What do some of you feel about the method of exhausting a dominate muscle, say, your shoulders, if your shoulders take over bench pressing usually?
Is there any evidence to back up that this actually works or is beneficial for those with dominate muscle groups?
Curious.
For building muscle, might work. Not so much for improving technique.
Probably increases risk of injury if youâre using higher loads.
Pre-exhaust techniques and applications have always confused me.
I always thought that if you have a muscle group or movement pattern that you wanted to improve you would put it first, then follow with your regular work sets.
Increased volume and/or stress=increased muscle or strength, right?
Then the internet happened. Now I just donât know anymore.
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This.
Pre-fatigue the target muscle.
I guess the logic is that if you exhaust, say, the shoulders, then the chest will come into it more ??
I have super dominate shoulders during bench and chest exercises due to a lack of poor form and technique developed when I was younger. Itâs taken years to readjust my form and technique.
Only now is my chest finally becoming even and catching up to the rest of my body. Itâs funny because so many bros at the gym are obsessed with chest, yet it is the one muscle I can say that confuses most people.
It all stems from that mentality of âlifting heavierâ when youâre young that causes a snowball effect where dudes keep lifting heavier, focusing on chest above all else, which leads to developing rounded shoulders that will make your chest look smaller than it is.
My thinking is like this- I had quad dominance of leg movement. So first I had to get the hams/glutes firing and recruited properly. Then to strengthen them Iâd do a couple of lighter sets of RDLs, then deadlift, followed by Ghrâs as an accessory.
That got everything strong and working right. So, because it was quad dominance, I had to bring up the oppositeâthe glutes and hams.
For pects Iâd do some rehab/prehab and stretching to get the scapula and humerus back into a more neutral position then go from there. Thatâs also a pretty complicated area and can give rise to a variety of problems.
There was a thread on this a few years ago involving Professor X haha
Iâm actively working on my mid back, lower trap area. I feel like it is a neglected area, so it should be something that must be tackled directly.
A lot of gyms, including mine, donât have something like a laying t-bar row which is in my opinion a vital exercise for that mid back.
I think part of that is because the terms pre-exhaust, âpre-fatigueâ (which is a fairly new one to me), and activation get used interchangeably when theyâre very different/nearly opposite. That also seemed to be an underlying problem in the classic, highly triggering thread from back in the day.
Pre-exhausting a muscle turns it into the weakest link in an exercise, which means itâs going to be the limiting factor for the set and the priority in the movement. Doing activation work gets a muscle functioning optimally and recruits it more (without inducing significant fatigue) so it basically becomes the strongest link in an exercise, which means itâs going to do the most work during the set.
So if shoulders are taking over during the bench press and you want a good chest workout, either work on pec-activation exercises like the Svend press or d-roy raise; adjust the programming to âpre-fatigueâ the chest by putting the bench press later in the workout so the chest can be more directly hit before the exercise; adjust technique (like youâve been doing), particularly grip width and pausing to increase tension/pec recruitment at the bottom; or just reconsider using the the bench press because many coaches agree itâs a sub-par pec exercise anyway.
100%, yep. Activation improves muscle recruitment.
Youâre killing me, Smalls. Dominant.
Cable face pulls holding each peak contraction for a 3-5 count.
haha sorry, is it autocorrecting to that? I got a new MacBook with this fucking Butterly keyboard that although makes me type much faster, I end up making so many damn mistakes that I rely on the autocorrect to correct words without paying attention.
Iâve been doing dumbbell shrugs and dumbbell rows, face down on an incline bench for that mid back area.
At first I didnât like it, I was setting the incline too high or too upright. Once I lowered it a click or two it was perfect.
I also like rear delts and side delts before front delts when working shoulders.
John meadows has a lot of video workouts on his YouTube channel. He uses this technique a lot for pre exhausting the target muscle. So for quads youâd do knee extensions then maybe leg press.
As far as you asking about pre exhausting to make the other muscle groups take over- Iâm sure there are other trainers who have advocated but I believe jim stapponi is the only one over ever heard use this.
Except for say benching he advocates burning the triceps out to activate the chest better.
I donât know much on this and this info came second hand from a friend of mine that follows his stuff closely.
Maybe thatâll give you a few leads to find what youâre looking for.
Nicely said, Chris. I was a part of that old thread back in the day, and I think you hit the nail on the head regarding the problems with communication there.
I just want to reiterate that the point of pre-exhaustion was to correct an issue with compound movements for bodybuilding purposes (which seems to be the issue for @greenboy). If we use the bench press, for example, the smaller muscle groups (triceps, deltoids) tend to be the limiting factor in the exercise, as they crap out faster than the pecs. The idea behind pre-exhaustion is to fatigue the primary muscle group you want to emphasize so that it hits failure sooner.
Contrary to Professor Xâs claims, Iâve seen no evidence that pre-exhausting a secondary muscle takes it out of the movement and magically causes your body to place more stress on the primary muscle, and itâs completely illogical. If you exhaust your triceps before you bench, for example, you arenât going to be able to press the bar up. Youâll have to significantly lower the weight, which means youâll get even LESS stimulation on your pecs and still be limited by the endurance capacity of your triceps.
Someone correct me if Iâm wrong, but Professor Xâs only evidence for this back in the day was anecdotal (meaning, he claimed it âworkedâ for him).
Yeah been doing all these a lot recently. Been putting a lot of focus into it.
Triceps is another one of those muscles where for me itâs just not that big relative to my bicep. I canât stand when I see these dudes with these massive triceps, itâs like wtf how.
He should have used it on those legs then! 
So, first off, you would pre exhaust chest with something else (flyes/crossovers are my go-toâs) before Bench to help your chest recruitment during, but more importantly - some people just donât get much chest development out of bench. And by some, I mean a lot. I myself am Shoulder and tricep dominant on bench, and a wide grip murders my joints. A healthy diet of low-to-high incline dumbbell presses in the 8-12 range and weighted dips in the 12-20 range have been instrumental in chest growth for me. Bench will get you strong and itâs cool, but in my opinion, if chest development is what ye seek, dips and dumbbells are king.
Yeah it has been helping. Iâm seeing results.
That will only work if exhausted shoulders forces you to change technique to handle the weight.
If not then If your shoulders are already fatigued, then during your work sets you will hit failure when your shoulders burn out(earlier), and before your pecs have done a proper working set.
Taking the example to the extreme to demonstrate, If I can bench 300 for 8 normally, and I do a ton of tricep volume before I bench such that my triceps are so fatigued that I can only get one rep at 300 now, well my triceps just did an extra work set, my chest didnât get shit all out of it though. Thatâs how the logic follows for me.
So as others mentioned, pre exhaust, pre activate or both on the target muscle so itâs the muscle getting to, or closest to, failure on the work sets of the compound.
Colucci and Flappinit hit the nail on the head. Pre-exhaust, at least for those concerned with bodybuilding purposes, allows someone who typically has trouble recruiting the strongest muscles in a compound movement because the weaker muscles fail first and the set must be terminated.
Bench press is the best example. Chest, Delts, Tris⊠If your delts and tris fail before the larger, stronger chest muscles, the chest will never be fully stimulated.
Now this is not true for everyone, but with different individual structures, and performances, some people may get huge chests from benching while others will get thick arms and delts.
S