Pre-Exhaust Training – Old School Mass Builder

One of my favorite advanced training techniques for hypertrophy (building muscle) is pre-exhaustion. This “old-school” method was used and recommended by some of the great golden-era bodybuilders from back in the day such as Casey Viator, Arthur Jones, and Mike Mentzer.

However, I don’t recommend using this training protocol until you have a good foundation getting stronger with the big basic compound movements (such as squats, presses, and pulls). For myself, I like to alternate between a program like my Barbarian Strength Training and Pre-Exhaust Training every few weeks.

Pre-exhaust training involves using isolation movements (those that involve a single joint, e.g. leg extensions) to pre-fatigue a specific muscle group before moving on immediately to a compound movement (involving multiple joints, e.g. squats.) This method of training was shown in a 1996 study to build more muscle than standard training, in which you do multi-joint exercises first. Here’s a video of one of my recent Pre-Exhaust workouts (Push Day):

I love the pre-exhaust method for several reasons:

It allows for greater overload to the target muscle group

When you employ pre-exhaustion into your workout, you are using isolation movements (ie: flies, pullovers, leg extensions) before you move onto your compound movements (ie: chest press, pullups, squats). This causes the isolated muscle to be significantly more tired than the other muscles involved in the compound movement you follow up with. When you move on to the compound exercise after completely fatiguing the target muscle group (in isolation) you are able to force that muscle group to continue to work, because of the assistance of the accessory muscles now involved. Your fresh muscles “pick up the slack” if you will, and pushes fatigue in the isolated muscle past the point it would have gotten to should you just have done the compound movement alone.

Using lighter weights on compound movements reduces joint stress 

For advanced lifters, using max weights all the time will begin to take a toll on your body. But of course you want to keep the effort and intensity as high as possible. You can simply use less weight and perform more reps, but at a certain point this becomes less effective for building mass and strength. Pre-exhausting allows the muscle to work harder, while allowing the load to be lighter.

It adds variety to your regular workout routine

Pre-exhaustion allows you to continue using the same tried and true compound mass-building exercises while incorporating a new element of isolation and increased intensity to provide a new stimulus for blasting through plateaus and triggering greater muscle growth.

The PUMP is real!

Hopefully you are sold on the benefits of this method! Download a free copy of my Pre-Exhaust Training Program at the link below:

Pre-Exhaust Old School Mass Builder

Until next time, Stay Strong!

Josh

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM