Weight Training Advice
Pre-Exhaustion Weight Training
working harder than your pecs while bench pressing or do squats seem to tax your lower back more than your quadriceps? If you have this problem on some of your weight training exercises, you need not despair, there is an answer to this problem, a pre-exhaustion routine.
Normally you should start your weight training workout with compound exercises, but if you're not feeling a pump in the muscle you're trying to work out, you may need to pre-exhaust the muscle. To pre-exhaust a muscle you do an isolation exercise that works the muscle you're targeting, then do a compound exercise for the same muscle. Doing an isolation exercise first will cause that muscle to work harder on the compound exercises.
While bench pressing during a weight training workout many people feel the resistance in their front deltoids and triceps and not as much in their chest. This is especially true of tall people or people with long arms. To combat this you could do a set of dumbbell or cable flyes to isolate the chest muscles, then do your bench press set to start your chest weight training routine. Doing this as a superset (one set done right after the other with no rest) will certainly cause you to feel the pectoral muscles working harder during the bench press set. You may not be able to bench press as much weight, but you'll be targeting your chest more.
While doing squats in a weight training workout, you may feel the movement is working your hips, butt, hamstrings and lower back more than it's working your quadriceps (front muscles of legs). Starting your leg weight training workout with a superset of leg extensions followed immediately by squats will guarantee you're properly hitting your quads.
If you feel that pulldowns or pull-ups seem to work your biceps more than your upper back and lats during your back weight training workout, you could superset straight arm pulldowns followed by pulldowns or pull-ups.
Close grip bench presses are a great weight training exercise to work the triceps, but you may feel them in your chest and front deltoids to much. Try a superset of lying tricep extensions (skull crushers) immediately followed by close grip bench presses.
These are just some of the examples of how to use pre-exhaustion to target your muscles better while weight training, there are many others. If you don't feel your targeted muscles working hard enough on your main compound weight training exercises, you should give pre-exhaustion a try.
While following a weight training routine do you sometimes have trouble feeling the exercise in the muscle you're working out? For instance, do you feel your shoulders and triceps
