Try Triple Drop Pre-Exhaust To Blast Past Sticking Points

Do you have any lagging body parts that could use a boost? I'm going to share a rather intense technique that can be used to break through sticking points and get a muscle growing again. I call it "Triple Drop Pre-Exhaust".

"Pre-exhaust" involves using an isolation exercise immediately before a compound exercise to pre-fatigue the muscle without involving the secondary muscle groups. For example, to pre-exhaust the pecs you would do a set of pec-deck or lying dumbbell flyes to failure immediately followed by flat or incline bench press. The idea is this: The pec-deck or flyes works the pecs without involving the delts or triceps. So although your pecs are fatigued, your delts and tris are fresh so you can further blast your pecs by doing a set of bench presses immediately after the pec-deck or flyes.

I like another technique that utilizes the pre-exhaust idea in a different manner. Let's take chest again for example. Pick an isolation exercise for the pecs. In this example we'll use the pec-deck. Select a weight that will allow you to complete 10 to 12 reps in good form with the last rep being the last one you can possibly complete without help. In other words, go to failure. Immediately reduce the weight approx. 30% and do another set without resting. Take that set to failure however many reps you can complete. Again immediately reduce the weight approx. 30% and do a third set without resting. Take this third set to failure however many reps you can complete.

Now rest about a minute and do a compound exercise for chest. Let's use the bench press for this example. Your pecs should be fairly fatigued if you performed the pec-deck as intensely as I described. Select a weight that allows you to complete 10 to 12 reps to failure. The weight you'll use will probably be significantly less than you normally use because of the pre-exhaust we did on the pec-deck. Now just like on the pec-deck, complete your first set to failure then immediately reduce the weight approx. 30% and do a second set without resting. Again immediately reduce the weight approx. 30% and do a third set to failure without resting.

This is a pretty intense technique and should probably only be utilized very sporadically. In fact, I would recommend waiting at least 7 days before you train the muscle group again after a session of "Triple Drop Pre-Exhaust"