I think you’re arguing your point, and I’m enjoying the discussion 
no worries dude
So, does it work better than something else, or works the same as that amount of work in a different order? And what happens if it ain’t pretty? humour
It works better than the usual order of compound before isolation exercises for muscles that are lagging behind the rest of the physique. It worked great for me in bringing up my torso comsidering I’m an arms-dominant guy. And like Stu said, rearranging the order of exercises, though it might not be traditional pre-exhaust (isolation before compound) can be beneficial too because it takes stress off the joints. For an example of this, it can be lunges before squats. I’m a medium frame guy. So when I one day got up to 17-20 (lost count on set, literally) reps of below-parallel squats with 315, I just felt like my frame couldn’t take it anymore, even though I likely could have progressed in weight more. When I started doing single leg exercises first, I felt so much better.
When the order of exercises is changed, the weight on the second and third exercises come down but the aim is still to progress in weight and reps from workout to workout.
@flappinit thanks for tag.
2 Likes
It was, if I’m being honest, a bit of an Appeal To Authority fallacy, but I had only anecdotal evidence of the efficacy of pre-exhaust to go on, and so I figured I’d get the opinion of people who had to bring up lagging body parts within time constraints.
I’ve heard a ton of people talk about how when you do an isolation exercise before a compound movement, it can actually hinder the target muscle by having other muscles take over.
What I’ve found is that when I did curls before chins - and I would choose an underhand variation for pull-ups - the biceps have no choice but to be involved, and the other muscles only take over more as the biceps get more fatigued. Whether it’s primarily back is irrelevant - you can’t perform a chin without your biceps, and your biceps will reach true failure and total exhaustion before your back does if they are properly exhausted beforehand, hence the term, “pre-exhaust”.
If your goal is just to get get bigger and stronger, techniques like pre-exhaust are overkill. But if you are satisfied with your physique with the exception of a few lagging weaknesses, then you can either prioritize those weaknesses in all aspects of your training, or, as @bulldog9899 suggested, add an extra day (or a substitution of sorts) where you temporarily prioritize those weaknesses.
Either way, IMO, the biggest myth I’ve encountered since I’ve started lifting is the idea that putting emphasis on something is useless, because it’ll just get worked unconsciously from the other stuff you do. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard that squatting will get me big biceps. One way or another, you’re going to have to move the lagging bodypart to the front of the line.
3 Likes
The point is to address an issue or working-around an individuals natural, or inherent strengths, whether due to structural/mechanical reasons, or even performance ones. I always pointed out how despite being able to bench a considerable amount for years, my pecs lags, but damn if my delts and tris weren’t thick. I knew it wasn’t a performance issue, and even though I did plenty of isolation work at the end of my sessions, my pecs still lagged. As such, I have no doubt in the efficacy of sequencing and pre-exhaust work.
And it’s always pretty -lol. THat’s what I get using the auto dictate function on my Iphone while I’m sitting in traffic 
S
1 Like
I have told guys something similar to this, but not for the reason you mentioned. Usually I’m talking to a “bro” who only does upper body when I say something like this, and my point is that the “Bro” is needs the hormone release and stimulation from working his lower body. I didn’t start squatting until I was 27, because none of my buddies squatted and I didn’t know what I was doing. Then came the internet and access to info, like studies and talking to enormous strong guys. I learned a lot, quick. If @The_Mighty_Stu and @BrickHead say it’s good for hypertrophy to preexhaust, and that it does something other than add volume to a lagging part, I am willing to believe them. Some things are difficult to explain. In my case, squatting definitely made my arms bigger, and they were their biggest when the only direct arm work that I did was triceps assistance to help my press. They were just shy of 20", with absolutely zero biceps work. I actually do some curls here and there now, and they are smaller. Of course, my goal has never been hypertrophy, so that doesn’t really matter to me, but it’s a long way from a 160lb kid out of highschool with maybe 16" arms.
3 Likes
Anyone who wants to see if it works should just try it for a lagging bodypart and see how the targeted bodypart is pumped and gives first in the compound lift. This is about a pump too. Although a pump is not necessary for growth, the ability to get a pump is, I believe. I don’t know how else to put this, but a lagging bodypart is usually one that is hard to activate (and no I don’t mean that in a literal sense). Your strongest muscles are the easiest to engage in anything it is called for, even low rep sets. Pre-exhaust innervates the target muscle before the compound lift.
5 Likes
I hate to put the breaks on this in-depth conversation… but i got a nagging idea your elbow issue isnt completely a matter of weak grip.
5 Likes
I don’t know about easiest to activate. The strength perspective is that the stronger muscles simply take over. If you have a weakness, your accessory work is specifically geared to hit that weakness. Not just the choice of exercise, but the form you use to do it. I am assuming having hypertrophy as a goal is more about a difference in volume or % of 1RM used in the movement. Assuming is dangerous, but it seems like guys lifting for hypertrophy seem to a ton of volume a but don’t appear to be all that close to their perceived 1RM. Maybe not, maybe they go from 15 reps to 1RM a lot quicker than me as far as added weight. How does causing failure in that muscle earlier in the compund lifting phase in some way work better than wearing it out after? Unless it doesn’t matter because you are using a relatively lighter weight for work sets anyway (Not relative to anyone else, relative to what you can lift)? Just trying to get a full understanding, as it’s fairly counter to the strength approach and I want a full perspective of how this works.
Pretty much how CT puts it: increased innervation of the target muscle. It just works.
Do you have lagging muscle that you don’t feel gets engaged when doing a compound lift for it. Try it out, just for one session to see what some people mean.
I never thought about it much in detail. I mean, I once had pretty big quads for my frame (currently I am an atrophying but lean and skinny dad bod due to the covid lockdown, low inventory of home equipment, and I won’t attend a gym with a mask), as shown by my pictures on here. So if I so much as walked up a hill or flight of stairs, I’d get a pump in my quads. Same for traps when carrying groceries.
But for a long time I could not get a pump in my chest from the universal gym workout of (let’s see if everyone memorized it) barbell bench press, followed by incline bar or dumbbell bench press, followed by flyes. It worked, but not how I wanted it to. The workout that actually brought it up was incline machine press, incline flyes, dumbbell bench press, then dips.
2 Likes
I feel this. I’m not even home, I am stuck on the road atm. I am limited to front squats with what I can clean if I want to squat right now. Even if I was willing to go to gym, my wife would kill me.
1 Like
LOL this was literally my chest workout for years. Switch barbel for dumbell flat every now and then and maybe add the odd set of cables at the end. For me it actually worked my chest and shoulders grew well.
The standard barbel curl, followed by alt dumbell curl and then concentration curls did nothing and my arms are still crap !! LOL
1 Like
Thanks for the tag @flappinit! Looks like we’re talking about pre exhaust here, and it’s been beaten pretty much to death. One thought I’m happy to add, is experimenting with sequencing, isolation vs more compound or strength based exercises etc., is rather than debating hypotheticals and such, is to try it and see if it works for you. My second year competing I had a huge focus for bringing up shoulders, biceps and hamstrings. I increased frequency, and also did more isolation exercises first before heavier work later. I noticed especially with my hamstrings, when I did that, I could really feel the pump more when I did the heavier work, and strength really didn’t change. Won all my shows that year and all those areas were improved. Was it specifically because of changing sequencing? Who knows. Of course it was cumulative from many different aspects, but I absolutely felt a difference when training.
2 Likes
Have you ever tried this in reverse order? I think you should.
2 Likes
Funny (ha ha joke is on me) thing is I haven’t. To be honest I have barely trained biceps for years now as aesthetics aren’t really a focus in my training right now. Doing a three week restorative block right now so it’s a good time to do some stuff I don’t usually do. Going to try it tonight and for the next few weeks and see how I go.
1 Like
Yes, the heavy (for me) skull-crushers probably were the ones to aggravated my elbows. For sure, I had to stop doing them and switch to rope pull-down triceps extensions which don’t hurt me.
Nonetheless, my wrists and forearms are tiny. And my grip isn’t impressive at all. Elbow issues are the only issue that I have in terms of tendon strains. (The front of my shoulders were also a problem until I improved my bench technique).
2 Likes
You can do tricep extensions with dumbells, it’s easier on the elbows. You actually have more variations available to you using DB’s for “Skullcrushers” than a bar, you can use different grips and roll the DB’s from one grip to another during the movement. If you rotate them from a palms down/pinkies toward your face position at the bottom to a neutral grip at extension you will find that it works the other head that isn’t getting much work with other stuff.
Also, thick bar training is the key to grip and forearm size. You can do wrist curls all day to no avail, they don’t work. Thick bar anything helps, and there are different things available like Fat Grips and Country Crush to make it easy to do a lot of your exercises with something larger diameter and get this benefit. You can also do Plate Pinches, which is pinching two plates together, smooth side out, and lifting them that way. One hand at a time. It’s harder than you think and will burn your forearms like nothing you have done.
4 Likes
Powerlifter Matt Wenning uses high reps on the small moves first to;
-Increase “Potentiation” or activation of lagging muscles.
-Thicken and strengthen tendons and joint tissue
-warm up or raise the temperature of muscles to help prevent injury
-increase conditioning and work capacity
Bodybuilder Dorian Yates used pre-exhaust for better muscle gains. If you do rows or chins/pulldowns you use lats, plus some bicep. It’s possible that your biceps could fail before your lats when rowing/chinning. Your set is terminated, but your lats are under-worked. So you pre-exhaust your lats with an isolation move like pullovers, so they’re blasted first. Then when you row or chin to failure, it’s your tired lats that fail first, and they are stimulated to grow by every set.
2 Likes
This is not really a pre-exhaust though, it’s a warmup. Outside of warming up the area, there isn’t any benefit to changing the order for strength work, except that I woldn’t have the same reserves for the main lifts and would not be able to get the same work from them. The older I get, the less use I have for warmups honestly. Stretching helps a little, but all I get from a lot of warmups is glycogen depletion before the work sets which I find to be counter-productive. I’m not as strong as I used to be, but I’m actually improving enough to be pretty close after the surgeries. My OHP still sucks, but it kind of always did. That may be great for some guys though.
This, by the way seems to me to be basically the opposite of the approach OP wanted to try. Exhausting the dominant muscle first to permit greater workload for the weak point makes sense, it’s the other way around that doesn’t.