By Jason Ferruggia
http://www.atozfitness.com/recommends/musclegainingsecrets.html

1)    Do a crap load of parallel bar dips and close grip chin ups. Ever see the arm development on male gymnasts? Nuf said. If you want to build bigger arms do what they do.

2)    For maximal growth you need to do both heavy sets of 6-10 reps as well as a few higher rep sets of 11-15 (and sometimes even as high as 20 reps). Variety is not only the spice of life and the key to good sex, but also a necessity in achieving impressive arm growth.

3)    Consider training biceps and triceps on your leg day, 48 hours after your main upper body day. This allows you to hit them more often and also when they are fresher. This was what former Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates did early on in his career, as detailed in his classic, Blood and Guts. If you do this I would stick with pushdowns and extensions for triceps though, as dips and close grip benches on both days will probably lead to overtraining in advanced lifters. Another option is to only do biceps on leg day. This seems to work better for most guys. Try and see which option you like better.

4)    If you train arms on lower body days, do them first, before squatting. After your squats you will probably be too wiped out to put enough effort into your bi’s and tri’s.

5)    If your biceps haven’t grown in a while try training your forearms. Sometimes people develop an imbalance or weakness, and correcting it by bringing up the forearms often leads to new biceps growth.

6)    The triceps respond best to high loads so be sure to hit them heavy with close grip bench presses, floor presses, board presses, rack lockouts, etc. for sets of five to eight reps. You can always finish them off with some higher rep sets of pushdowns.

7)    Be sure to include some loaded stretch position exercises like overhead triceps extensions and incline curls from time to time.

8)    Try doing close grip benches and extensions with a fat bar to take the stress off your elbows.

9)    For a short specialization period of a month or two, train your biceps and triceps first in your upper body workouts. When you do that you need to increase the volume for bi’s and tri’s and cut the volume for chest, back and shoulders.

10)    Bodyweight curls with the TRX Straps are an awesome biceps exercise. Like I’ve said a million times before, when you move your body through space versus simply moving a weight with your limbs you get a stronger strength and muscle building stimulus. Give these a try ASAP if you want to build bigger arms.

11)    Bodyweight triceps extensions with the TRX Straps are equally as effective, and they are also a lot easier on the elbows than barbell, dumbbell or EZ bar extensions.

12)    Barbell curls can place a lot of stress on the wrists in certain individuals. Dumbbells are equally as efficient at building big biceps, and safer for many people. Don’t battle through the pain just because you think this is the best biceps exercise around. It’s not worth it.

13)    If you can do barbell curls without pain, then by all means do them and do them often. They are a great mass building exercise which allows you to pile on the weight.

14)    Barbell curls need not be done strictly. In fact, a slight swing and a little body English, ala Arnold in the Pumping Iron (25th Anniversary Special Edition), is actually a more natural and safer movement.

15)    If you value your shoulders be very cautious in adding too much weight to parallel bar dips. I did this for years, routinely dipping with three plates attached to my belt. I also have the scars from shoulder surgery to show for it. I don’t recommend it.

16)    Instead of adding more weight, try doing dips on gymnastics rings or TRX Straps. These are incredibly challenging, but if you work up to a few sets of 12-15 your triceps will surely get absolutely jacked.

17)    Since they are a smaller body part, the arms can tolerate more volume and frequency than the lats, quads or other larger muscle groups, particularly when specializing on them for a month or two.

18)    The first Mr. Olympia, Larry Scott, recommended curling your wrists first on any type of biceps curl. He felt that it allowed you to curl more weight and thus further stimulate the biceps. Tough to argue with his results. Give this a try for a few weeks and see what you think.

19)    Another tip from Larry is to do very heavy partial range barbell wrist curls where you don’t allow the bar to roll down into your fingertips, but instead keep your hands squeezed the whole time and just use about 2/3 of the range of motion. After finishing that, immediately superset with light weight, full range wrist curls and allow the weight to roll all the way down to your fingertips on each rep. This is incredibly painful but incredibly effective.

20)    Always do an equal amount of work for both the triceps and biceps.

21)    Try supersetting an isolation biceps exercise like an incline or barbell curl with a compound back/biceps exercise like a close grip chin up or pulldown. Your biceps will be pretty fried from the curls but your lats will help really finish them off on the chins or pulldowns.

22)    This can also be done for triceps by supersetting pushdowns or extensions with a compound movement like a close grip pushup or bench press.

23)    Rows with a two inch diameter rope attached to a sled or Prowler will blow up your biceps and forearms. Give them a go for a month and thank me later.

24)    If you are a strength and conditioning coach, you know that direct arm work isn’t necessary and will probably have little to no impact on performance. But the fact of the matter is that almost all guys love to train arms.  When you keep your athletes happy they like you more as a coach, the atmosphere in the gym is better, they get faster results, everyone’s happy and the world’s a better place. Not only that, but big arms can help intimidate opponents. Something you don’t hear people talk about too often, but definitely worth noting.

25)    If you train four days per week with two upper body workouts, consider doing one day where you focus on chest, back and shoulders with a fairly high volume then finish with a few sets of arms. On your second upper body day focus on biceps and triceps for higher volume and then finish with a few sets of chest, back and shoulders for far fewer sets.

26)    Behind the back wrist curls are an often forgot about but very effective forearm building exercise. If your forearm training is getting stale, add these into your next program.

27)    Another oft forgotten forearm exercise is the EZ bar reverse curl. This can be done standing or on a Scott bench as popularized by the great Larry Scott. I prefer to do this with my thumb on the same side of the bar as my fingers, thus working your grip even harder.

28)    Actively squeeze and contract your biceps as hard as you can on each and every rep of whatever type of curl you are doing.

29)    Shrugs and high rep dumbbell rows without straps are great forearm/ grip strength builders.

30)    Finish your biceps and triceps off with the most dramatic pump you can possibly achieve. Even though it would be cooler and more hardcore to say that the pump has nothing to do with growth, the fact is your arms will grow faster if you pump the shit out of them. But do it with relatively heavy weights. Nothing above 15-20 reps.

31)    Intensely stretch the biceps and triceps in between sets and especially after your last pump set. When doing direct forearm work, stretch them between sets as well.

32)    To simultaneously train your grip, forearms and biceps do plate pinch curls. Grab a pair of ten pound plates and sandwich them together, smooth side out. While holding them with your fingers on one side and thumbs on another, simply curl them up and down while squeezing them as hard as you can. When this gets too easy, add a third plate to the mix.

33)    On the eccentric portion of a curl, actively contract your triceps and try to do a pushdown. Immediately reverse the motion at the bottom of every rep.

34)    On the eccentric portion of triceps pushdown or extension, actively contract your biceps and try and do a curl.

35)    Always try to increase the load on all of your biceps and triceps exercises. If you are curling 35 pound dumbbells now you had better be curling 50’s a year from now. If not your arms will look pretty much exactly the same.

36)    If you don’t do squats and deadlifts you shouldn’t be reading an article about training biceps and triceps. You should start doing squats and deads and come back and reread this article in about a year or two.

37)    If your arms are under 15 inches, you too probably don’t need to worry about an article telling you how to build bigger arms. Instead, just focus on gaining weight and getting strong on the big, compound movements. Tons of direct arm work is an absolute waste for beginners and skinny guys.

Train hard,

Jason Ferruggia

PS. For more great arm training information check out Muscle Gaining Secrets today.
 

Jason Ferruggia Click below to download Jason Ferruggia Mass Building Sins (access is free to all atozfitness subscribers)

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