We all have a certain stubborn body part we wished would be better looking. We training it to death but nothing seems to work. There are many different ways to fix a stubborn muscle. I’m going to show you one way known as pre-exhaustion that has helped me with those stubborn body parts.
Science says the best way to simulate a muscle is to start with exercises that recruits as many muscle fibers as possible which generally means big compound movement. It makes sense get the most bang for your buck after all. I’m definitely not disagreeing with science. However for those stubborn muscle, when that just isn’t working it’s time to try something different.
The concept of pre-exhaustion is based off the science proven fact that our bodies will only recruit as much muscle fibers as needed to perform a task at hand. Our bodies rather conserve energy at all cost so it will only use what you demand of it. This works great for survival in the wild but not for looking good on the beach sadly. So instead do an isolation movement first rather then a compound movement. This will recruit less fibers which is what we want this time. Our goal is to tire out the smaller muscles first forcing the larger muscles( the ones you visually notice and want to improve) work that much harder. Now that the smaller muscle are exhausted you’ll make full use of the larger muscles in the exercise. Where as if you just did the harder movements first you wouldn’t have had to put as much of a demand on the larger muscles because the smaller muscles were assisting.