Something I'm really focusing on this year is developing my arms.
Like most of you, I've pretty much always known how to properly train arms, but I didn't prioritize doing those things, and, as a result, my arm development has lagged behind. Heck, there was a time (I've talked about this before) where I barely did any arm isolation work, hoping that getting strong on compound exercises would be enough to beef up my squirt guns.
Oh, how many sleepless nights I've endured from that flawed logic...
But, the last couple years I started training my arms more intelligently – that is, I actually included a couple isolation exercises for biceps and triceps, almost weekly – but I still didn't prioritize them or train them in an urgent manner. You could say I just did the bare minimum to move the needle, slowly but surely.
This year I'm taking my arm training a bit more seriously. Now, I'm not devoting an entire session to training my arms or putting them first in my upper body workouts (they're not THAT bad). But I am training them in a more intelligent, focused, and complete manner as a part of a balanced program.
I'm not doing this by adding a bunch more volume or even more frequency than usual. I'm doing it by focusing on stimulating the muscles better.
That comes down to exercise selection and intensity.
Here's a few things I'm focusing on which you (like me) may already know but may not be incorporating.
1. The triceps make up most of the upper arm. Specifically, the long head of the triceps makes up a large part of the upper arm and give us that rounded, juicy appearance. The best way to grow the long head of the tricep – and, therefore, the best way to increase the size of the arms – is by doing overhead tricep extensions. You don't have to do every overhead tricep extension in the book, but pick 1 or 2 and do that/those. A few good options are cable overhead extensions, French press, single arm dumbbell/cable/band overhead extensions, or even skull crushers while dropping the weight behind your head each rep. I find high reps to be friendlier than low reps when doing these tricep variations.
2. Include some sort of tricep extension from the shortened position, like close grip pushups, close grip bench presses, or – better yet – cable pushdowns.
3. Hit the biceps 2 ways. One where the elbows are behind the body and another exercise where the elbow is in front of the body. Examples of elbows behind the body include incline dumbbell curls or cable Bayesian curls. Examples of good exercises with the elbows in front of the body include preacher curls, concentration curls, and spider curls. Pick 1 exercise for each elbow position and get stronger with it.
4. Train the forearms. I've written about this recently so I won't go into too much detail, but if you want bigger arms you mustn't ignore the almighty forearms! You can train the forearms in many ways, but some of these ways will include using a neutral grip, supinated wrist curling, pronated wrist curling, rotational wrist twisting, or variations of grip-specific exercises. Bonus forearm work can be achieved by doing kettlebell ballistics, like 1 hand swings or kettlebell snatches. But these alone won't render dramatic changes. Doing kettlebell ballistics while prioritizing direct forearm isolation work will provide bonus forearm and grip training (while working other big muscles groups, as well). The kettlebell ballistics are optional. The direct forearm isolations are not. When doing forearm isolation exercises, focus on higher reps, like in the 10-20 rep range.
5. Last but not least, the arms are a small muscle group and training them hard doesn't accumulate a lot of systematic fatigue. It's also unlikely that we'll die if we fail a rep of cable overhead extensions, incline curls, or wrist curl variations. Therefore, we can safely train our arms very close to failure. The worst that usually happens when failing an arm isolation exercise is screaming like a weenie because of immense lactic acid build up. That's okay. It builds character, muscle, and, maybe if we draw enough attention to ourselves it'll inspire someone to strike up a conversation at our expense and we can make a friend. That'd be wholesome. So take your arm exercises really close to failure.
There it is. All pretty common sense stuff. But, if you don't hold yourself accountable to doing this common sense stuff, you'll leave inches of arm girth rotting away on the table. That'd be a shame.
With that said, I look forward to my progress this time next year.
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