Quaranturnt Day 56 - Tactical Exhaustion

Hey Quaranturnt Crew,

I wrote about superset back on day 26, but I forgot one major reason I really love including them: tactically exhausting a muscle group to help target another muscle group. 

Let’s say you are interested in strengthening your lats (Why? Well maybe you are a swimmer, maybe you’re a bodybuilder, or maybe you are one of the many in people this group trying to get your first pullup). In order to strengthen your lats, doing pullups, or some scaled variation of them, is a great choice. But it’s a challenge to focus on your lats properly; pullups rely significantly on your biceps as well (especially if you’re actually doing a chinup). 

So how can you avoid using your biceps? Option 1 is “just know” and use your mind body connection to direct all your attention and strength to the lats. For the rest of you who haven’t been deeply engaged in meditation and strength training for 5+ years, don’t worry, there’s a better option. Tactical exhaustion. 

Precede and superset your pullup work with some bicep-crushing activities. So do a few sets of curls and then start the pullups with some curls in between sets too. This way you will not have a choice but to avoid using your biceps in the pullup. You already tactically exhausted them to aid in targeting the lats. 

I use this technique in a lot of the work we do. Like today, I don’t want you using your quads in the table top thrusts - it’s a glute exercise - so how about you get some squats and burpees in, then use them glutes for the table top thrusts. Boom. I exhausted your quads, tactically.

You can probably skip this paragraph, but if you want another example, here’s a good one. I use my shoulders too much to keep my jump rope going. So what I do in my workouts is add some extra shoulder press work to tactically exhaust them. That forces me to stick to targeting the wrists for the rope speed! 

Here is the IG Post. ​