Why Pre-Fatigue Sets Are Great For Muscle Building

As you go about your muscle building workout program, one concept that you will want to think hard about incorporating in is pre-fatigue.  What this essentially has you doing is looking at your compound lifts scheduled for the workout and tiring out any of the helper muscles that may be involved.

In doing so, you're going to be then placing much more stress on the actual target main muscle group of that compound
lift, seeing that much better strength gains.

Let's take a quick look at how to do pre-fatigue sets and why they are so beneficial.  

Executing The Pre-Fatigue Set

In order to do the pre-fatigue set, you're going to have to determine which muscle groups are going to be at play throughout that compound lift.  So for instance, let's take the bench press for example.  If you're doing a bench press you're going to be primarily targeting the chest, the shoulders, and the triceps.

Since your primary target is the chest, your mission then is to work the triceps and possibly even the shoulders before moving onto the chest press.  Then, by the time you get to that exercise, both of those helper muscles won't have much 'juice' left in them thus the chest really gets put to the test.

Do three or four sets of a tricep isolation exercise such as tricep kickbacks and then do a few sets of a shoulder isolation movement such as lateral raises.

Once both of those are completed, move over to your bench press exercise.  Don't be surprised if you do have to use less weight while doing this though due to the fact you'll have less overall power behind you.

The Benefit Of Pre-Fatigue Sets

When it comes to the benefits of pre-fatigue sets, they're numerous.

Fatigue Management

The first main benefit is fatigue management.  Since you're really going to be facing a high level of fatigue in those helper muscle groups, this type of training is going to teach your body how to handle that very well.

In return, then when you go back to your straight sets again, you should be able to tolerate more volume before needing a rest.

Greater Metabolic Boost

Second, since you'll be moving through the initial isolation sets and then the compound set fairly quickly while using this technique, this will help to boost the metabolism and allow you to get ripped faster.  If you're following a fat loss diet as well, this is a very good way to bring out a maximum muscle pump and look very lean quickly.

Increased Focus and Concentration

Finally, the last benefit of pre-fatigue sets is that it will train you to have better focus and concentration in the gym.  Again, due to the fact that those helper muscles are so fatigued moving into the chest press, if you aren't really focusing in on getting that weight up and moving through the set, you're going to struggle along.

Losing focus is a big reason many people aren't able to put forth the power they should be in their workout program so by training this aspect you'll see long term benefits.

So be sure that you don't overlook pre-fatigue sets.  You shouldn’t make all the sets in your workout pre-fatigue since they are so stressful and that would quickly lead to overtraining, but if you can add at least a couple throughout the week you should see a nice boost to your muscle building.