— . ere is, however, an important use of pre-exhaustion set aside for super-
strong trainees. A steady diet of extremely heavy weights imposes enormous
stress on the body. To pre-exhaust will reduce the size of the poundage
needed in the compound movement to deliver a good training effect.Warning!
. Do not treat all exercises equally when training to failure. Do not push all
the way to total momentary failure in deadlifts or stiff-legged deadlifts. Do
not go all the way in an area where you know you have a slight weak link.
Be in tune with your body and keep a little in reserve if you know that you
cannot go all the way in full safety.. Some very experienced trainers adamantly caution against going all the way
in any exercise—train hard, even very hard, they say, but not quite to total
momentary failure. You have to travel the road yourself, and see what works
best for you. Take comfort from the fact that it is not a necessity to train
with gut-wrenching intensity, to gain. Some people train successfully using
extreme intensity, because it suits them physically and mentally, they can do
it safely, and they can provide the necessary recovery factors; but extreme
intensity is absolutely not the only way to train.Why go “brutally hard” when “very hard” & “hard” work?
. If you can make steady gains from hard and very hard training, why train
even harder? Because you might make faster gains, and perhaps the fastest
gains you can possibly make. It is a big reward if you can do it, but the price
in terms of effort is extraordinarily heavy, and one that very few people can
deliver. If you can do this all the time, and recuperate properly, you are going
to realize your ultimate potential for muscular size and strength as quickly
as possible. If you can only train that way for short spells, but actually gain
faster during those periods, then use that sporadic strategy.. But if you cannot deliver the brutally hard work, do not feel any less of a per-
son as a result. Train as hard as you can. If it means you reach your ultimate
size and strength slower than perhaps you would if you trained harder, that
does not matter. You will still get there, and in the process you will learn to
train harder.. If you, however, cannot gain from the brutally hard approach, there is no
value in doing it, even if others can gain well from it. If you can gain from