I am but a wind chime, making noise and moving in the blustering wind… yet, I never move from my fixed position.
The pects aren’t even meant to be a prime mover. They’re supposed to stabilize and assist the movement of the humerus along with the front delt.
And not a single top notch bodybuilder who used prep-exhaust or specific exercise sequence has done it in the the way you propose–NOT ONE–not our very own WNBF pro @The_Mighty_Stu, Dorian Yates, Mike Menter, Jay Cutler, and so on!
But understand that whether it’s the stronger or weaker link in the compound movement chain, all muscle groups contribute somehow to the proper execution of said movement, and it not usually a 50/50 split.
If you could pre/exhaust the smaller/weaker link and then still still perform a compound movement in order to strain the larger group more effectively, then you’d be able to go do a hard set of tricep press downs before a set of pushups and not fail because your tri’s gave out before your chest did.
Seriously, go try it, I’ll wait 
S
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Yeah but this is about muscular activation, not about the muscle giving out. The triceps can give out while fatiguing less fibers than if a push up is done without the pre-exhaust while the chest strains more until the last 1/3 of the movement.
For example, have a relatively new lifter pre-exhaust his triceps and look at his bar path when he benches. It will probably touch his nipple line and go back over to over his shoulders naturally in a curved path. If he pre-exhausts his chest, most likely he will be pressing the bar up and down in a vertical line if he tucks his elbows and touches the nipple line.
Guys, I’m really not trying to be contrarian for the sake of it lol. And I’m not really arguing, just stating a different point of view with some points to back them up. In the end, it shouldn’t matter. Just work on mmc because you should be doing it anyway and do what successful bodybuilders do. There’s no reason to do something different just for the sake of it either.
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It certainly doesn’t work in all situations. dt79 started my thoughts on fatiguing a muscle prior to lifting, ie. triceps to engage the chest.
Regarding the second point in my other post: if I am trying to target my rear delts, I might begin with band pull-aparts to get a good pump. Then proceed to rowing movements. All I’m really doing is trying to feel the muscle work before doing a compound movement. This isn’t pre-exhaust, tho. It’s more priming.
Also… I’m breaking one of my rules. I swore I’d never take an opposing position on lifting with Stu lol.
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That’s actually precisely pre-exhaust in the example you gave.
I feel a bit like we’ve already had this discussion
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On this board there are less than 10 discussions concerning training/diet that just keep repeating-lol.
S
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And pre-exhaust has only meant ONE thing for the fifty or so years it has been written about!
I am a fairly physically ordinary guy and this here are the results of pre-exhaust for my delts and pecs in only SIX MONTHS.
Looks like the result of a stellar fuckin diet, but I get your point.
the triceps are which fail on the dips / bench press, not the chest. so you pre exhaust the chest . and use the fresh triceps to their failure point. even if you’re using less load you’re stimulating more growth in the chest and perhaps in both muscle groups which im not sold on yet…
my chest responds well without pre exhaust and am doing just dips, also i think pre exhaust helps recovery however in this case not important and triceps rarely overtrain. when in doubt add more tricep work.