The BEST Way to Build Bigger Arms
Swollen, full, round biceps…thick, solid, hulking triceps…what guy at one time or another doesn’t aspire to build the kind of arms that make people stop and stare in awe?
Powerful looking, chiseled arms are a sign of raw strength, a badge of honor if you will, and are acquired only by those who are willing to toil for months and years under the iron.
Building extremely muscular arms, and indeed extreme musculature on any area of the body, requires that you work hard – that’s a given – but more importantly, it requires you to work SMART!
How many times have you seen some 150lb weakling curling (swinging!) a set of heavy dumbbells with terrible form in an attempt to build bulging biceps, and yet week after week he seems to make little to no progress…? The same guy never really seems to train triceps at all, save for a few haphazard sets of rope pushdowns at the end of chest day.
There’s a lesson to be learned here.
EXECUTION. Proper EXECUTION is using the target muscle to lift the load. In the case of a close grip bench press, the TARGET muscle is the triceps. For bicep curls, you guessed it, it’s biceps! That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Before I begin the first rep of any exercise, I activate the target muscle. Take the seated dumbbell bicep curl for example. Seated on the bench, dumbbells at arms’ length, palms pointing forward, you begin to curl the weight up…STOP right there…not so fast!
If you’re like 95% of gym goers, you’re probably making one major mistake, that is, not ACTIVATING the target muscle! Without activating the muscle you’re potentially missing out on most if not all of the benefits of the exercise.
So here’s the fix…CONTRACT before you ACT.
Remember that statement and repeat it before every set of arm training you do from this moment on. What does it mean? That’s simple. Take our example of the seated dumbbell curl above. Seated on the bench, dumbbells at arms’ length yada yada yada…now, before you even begin to curl those dumbbells, I want you to CONTRACT your bicep. FLEX it, TENSE it – however you want to put it, what I mean is that you need to create as much tension in the muscle as possible before you even move the weight.
Now curl the dumbbell, keeping that muscle tensed. When you complete the rep, start over. CONTRACT, FLEX, TENSE…now curl!
The same goes for triceps training. You’re lying on the flat bench, hands shoulder width apart on the cold steel bar as you lower it to your torso. You reach the bottom of the rep and are tempted to just get that weight back up by any means possible. But you don’t. What do you do?
CONTRACT before you ACT!
Flex your triceps as hard as possible, and lift the weight. Rinse and repeat for every rep of every set.
With this approach you’re going to have to lighten the loads you were previously using, but don’t worry, it’s just a means to an end. You’re going to be creating much more tension in the muscles than you ever did before, and with that, renewed growth. Your arms will respond by growing thicker, stronger and more vascular.
When the guys at the gym ask you how you did it, just tell them…CONTRACT before you ACT!!
This is Shane McDonald for Muscle Eire
