Pre-Exhaust Training Critique

And thinking more about it, I like it. Activation set. Like it.

[quote]JFG wrote:
And thinking more about it, I like it. Activation set. Like it. [/quote]

“activation” sets are pretty useful. Besides the prefatigue/warm up qualities it also enhances the mind muscle connection. Dorian Yates would occasionally use nautilus 1 arm curls for biceps before barbell curls to prefatigue/activate the biceps and counteract his dominant shoulders.

Does this mean I’m NOT retarded?? yay!

It was my understanding that pre-exhaust/activation exercises were mainly used for bodyparts that needed that extra “help” if you get what I mean? You know, some people really struggle with activating their lats during back movements, so they either pre-fatigue them with something like machine pullovers, then proceed with the bread and butter moves…or for chest (e.g.) use the pec deck machine before pressing…and so forth.

In other words, something used once most other avenues have been exhausted?

IMO, you could end up cluttering things up and losing sight of the elementary things if you get too carried away with smaller tweaks/supersets/pre-exhausting “everything”.

If not, just ignore my ramblings lol

[quote]its_just_me wrote:
It was my understanding that pre-exhaust/activation exercises were mainly used for bodyparts that needed that extra “help” if you get what I mean? You know, some people really struggle with activating their lats during back movements, so they either pre-fatigue them with something like machine pullovers, then proceed with the bread and butter moves…or for chest (e.g.) use the pec deck machine before pressing…and so forth.

In other words, something used once most other avenues have been exhausted?

IMO, you could end up cluttering things up and losing sight of the elementary things if you get too carried away with smaller tweaks/supersets/pre-exhausting “everything”.

If not, just ignore my ramblings lol[/quote]

I think your right to a degree. Using Dorian as an example again, I know besides the technique above he would often (I want to say 99 percent of the time) started his back workouts with the nautilus pullovers or pulldowns to prefatigue his lats before the meat of his workout. But to the OP’s credit, he still has his compound/mass lift as s stand alone and first in his routine.
No amount of supersets or preactivation is going to be better than heavy compound exerciese from the get go IMO.