Pre-Exhaust

Everyone that needs to BE adjusted needs to STAY adjusted. That’s obvious, which is why this thinking is at the center of our care modeling. But what if there is an injury? How do athletes that commonly get injuries during training or throughout their life, continue to train and still heal?

Prevalent in current training and conditioning thought is the idea of training movements, not muscles which, from a conditioning and fitness standpoint makes a lot of sense. By the time someone lands on my bench, it is likely that they have been beset by a pain/injury/dysfunction condition that includes some element of an under recuperated link in their chain. Not only is this common, this usually is the aspect of the clinical picture that tends to chronicity- the state of affairs wherein the problem may be helped by any number of things but never really gets better.

Almost always this picture includes some necessity to continue training through the injury. Sometimes this “training” can simply be someone’s day job. Long term training and conditioning often means joining the ranks of the walking wounded. Training movements-not muscles falls apart as a strategy when the movements become part of an injury pattern.

Pre-Exhaust as a training technique was popularized by Arthur Jones/Mike Mentzer as part of a focus on high intensity training. Pre-exhaust can be utilized to get training results in parts of the body that have plateaued. For example, if you have the same work-out routine every week and have observed that you stopped feeling and seeing results in your chest, you can use pre-exhaust to get a pretty intense workout without having to bench eight wheels. By doing a set of cable cross overs before you begin to bench press, you have already targeted and pumped up your chest muscles before you begin your chest presses. This allows for a much more intense chest workout while not putting the same work-out burden on the shoulders and arms.

Pre-exhaust can be useful clinically when used inversely as a mechanism to spare the under recuperated links in the chain while maintaining a training/conditioning regimen. A simple example: a person that keeps squats as a cornerstone for their lower body work-out program develops low-back pain that defies efforts of self-care. We often have much more rapid and lasting success managing the lower-back situation by substituting a pre-exhaust combination of leg extensions followed immediately with leg presses such that a robust leg workout can be achieved with limited to no burden on the still-recovering lower back issue. Response to treatment becomes greatly improved when you spare the muscles and body parts that need more time to heal.

Lasting success in managing pain and injury requires vision as well as expertise. success requires deliberateness with respect of process. If you have come to frustration in the face of a pain/injury situation, be it due to an injury or even an automobile accident or has evolved due to vocational/conditioning issues, consider having the care team at Grovetown Chiropractic become your resource for lasting resolution.