Pre Fatigue

Strength - Pre Fatigue Isometric + Concentric

Have you ever felt sore from your workouts? Did you like that feeling? If so, you’re going to love this block.

What we got this month is what we call ‘Pre-Fatigue’. The idea is to create tension in a muscle group or a movement pattern before going into a set. This recruits more muscle fibers and fatigues them more so during the actual work set. 

There are a variety of ways we can do this. One method, which we have done before, is to utilize an isolation exercise. This is a great way to elongate the period of tension on a muscle group. This is a great method, but it does have its shortcomings. One is pairing with exercises. You effectively add a whole other exercise and create more things to set up, coach, manage, remember, perform, etc. Most times this method can overcome any logistics with good exercise selection and management. 

The way to circumvent the logistics of having a whole separate exercise is to vary the contraction within a set. In this format, we keep the traditional format of A1 and A2 by having a different contraction or focus point on our first rep before the primary set. For example, we are going to do a set 1 rep with an 8-second hold in a contracted position followed by 5 reps with a 2010 tempo. It is effectively a set of 6 with the first rep trying to elicit the same effect as a pre-fatigue-based isolation exercise, minus the additional exercise. 

Why all the fuss? Part of the answer is tension matters. Tension matters because that is the currency of hypertrophy or muscle building. Tension is different from fatigue. Fatigue is the sensation we get from exercise. Tension is from targeting and contracting a muscle or muscle group. We can typically have fatigue with quality tension. We can experience fatigue without tension and that is what we want to avoid. 

Crappy reps are a common thread with training. It is a personal ethos that you should be deliberate about how you do everything. Aside from the quality of the stimulus determines the quality of the outcome. Quality determines the significance of what we do. If we do have quality from a predetermined standard, we are effectively hoping for an outcome. This is when fatigue can come without any direct tension. 

Pre-fatigue gives context on where something should be felt. Context allows us to target something more directly and we can leverage the sensation of fatigue more effectively. A clear indication of doing something correctly is feeling local fatigue and subsequent definitively placed soreness. A classic example of the opposite is feeling lower back soreness following a workout that did not target the lower back. We should be leaving a breadcrumb trail of soreness following the direct path of exercises we took. 

The other part is that learning movement is hard and pre-fatigue facilitates that. Having an exercise you feel and understand makes a difference in learning that movement. It gives you context if you are doing it correctly. Each rep having a direct sensation in a muscle group you are intended to target makes a massive difference. 

This block is going to be fun. Challenge yourself. You are stronger than you think you are so push the weight each session!