There’s a guy in the gym, seems like every god damn time you
see him he’s doing curls. Well, either rocky, legs/back/shoulders curls, or
sloppy, leaning-forward rope pushdowns. The Arms Guy.
I hate this guy. I am the opposite of this guy. For the
first few years of my training, I actually didn’t train my arms directly at
all. I figured, if you go to the gym, do heavy back and heavy chest, those
movements will incorporate the tertiary arm muscles enough to keep your arms
big and strong. This is true to some extent. Big compound movements like chins
and presses will certainly activate your bis and tris, and depending on form,
genetics, and nutrition, you can get away without doing any arm isolation work
at all. The compound movements should make up the majority of your time in the
gym, really.
Eventually I discovered that I needed to do a few arm isolation
exercises, not only to aid my strength for the bigger movements, but also to
pack on a little size (don’t judge me, beach season is coming up). I usually
train with a pretty classic split, adding 3-4 sets of tris after chest day,
same thing with bis on back day.
Every once in awhile, it can be a nice shock
to your body and give your tree trunks their own day- a “gun run” if you
will. I probably do this once every 6 weeks, on am “extra” gym day- a lazy
Sunday where I end up going to the gym out of boredom or something like that.
Given that I’ve been doing all types of weird shit with my
workout splits lately (back/chest, legs/shoulders, splitting upper back and
back width, etc.). Today I figured I’d do an arm day, stealing a move from
Arnie again and supersetting Tris/Bis. Doing supersets like this left me with
INCREDIBLE pump- like, “hard to do skullcrushers with my biceps in the way”
pump. To the point where some random guy actually commented on my vascularity…
score.
One thing that I did for this workout that is different from
the average gymgoer is… strict form. I
cannot stress this enough. Here is a
GREAT video with my
bodybuilding hero, Kai Greene, discussing his philosophy around executing arm
movements, specifically curls. Using legs, moving your elbows around, and cheating
is only going to sabotage your workout and potentially get you hurt. Drop the
weight. Use the proper form.
With this said, I will cautiously offer a technique that I
use to train past my natural limitations and increase intensity. Cheating, when
used properly, can be an effective way to fully tax the muscles when arm
training. Arnold said it best…
Say you are doing a
heavy barbell curl. You curl the weight up five or six times, and then find you
are too tired to continue to do strict reps. At this point you begin to use your
shoulders and back to help you in the lift slightly so that you can do another
four or five reps. But you cheat just enough so you can continue the set, and
your biceps continue to work as hard as they can. By cheating you have forced
the biceps to do more work than they could have done without help from the
other muscles, so you have to put more stress on them, not less.
In short, during the last few sets, after failure with
proper form, if you can break past that by cheating for an extra few reps, do
it. You don’t want to do this every time. But it can help get to a higher
level.
Finally, to the workout.
Warmup Superset
– LIGHT, 2 Sets, 20 reps
V-Bar Pushdowns
Rope Hammercurls
For all working exercises, we are doing 5 sets, with the
first 4 being in the 10-12 rep range, last one a little heavier for a 6-8.
Ideally, going up in weight at least 3 times over the course of the exercise,
but not sacrificing form.
First Superset
V-Bar Pushdowns – Don’t lean into these! Stand up
straight, bring the V-Bar up as far as you can without losing tension on your
tri. Definitely past your elbow being 90 degrees at least.
Barbell Curl – Hands shoulder width
Second Superset
Skullcrushers – Keep your elbows tucked in. Imagine there
are two pieces of wood jutting out of the bottom of your chin and the top of
your head as you’re laying down. When doing the skullcrusher movement, keep the
bar within that “box.” (Does this make sense?)
Seated Dumbbell Hammer Curl – Remember the Kai video!
Third Superset
High Pulley Triceps Extensions (with the rope) - It's
important to keep the ends of the rope apart about as wide as your head- don't
go narrower as you do the movement, this is cheating. Keep your elbows
stationary and not flared out. Go as far back as you can to get a very deep
triceps stretch and extend to lockout. This video
shows the basic movement but keep your hands farther apart, palms facing each
other, and don’t change what your hands do throughout the movement.
Seated Preacher Curl – I actually used the Hammer
Strength machine where you can load plates on the bottom, you can do this with
a EZ bar if you want as well.
Fourth Superset
Single arm reverse grip pulldowns - Here
is a good form video, although I’m not sure why that guy is recording
bodybuilding videos in the first place.
Narrow, reverse grip curls from the low pulley - Here's a simple form
video. At the top, crank your wrists to
hit the forearms even harder. Don’t lean back.
To finish off, I did 4 sets of wrist curls, about 15-20
reps each. At this point my arms were absolutely TOASTED.
Overall, the workout was very fast because of the
supersets, and I got a lot of work in, only spending about an hour and a half
at the gym total. If you can squeeze an arm day into your routine, try it out!
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