Pre-Exhaust - For Accelerated Growth

Introduction

The pre-exhaust routine is based on the concept of attacking a muscle area. First, you must exhaust it with an isolation exercise, and then immediately perform a combination movement that utilizes this target muscle. As a result, the muscle which is isolated is forced to work. It has to perform at its maximum limit because it is already pre-exhausted from the previous exercise.

Motivation

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.

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.

Rest Interval

It is extremely important when performing this shock routine to leave ensure that there is no rest interval between the isolation movement and the combination movement. As an example, even a very minimal rest interval, for example, only 15-20 seconds, will bring about an 80 percent rate of recovery. That is a very big number for a shock routine that relies on what is essentially a 0 rest interval! Too much, to say the least.

Advice for beginners

Those who are just beginning to utilize the pre-exhaust shock training principle should limit their sets to two, using something less than maximum poundage for the earlier workouts.

When you undertake a pre-exhaust routine the first thing you will discover is that you are going to be unable to lift as much weight as you think you can. It will take you several sessions to find the proper poundage’s for the various movements so be sure to keep a good training log to help you with this.

Example Pre-Exhaust Routine

Pre-Exhaust Training
Muscle Group	Exercise	Sets	Reps
Shoulders	Lateral Dumbbell Raise	3	12
	Machine Press	3	8
Chest	Peck Deck Bench Flye	3	10
	Bench Press	3	8
Quads	Leg Extension	3	12
	Squat	3	10
Back	Bent-Arm Pullover	3	15
	Close Grip Lat pull down	3	10
Abs	Rope Crunch	3	15
	Hanging Knee Raises	3	20
Calves	Seated Calf Raise	3	25
	Standing Calf Raise	3	12
Biceps	Preacher Curl	3	12
	Standing Barbell Curl	3	10-12
Triceps	Triceps Pressdown	3	12
	Close Grip Bench Press	3	10
Forearms	Wrist Curl	3	12
	Reverse Curl	3	15

Targets of the Above Routine

As you can see, the pre-exhaust training intensity principle is capable of providing a very balanced workout while shocking your muscles into new growth.