Arms are an important body part to focus on when you’re building a body that women find attractive. I’ve heard that forearms are like cleavage on men, in that women will take a look at a guy’s forearms like a guy takes a look at a woman’s cleavage – any truth to this ladies? A woman may look for your arms, but she’s not even going to notice you unless you have a good frame. A woman wants to feel protected and safe in a man’s arms. Sculpted, muscular, and athletic arms are important to have in an attractive physique. However, you don’t want to have massive arms that are purely bulk, with no definition. You also don’t want to be supremely focused on your arms in your training either, letting the rest of your body take a back seat – a mistake I’ve seen far too often, especially with novice lifters.
Training to Build Athletic, Lean and Muscular Arms, that Serve a Purpose
Your Biceps, Triceps & Forearms are all relatively smaller muscles compared to the other muscles in your body. This means they’re going to recover a lot faster than say your back, or your legs might. What this means is you can place more stress on these muscles, without worrying about burning them out (stress, primarily in the form of reps, not weight).
When you’re first starting out focus on compound exercises when working arms. Exercises like close grip bench press and dips for triceps, and chin-ups and reverse grip bent over rows for biceps. Your forearms will be worked in any pulling exercise, but feel free to add in a farmer’s walk-type exercise if needed. Also for your forearm development, never use straps. If you can’t lift the weight with your own two hands, then don’t lift it.
When beginning, focus on strength and hypertrophy, using sets with reps up to 10 reps.
As you progress, add in higher rep counts, even burnout sets of 30 reps at the end of a set, or drop sets.
Weekly Split – Focusing on Arms
If you really need to build bigger arms, try this weekly workout split for three weeks. You’ll hit arms individually twice, but will also hit each muscle in the arms at least one other time during the week. For example, your triceps will be isolated 1 day, but they’re also worked when doing any pushing – such as certain chest or shoulders exercises. The same can be said for your biceps and any pulling exercise.
Start the week out with a legs day – the most important group of muscles when trying to build lean mass, improve your athleticism or burn fat – so you’ll also be hitting your legs twice in the week as well.
Day 1
Quads + Calves + Abs
Day 2
Back + Triceps
Day 3
Hips + Shoulders
Day 4
Chest + Biceps
Exercises
I’m not going to go too much into exercises, I’ll let you guys do that. I think the real magic happens in varying you rep and set counts when training your arms, not necessarily the exercises you choose.
To build muscle fast you need to present the body with a stimulus that it isn’t used to. This stress will cause the body to adapt by building itself up bigger and stronger.
Where most people go wrong is that they think they need to annihilate the muscle in order to elicit any type of response. This is counterproductive. When you annihilate the muscle with tons of sets, reps and constantly train to failure and beyond you drastically increase your recovery time. The problem with that is that training frequency is very important. So when you increase your recovery time you have to decrease your training frequency. You’re shooting yourself in the foot.
The key is to do just enough to stimulate size and strength gains but not annihilate yourself so that it takes forever to recover, or worse- that you put yourself in a state of over-training.
If you want to make consistent size gains you have to make consistent strength gains (in a hypertrophy rep range), while eating enough food and allowing enough time for recovery.
The body will respond to any given stimulus one time and one time only. If you place the same demands on it a second time (like pressing the same weight for the same reps) nothing will happen. You must always be forcing it to adapt and thus you must always ask it do something it isn’t used to.
The easiest way to do this is add more weight or do more reps with the same weight (but no more than 10-12 for the upper body and 15-20 for the lower body).
Aside from making consistent strength gains the next most important thing to consider is training frequency. To improve anything in life you need to do it frequently. Building muscle is no different.
So you want to train a muscle as frequently as possible, while it is in a fresh and recovered state. This means that you should be training each body part once every 2-5 days, and not once a week like a lot of the muscle mags recommend. That’s too little frequency. The more times you can stimulate growth throughout the year the better. Obviously 104 growth stimulating workouts per year for each body part would be a lot better than 52.
Summing it up, to build muscle fast you need to do the following three things:
- Constantly get stronger.
- Stimulate but don’t annihilate (12-16 sets per workout. Don’t go to failure)
- Train each muscle group more frequently than once per week.
1. Have a clearly defined goal. You can’t put 50 pounds on your squat, lose 50 pounds of fat and gain 50 pounds of muscle at the same time, while simultaneously training for a bodybuilding contest and a world record in the hammer throw.
2. Train for performance increases from workout to workout. It’s very hard to see size gains or even fat loss gains from day to day but you can see performance improvements on a regular basis, if you train properly.
3. Set PR’s as often as possible. You can’t do the same thing over and over and expect to see any results. Setting PR’s ensures results and fun.
4. But know when to back off. Deload weeks should be taken after 3-8 weeks of intense training.
5. Do fewer things better. ADD is a very bad thing. Pick the most productive exercises and methods and get good at them. It’s the best way to make long term progress.
6. Foam roll or use a PVC pipe before training. Hit the quads, hams, IT bands, glutes, inner thighs, calves, lower and upper back.
7. If you are going to static stretch because you need to in order to get into certain positions, the best time to do it is after you foam roll and before you start your dynamic warm up.
8. Use a lacrosse ball on your piriformis and upper back. You’ll hate me at the time but will thank me later.
9. Do some type of dynamic warm up for 5-8 minutes before you start lifting heavy. This should include low intensity hopping drills, leg swings, isometric bridging exercises, activation drills, etc.
10. Do hurdle mobility drills. Hip mobility is very important and goes quickly as you age.
11. Jump or throw something after your warm up and before you start your main lift. It fires up your CNS and better prepares you to move some heavy shit.
12. Be explosive on every set; even your warm ups (to a point, you don’t have to explode the empty bar so excessively that you dislocate your shoulder).
13. Don’t cause excessive fatigue on your warm up sets. But don’t rush them or neglect them either. Find the balance.
14. When working up to a heavy triple, double or single it’s best to use smaller jumps and take about 8-12 sets to get to your max. You will find that your top end sets feel lighter when you do this versus if you just jumped right into them after only a few warm up sets.
15. Squat.
16. Always squeeze the bar as hard as you can, trying to crush it, on every lift you do.
17. Squeeze your glutes tightly and brace your abs like you’re about to be punched on every standing exercise you do.
18. Always maintain optimal posture throughout your sets. Never let your shoulders slouch forward or your lower back round out.
19. Do more moving and supporting on your hands. Practice handstands against the wall, do Power Wheel hand walks, lateral hand walks, alligator pushups, partner assisted wheel barrow walks, etc. This is great for building up strength and stability in the shoulders.
20. Use thick handles or Fat Gripz and ropes as often as possible.
21. An awesome workout template goes like this- some type of jump or throw for power development, big barbell lift for maximal strength development, bodyweight exercises for assistance work, strongman finisher. Try it.
22. Don’t train to failure on a regular basis.
23. Don’t do slow, grinding death reps. They fry your CNS and slow down or even reverse your progress.
24. Don’t use less than 70% of your max on any exercise. The resistance won’t be enough to stimulate any size or strength gains and will serve very little purpose. (There are some exceptions but this is a pretty good rule to follow)
25. Jump rope.
26. Do the majority of your exercises in a standing position. You sit or lie down to relax; not to train.
27. Pick heavy shit up off the ground.
28. Always carry or drag heavy shit as part of your program (farmers walks rule).
29. Press, support or carry heavy shit overhead more often.
30. Do more pushups. If you are beyond the beginner level figure out creative ways to load them (weight vests, plates on back) or make them harder (suspended, 1 arm, etc.).
31. Decrease your rest periods.
32. Do something active at least 4-5 days per week. Three 45 minute heavy lifting sessions will get you strong, but you won’t necessarily be in shape or healthy. Try to find the balance of both.
33. Take one day completely off. The body needs a break once in a while.
34. Don’t train for more than an hour, max. Your testosterone levels will plummet and cortisol levels will skyrocket.
35. Run, jump, climb and crawl. It’s what your body was designed to do.
36. Work up to advanced levels of planks and side planks. Your spine will thank you later.
37. Listen to your body. When you have nagging pains it’s almost always better to train around them than through them. Trust me.
38. Take a week off when your body needs it. The older you get the more frequently you will need to do this. There’s no shame in doing so. It will keep you in the game longer.
39. Don’t do more than 10 reps on most upper body exercises and 15-20 reps on most lower body exercises.
40. Play.
41. Get at least 20 minutes of sunlight per day.
42. Do hill sprints.
43. Go to bed by 10:30 every night. Eleven at the latest.
44. Get 8-9 hours of sleep. It’s very difficult to get bigger, faster, stronger or leaner on minimal amounts of sleep.
45. Get up at the same time every day.
46. Take naps. It’s an awesome way to boost recovery and get a little surge of growth hormone.
47. Get Active Release.
48. Take contrast baths or showers after training. Hot as you can handle for 1-3 minutes. Cold as you can handle for 30-60 seconds. Repeat for 10 minutes. This really helps with recovery.
49. Get massages. Being dedicated to this on a regular basis lately has made a tremendous difference in how I feel. The key is to find a really good masseuse who really knows what’s up.
50. Train outside from time to time. Bring a bunch of stuff outside and get after it. Or just go to the park and do a bunch of bodyweight stuff on the monkey bars. But do something.
51. Meditate!
Start incorporating any or all of those tips today and pretty soon it will be impossible for you to walk into a room without people stopping to note, “That dude’s fuckin awesome.”
Let me know what you think of this list and feel free to add to it in the comments section below.
