I wanted to share another great training system with you today called pre and post exhaustion, both these systems make the use of isolation exercises (single joint) and compound exercises (multi-joint) to fatigue a muscle while you may have weaker smaller assisting muscles that would normally fatigue first, with this system it bypasses them and allows the bigger target muscles to greater fatigue. Result!

Have you ever been on the bench press and you find it really hard to reach your target reps because your triceps feel like they’re going to pop out. The smaller triceps muscle failed before the stronger pectorals.

Let’s see if we can change that.

When using pre-exhaust the isolation exercise is performed before the compound exercise, in our case we would do a cable crossover as the isolation and a bench press for the compound exercise. There are two ways you could go about this: option one would be to complete your target number of sets on the isolation exercise then moving on to the compound for target number of sets.

Option two would be to perform the isolation and immediately moving on to the compound exercise as a superset with no rest, and completing target number of sets. The beginner would be best starting with only 2 sets as it places a high remand on the body.

When using Post-exhaust you might have already guessed but in the case you’ll perform the compound exercise before the isolation exercise. Again you can employ the two options as shown above.

Here are some examples:

Quadriceps: Leg extension (isolation exercise) / Squats (compound exercise)
Pectorals Major: Cable crossover (isolation) / Bench press (compound)
Latissimus dorsi: Straight arm pulldown (isolation) / lat Pulldown (Compound)
Hamstrings: Leg Curls (isolation) / Still legged dead lifts (compound)

Give it a try and let us know how you get on,

Andreas

Visit Metro health and fitness personal training London

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