All Glossary Terms
Training

Pre-Exhaustion

Performing an isolation exercise before a compound to fatigue the target muscle.

Pre-exhaustion involves fatiguing a specific muscle with isolation work before compound movements. The goal is to ensure the target muscle fails before synergists in the compound exercise. For example, doing leg extensions before squats to ensure quads reach failure despite glute/hip involvement. Research on its effectiveness is mixed.

Examples

  • Dumbbell flyes before bench press
  • Leg extensions before squats
  • Lateral raises before overhead press

Related Terms

Isolation Exercise

An exercise that targets a single muscle group using one joint.

Compound Exercise

An exercise that works multiple muscle groups and joints simultaneously.

Training to Failure

Performing reps until you cannot complete another with proper form.

Compound exercises

Put this into practice with exercises from the library.

Clean Pull

Olympic Weightlifting · Barbell

Clean Shrug

Olympic Weightlifting · Barbell

Clean and Jerk

Olympic Weightlifting · Barbell

Clean and Press

Strength · Barbell

Clean from Blocks

Olympic Weightlifting · Barbell

Clock Push-Up

Strength · Bodyweight

Close-Grip Barbell Bench Press

Strength · Barbell

Close-Grip Dumbbell Press

Strength · Dumbbell

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