to illustrate how the exercises should be performed.

Example: