Pre-Fatigue And Understanding Exercise Progression

When you have limited equipment (or even if you don't), there’s an effective method called pre-fatigue. People were anxious, not having their normal gym setups (and some still are leery about visiting gyms); but I guarantee I can annihilate an elite athlete without one single apparatus, simply using isolation fatigue followed by compound movements. Show me one person who can do TKEs or lock-knee hip flexion (or good ol’ leg extension) to muscular failure and then rep out 15 solid single leg squats with no added weight. NO ONE. Show me someone who can do fly-width pushups (or resistance band flys) to total muscular failure and immediately hit 15 solid one arm pushups. NO ONE.

Here, I’m employing pre-fatigue by hitting DB ham curls (see second video for a glimpse into how much dinking around I had to do to get the right angles) prior to single leg RDL. Though I have access to equipment, I’ve been getting so strong at the RDL that I’m worried about tearing something in my arm just from how heavy the weight is that I’m holding. By first pre-fatiguing prime movers in an isolated fashion, I can’t go as heavy. With pre-fatigue, I don’t need to in order to experience overload in the glute and hams.

I also included a few sets of the rest of this “pull day” workout.

DB ham curl - 4 sets of 6-8 reps at failure
1arm/1leg RDL - pyramid to top set 4-6; back-off set 12-15
Weighted pull-ups - 5 sets of 8
Bicep series - supinate/hammer/cross-body to fatigue