The pre-exhaust principle

Muscle & Fitness/Hers, July, 2002 by Bill Geiger

WHEN YOU'RE READY TO KICK YOUR ROUTING UP A NOTCH, TRY THIS ADVANCED TRAINING TECHNIQUE ON FOR MORE MUSCLE

Are you one or those gals who believe there's a right way and wrong way to work out?

Conventional wisdom, for example, holds that you should begin your weight-training session with compound movements -- exercises that are the most demanding on your muscles since they involve action at more than one joint. That makes sense, as you probably start your chest workout with bench presses (called multijoint since both the shoulders and elbows are involved), your leg workout with squats or leg presses (hip and knees) and do overhead presses for shoulders (elbows and shoulders). In all these examples, secondary muscles that are recruited to execute the lift assist the targeted muscle group.

Imagine throwing that entrenched training philosophy right out the window. Sound extreme? Not when you consider the seemingly backward but highly effective concept of training called pre-exhaust. Pre-exhaust simply means starting your workout with an exercise that attempts to isolate the larger muscle with a single-joint exercise before doing your compound multijoint movements. Probably the exact opposite of what you're used to doing, but there's a reason.

isolating the TARGET MUSCLE first

You've heard that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link? Oftentimes what prevents you from pushing yourself to total failure during a working set is, in fact, the secondary muscle group, which might give out first. So, fatigued biceps -- not your lats -- could be what force you to stop your set of pull-downs.

"Whatever muscle is the weakest link in the chain will fatigue first," says Kevin L. Lewis, certified personal trainer and owner of State of the Art Fitness in Woodland Hills, California. Smaller muscle groups, most commonly in the arms and legs, can fatigue before you've fully exhausted the larger and stronger muscle group you're targeting. Some examples might include the front delts or triceps in chest training, or the biceps in your back routine.

You can probably relate if you've ever racked the barbell after a set of incline presses: Your front delis are typically burning to a far greater degree than your upper chest. The bottom line is that these weak links may force you to terminate your set before the primary muscle group is fully fatigued, thus limiting the effectiveness of a given set.

Using pre-exhaust training, you're more able to target a particular muscle. The concept allows you to circumvent the weak-link muscle by choosing a single-joint isolation movement first in your routine before proceeding to a compound exercise.

"Essentially, pre-exhaust is an advanced way to manipulate intensity levels of a workout so you can amp up your intensity to get deeper muscle-fiber recruitment," Lewis adds. "This allows you to work the muscle in new and more thorough ways. Many individuals don't manipulate their training variables, like speed, volume and intensity; this is one way to change your training to get continued growth."

Doing pre-exhaust also serves another purpose, says IFBB fitness pro Beth Horn of Chicago. "Pre-exhaust can help you thoroughly warm up a particular muscle group for the heavier compound exercises to follow. If you've had an injury or tend to be tight in your joints, that's an extra benefit."

Here's how it can work in a chest routine. Before doing barbell or dumbbell presses, which are compound exercises start your chest workout with single-joint dumbbell or cable flyes (remember, the angle in your elbows is locked throughout the range of motion, which minimizes involvement of the clefts and triceps). Likewise, you can do leg extensions, a single-joint movement that targets the quads, before leg presses or squats, which also work the glutes and hamstrings. Because the secondary muscle groups are still fresh after you've completed the initial pre-exhaust movement, they're far less likely to be the limiting factor on the follow-up exercise and can assist the pre-fatigued muscle. Hence, you can come closer to achieving true failure in the target muscle group.

When PRE-EXHAUST makes sense to use

Though pre exhaust sounds like an intelligent way to train, keep in mind that compound movements hit relatively large amounts of muscle mass in a single exercise. Thus, multijoint exercises typically burn more calories and are better choices for beginning lifters and those looking for a faster workout.

"This technique isn't a great choice for beginners because they'll normally see good progress doing a basic routine," says Lewis. Those stuck at a training plateau or looking for a new stimulus for a lagging bodypart, however, may benefit from this type of training.

"Pre-exhaust is a novel way to shock the muscles -- it's something entirely different," Beth remarks. "If you feel like putting in a tough, demanding workout, try mixing things up with pre-exhaust. In that sense, it's definitely not for beginners. Inasmuch as you can induce a little more fatigue than you'd normally get, I'd recommend using a spotter as well, especially when pressing a barbell or dumbbells overhead."