PRE-EXHAUST
TRAINING
Improve your form, keep your body balanced and
continue progressing.
H
By By Heather Neff, CPT
ave you tried pre-ex-
haust training? Though
it’s not a new method,
pre-exhaust training is
gaining in popularity,
and for good reasons.
Whether you are trying
to gain in muscle size,
strength or even in-
crease your endurance,
pre-exhaust training is
something that’s sure to help. If you’re
like most people, you go to the gym to
improve yourself in more ways than
one way. You train hard, count reps,
complete your sets, regularly add weight
to the bar and are always striving for
progress. After all, that’s what success-
ful training is all about.
With pre-exhaust training, progression
is a main factor. It not only helps you
move towards your goals, pre-exhaust
training also ensures your muscles stay
in balance, your form improves and you
are always keeping it challenging. As we
all know, challenge makes change.
The Concept
With pre-exhaust training, you perform
an isolation exercise for a high number
of reps before switching to a compound
movement for the same muscle group.
For instance, you would complete two
or three sets of 12 to 15 reps of dumb-
bell concentration curls and then begin
performing standing barbell curls.
It seems to be the exact opposite of
what you’ve always been told to do:
Heavy compound lifts before isola-
tion exercises. With this pre-exhaust
method, you’ll be fatiguing the main
muscles before moving on to your
compound movement that incorpo-
rates other muscles. The target muscle
will already be worked enough before
the other muscles give out first. Why
6 SEPTEMBER 2017 | ironmanmagazine.com
TRAIN
TO GAIN