Why should you not fatigue the core before performing a heavy leg workout with squats and lunges??
Hi Leila. I noticed that your question says “fatigue” the core before a “heavy” leg workout. I added the emphasis here because that is what I’m limiting my answer to since I believe it’s perfectly fine to “work” the core prior to or in conjunction with a leg workout. But, as you identify here in your question, FATIGUING the core prior to a HEAVY leg workout would be problematic in my opinion because of the importance of the core to heavy leg workouts—PARTICULARLY the type of heavy leg workouts that you identify in your question (namely free weight workouts like squats and lunges). Assuming that you are speaking of free weight workouts with the legs, the importance of not pre-fatiguing the core prior to the leg workout is even more dramatic since it is your core that will be providing the all-important stability to the exercise.
So the answer as to why NOT do this would be for two primary reasons, FIRST, and in my opinion most important would be for safety reasons, and SECOND would be for performance reasons.
I hope that this helps.
LaRue, CSCS
www.lecfitness.com
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