How to Get Bigger Arms - Part 2

Guys are you ready to blast those arms muscles and grow BIG and THICK as a rock? Here we go:

The biceps and triceps are two of the main muscles of the arms and also the most important if your aim is to have impressive upper arm physique. We’ll make it simple: Biceps role is to flex your arm at the elbow, Triceps role is to extend your arm away, Forearm role is to flex your hand, and extensor carpi (outer side of the lower arm) contracts when you have to pull your hand up to the outer side.

We won’t get too much into how biceps and triceps muscles are made, just to know a little bit they’re made respectively of two and three main muscles which work together. This is enough.

It’s almost impossible to isolate one muscle or the other because their synergy is complete, but we can change the angle at which we do an exercise to target this or that muscle a little bit more, and have a complete development of the arm.

Skipping the good old curls and triceps extensions, which could be found everywhere, from magazines, to the Internet and to gym exercise cards, we’ll start straight from the top level exercises. But in order to master those and make them really effective you MUST know how to breathe, control your body, engage the right muscles and support an eccentric movement without engaging other muscles.

BICEPS

Functional Warm-up

(2 sets to failure)

If you want to get bigger arms always remember that every muscle should be pre-filled with blood before you get into your working sets. A complete body movement is always better for this purpose. As a warm-up hang on a bar with your hands supinated (reverse grip) and shoulder width, lift your body until the bar is under your chin, go down halfway until your forearms and upper arms form a 90 degrees angle, then come back up again.

You can think it as a half chin up.

Do a couple of warm-up sets, if it’s too easy or you feel you’re not engaging your biceps enough add a 1 second stop at the top of the movement and think about squeezing your biceps.

Hell Curl 666 The Number Of The Beast

(6 sets – 6 Reps – 6 Minutes)

Get an EZ Bar and grab it with a close grip.

FOCUS ON:

Keeping your elbows tight to your side

Full range of motion

Good form

Cheating or spotting usage

This exercise is fun to do with a buddy because it’s an “I go you go” exercise. It means you do your set while your buddy spots you, you put the weight down and with no rest your buddy begins his set while you spot and so on.

HOW TO:

Begin by locking your elbows on your sides, keep your back aligned but slightly bent at the hips , begin in a rest position, contract the biceps without allowing your elbows to move and bring the bar under your chin, squeeze on top, then go back down and follow through with a controlled negative movement. Use a full range of motion but never release tension on the biceps on top or bottom of the movement.

Explode up, slow down, in a 2-0-X-1 tempo, where 2 is the negative portion in seconds, 0 is the rest at the bottom, X is an explosive concentric movement and 1 is the second to squeeze at the top.

6-6-6 The Number Of The beast: Do 6 sets of 6 reps in 6 minutes as a rest time you have the time while your buddy completes his working set. Alternate close and wide grip on each set. You will cheat, yes you will, BUT force yourself to cheat only on the last 2 reps of the last two sets.

Outer rope curl

(4 sets – 8/10 reps)

You remember those guys showing off a big rock popping out of their inner arm? Great, now forget them, you don’t walk like Popeye with your arm raised in a biceps contraction pose. When you see a big arm, you see the outer side of the biceps, so let’s work on it!

Take a cable with a rope attached and put it to the lowest level. Take both of the rope ends in one hand and facing the cable align your shoulder to it. With your elbows LOCKED on your side pull up the rope, raise the cable to your shoulder and when you’re about to touch it with the rope move away on the outer side and squeeze the movement.

Explode up, slow down, in a 2-0-X-1 tempo, where 2 is the negative portion in seconds, 0 is the rest at the bottom, X is an explosive concentric movement and 1 is the second to squeeze at the top.

Keep on your back nice and straight at all time, but also keep your legs bent and relaxed.

Smith Ladder

(3 sets to fail)

Let’s keep on attacking our big biceps from all angles, hang under a smith machine, set its bar so that you can hang with your hands supinated and be almost parallel to the ground. Lay on your back, point your heels to the ground and raise your chest to the bar by contracting the biceps. This time use the upper part of the movement, and isolate the muscle. When you reach failure, elevate the smith of one pin and get back to work. Do this three/four times and rest under 30 seconds.

These exercises are complimentary to the work you do with isolation movements like concentration curls and Scott curls, change your routines often and stay tuned for more information on how to get bigger arms.

If you’re ready to put your triceps under test and get bigger arms, click here for the next part of the article.