Double Pre-exhaust Bicep HIT Routine

                                                       

Pre-exhaust routines are a great method to dramatically increase the intensity of your training and add new growth to your muscles. The normal way to put this into practice is to perform an isolation exercise first to failure followed by a compound exercise, also to failure.

Some examples of isolation exercises for biceps include: concentration curls,barbell and dumbbell curls,preacher curls and cable curls. Compound exercises include: palms-forward barbell rows,palms-facing lat pull-downs and palms-up cable rows. There are others but these are great examples of each.

Isolation exercises focus efforts on the target muscle, in this case biceps, while limiting the use of other nearby muscles. Compound exercises do the opposite, they use nearby muscles to assist the biceps in the execution of an exercise. 

A typical pre-exhaust routine using a hit protocol looks like this:

• concentration curls-1x12
• palms-facing pull-ups-1x8 + 4 negatives at the end of the set (lift yourself up with your legs and lower with your arms only

This routine uses one isolation exercise and one compound one. A double pre-exhaust program uses two isolation exercises that precede one compound exercise. The reason for this is the added ability to more thoroughly exhaust, or wear down, the muscle with two isolation exercises before using fresh nearby muscles to push the biceps past normal failure. 

Typically, the isolation exercises are carried to failure while the compound one may have one or two HIT variables  added to the end of the set to really exhaust the muscle. 

The following routine is an example of a double pre-exhaust HIT routine:

• barbell preacher curls-1x12
• overhead cable curls-1x10
• palms-forward barbell rows-1x8 + 4 negative reps

Give both pre-exhaust and double pre-exhaust training a try in your next couple of workouts and I'll bet you'll be adding them to your regular program!

Dave