Sleeve-Splitting Arm Workout
The idea of having big arms push many of us to get a gym membership and start to pick up those dumbbells. Huge arms have been associated with being masculine for a long time, just take a look at the statues of Greek Gods or the depictions of the gladiators, they were all pretty big. Ask a kid to flex his muscles, and he’ll most probably hit you with a front double bicep pose, the bottom line is that your arms are crucial for developing a well rounded physique.
You need to pay equal attention to your biceps and triceps. You can’t go crazy with your bicep workouts while overlooking your triceps development. Muscle symmetry is important for strength and aesthetic purposes.
Some people hurt their gains by training their arms every single day, when in reality your arms are not muscle groups that are able to be trained every single day. Training your arms every day won’t get you bigger arms. Doing this actually leads to overtraining since your muscles need time to recover and grow after a workout, and this can put you at an increased risk of injury.
Many people train their biceps before their triceps on the arms day. This can lead to weak triceps since you might be exhausted by the time you start your triceps workout, and you do not put as much effort towards training your triceps then.
This can happen for any muscle you train second on a multi-muscle training day. To combat this in your arm workouts, you will be doing antagonistic supersets. In this advanced training technique, you superset different muscle groups in a single set. For example, you will be super-setting your biceps with your triceps, rather than doing one first.
Follow this workout to get bigger arms.
Superset Number 1
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Standing Cable Bicep Curls – 3 Sets of 15 Reps
You would be starting with a cable exercise to pre-exhaust your muscles. This will help you get the same muscle pump later in your workout while using relatively light weights. Use a straight bar attachment for this exercise.
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Overhead Rope Cable Tricep Extension – 3 Sets 15 Reps
Your triceps consist of three heads; medial, long and lateral. You need to train all three to ensure an overall development and decrease the risk of lagging muscles. The overhead rope cable extensions target your long head. Using cables will help you maintain tension on your triceps throughout the movement.
Superset Number 2
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Dumbbell Curls – 3 Sets 15 Reps
Dumbbell curls are an incredibly effective exercise to target your biceps, and they are one of the most simple movements to complete. In this exercise, rotate your hands outwards at the top of the movement. This will help in building the peak in your pythons.
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Close Grip Bench Press – 3 Sets 15 Reps
Doing a compound exercise (multiple joints) can help build size and strength in your target muscle group. Close grip bench press helps with the overall development of your triceps, and is actually a very good exercise to help strengthen your actual bench press. Make sure you have a complete range of motion while performing this exercise, as well as a good mind-muscle connection.
Superset Number 3
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Concentration Curls – 3 Sets 15 Reps
It is always more effective to end your bicep workouts with an isolation exercise. Concentration curls were one of Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s favorite exercises, and he won 7 Mr. Olympia titles, so it may be a good idea to take his advice. This exercise helped him turn his biceps into mountain peaks. You need to maintain a mind-muscle connection throughout this exercise, really visualize your muscles growing. Going through the motions mindlessly won’t get you anywhere.
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Tricep Dips – 3 Sets 15 Reps
Doing dips at the end of your workout can test what you’re made of. If body weight dips are too easy for you, feel free to add resistance bands or resistance using weights. Maintain a full range of motion and squeeze your triceps at the top of the movement to get the most of this exercise.
Importance of an Arm Day
While many people will not dedicate one day just to working out their arms, it actually can be very beneficial to your overall physique. Sure, you can do the push, pull, legs split where triceps are grouped in with chest and shoulders, then biceps are grouped in with back, but that is a lot to pack into one workout. There would be so much volume involved that each muscle group may not get the proper amount of attention that it needs to be truly broken down so it can grow back bigger.
That being said, a proper arm day can be great for your gains so you can build some solid size and strength in your biceps and triceps. It allows you to focus specifically on those areas, and they transfer over to a lot of other lifts. For example, triceps are key movers in the bench press and overhead press, and the biceps are crucial for movements like deadlifts and rows. So, strengthening your arms is very important.
Arm Workout Wrap Up
Overall, if you want to get bigger arms, a good arm workout will not have you doing too much of one thing, or splitting up your muscle groups to the point where you are so fatigued by the time you hit triceps, that you do not do it to the fullest extent and vise versa. Supersets are the way to go when it comes to training your arms, as you are getting an equal amount of intensity and concentration applied to your biceps as well as your triceps.
Though the bicep only makes up two muscles on the arm, and the tricep makes up three, it is still important to attack these muscles equally to ensure the best gains possible. Do you agree with our arm workout?
Which is your favorite bicep and tricep exercise? Do you think this workout will help you to get bigger arms? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
