Pre Exhausting Muscles

[thephoenix25]

Hi,

I am trying out different techniques and ideas to get my pecs to engage more during my chest workout. I have read a number of posts that suggest pre exhausting pecs first with flies or db presses before moving onto main working sets on the bench. Here are my questions :

1) Muscle hypertrophy occurs when the muscle repairs micro tears caused during training. If I pre exhaust the muscle first, wont those tears be less as the overall max weight moved would be less at the peak of my main working sets?

2) Wouldn't pre exhausting delts and triceps first cause pecs to bear more of the load during the working sets and therefore cause more micro tears?

It seems my logic is back to front compared to the advice I've read here in other threads. Could someone expand upon this for me please?

Thanks

[Lovemiami]

Thanks for the tips

[gmantheman]

Hi,

I am trying out different techniques and ideas to get my pecs to engage more during my chest workout. I have read a number of posts that suggest pre exhausting pecs first with flies or db presses before moving onto main working sets on the bench. Here are my questions :

1) Muscle hypertrophy occurs when the muscle repairs micro tears caused during training. If I pre exhaust the muscle first, wont those tears be less as the overall max weight moved would be less at the peak of my main working sets?

2) Wouldn't pre exhausting delts and triceps first cause pecs to bear more of the load during the working sets and therefore cause more micro tears?

It seems my logic is back to front compared to the advice I've read here in other threads. Could someone expand upon this for me please?

Thanks

You wouldn't want to pre-exhaust the tris or delts first. I guess you could think of it as the weakest link. The tris and delts are the weaker link compared to the chest on the bench (incline, flat, decline). If you pre-exhaust these muscles then the chest will not have a chance to get recruited to any significant degree. Another analogy would be trying to sprint 100 meters as fast as you could but before doing it you jog a mile.