If you’re a competitive bodybuilder, then a pair of killer arms are essential for making your mark in any competition you enter.
If you’re just a beach bodybuilder, a set of well developed biceps and triceps is very much needed to make acquaintance with the fairer gender in your travels. If you’re just a regular guy trying to make a statement at work or anywhere, a pair of powerful arms is a prerequisite for getting noticed. Heck, is there any place when having an amazing set of arms isn’t a distinct advantage?
If your arms aren’t where you want them to be – and whose are? – then you may want to consider giving them a little extra attention. Sure, this is the point where a trainer will yell at you to “train harder” and “push it to the max” and other cheesy catch phrases. If you’re a hard working trainer, then you’re probably already doing that. It’s likely that you’re giving your arms everything you have on their training day.
There’s your limitation. Your training “day”. You are training one day a week for your arms, just like all of your other muscle groups. There is the key to making better gains for this particular muscle group in particular – you need to train them more. You need to ‘find’ another day to hit your arms.
The easiest split is the common sense split. Chest & Triceps will be trained on Monday. Back & Biceps will be targeted on Tuesday. Wednesday is shoulder day. Thursday you hit your legs.
Then Friday is arm day – AGAIN. On Friday, you train arms alone, to their greatest potential, then you drop the weight and you don’t tough them again until Monday.
Since you will be hitting the triceps & biceps in a secondary role on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, you will want to avoid going too heavy for them on this training day. Use lower weight, with higher repetition.
They won’t be worth much in terms of control and balance of weight, since they’ve been torched with the heavy chest and back work already. Instead you should keep your repetitions in the 8 to 15 range, and use lots of sets.
Once the heavy day rolls around, it’s time to get to work. Friday is “Lift heavy arm day” and nothing more. Use a rep range of 5 to 10 repetitions, and let the weight go heavy, as you have all weekend to heal.
Hitting the arms twice a week gives them 104 mini ‘growth cycles’ to enjoy each year – and the feeling you’ll enjoy with bigger arms at the beach, bedroom, or bodybuilding stage will be indescribable!