Here’s a great use of the high intensity technique known as pre-exhaustion. This superset technique involves performing an isolation movement for a muscle group immediately prior to performing a compound movement. This produces significant fatigue and activation in the targeted muscles allowing those specific muscle groups to fail before other smaller muscles do. This pre-exhaustion principle is something bodybuilders have been using for decades to crush specific muscle groups. In this example one of my awesome clients Matt Jordan is performing a straight arm pulldown (more of an isolation movement) prior to performing a pullup/chin-up exercise. The straight arm pulldown fatigues the lats so much so that by the time he performs the pull-ups his lats and upper back give out well before the smaller muscles of his biceps and arms do thereby inducing greater hypertrophy gains in the lats. Similar protocols can be done with other muscle groups such as leg extensions before squats, flyes before chest presses, and glute bridges or leg curls before RDL’s. You can also use pullover variations before pullups and pulldowns to a produce a similar effect shown in this video.