What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
If you're looking to build bigger biceps and triceps you've come to the right place.
You've come to the right video.
I'm going to show you today why you need to up the ante when it comes to arm training,
if you want to see better arm gains, and it's going to amount up to 1" of gain on your arms,
just by doing these more intense training techniques.
The first thing I want you to try to do is utilize mechanical drop sets, like we're seeing
right here.
So mechanical drop sets allow you to take advantage of the fact that, just by changing
the position of your body without having to interrupt the flow of the total set, you can
actually keep a set going to failure, and through failure, on a given exercise.
So we start with a bicep version of this.
We know that the simultaneous version of the curl is going to be more difficult because
of the stability of the core that is needed in order to move that weight, but we can take
that all the way to failure, and from there just drop it down to an alternating version.
You'll be surprised.
You might have thought you couldn't have cranked out anymore reps, but now when you split it
up side by side you can.
So you took a set to failure, you continue to push through failure, but even there the
biceps don’t have to stop working.
You may not be able to curl anymore, but you can drag curl.
You can shorten that moment arm and pull the dumbbells up to your chest, by allowing your
elbows to drift back, behind your body, which allows those biceps to still work, but in
an easier way.
The same thing can be applied to your triceps as well.
You do a tricep extension – your dumbbell tricep extension – which gets difficult
to a point where you're going to hit the wall, but you don’t have to stop.
You can turn it into the modified French press, just by allowing your arms to drift a little
bit more in front of your body here, and you do a few reps of that until you can't do anymore,
and you realize the triceps may be done from that exercise.
But they don’t have to be done entirely.
You can eek a little more effort out of them.
Meaning, more gains by allowing you to do a close grip dumbbell bench-press, and finally
taking that to failure.
So there's one technique.
But we can also include things like this.
More focus on including negative training.
It's not just slowing down the rep to make sure we're not forgetting the eccentric component
of it.
We're talking about actually adding negative only repetitions after you've gone to failure
concentrically, which allows us to illicit even more work out of that muscle.
You can see here with the tricep pushdown.
I do the tricep pushdown until I can't do anymore, then I allow body English, I allow
myself to get over the top, again, shorten that moment arm, and pushdown – yes, I'm
even using my chest here to do a push down, and dip onto the rope – but that doesn't
matter.
We already know that we're done concentrically.
All I'm doing is getting it to the bottom of the rep so I can continue to push out more
eccentric reps, which we know we are capable of.
We're always going to be stronger eccentrically than we are going to be concentrically.
So I can actually get a few more of those extra negative only reps.
We can do the same thing here on the box curl.
Do a cable curl, and do, what I call a squat curl.
Yes, we actually can take a curl, and allow our body to put us in position to do another
curl.
So as we get down to the very bottom here, we may not be able to move this thing at all,
but if I squat my body down, rest my elbows in on my thighs, and let them take the ride
back up to the top.
I'm right there in position again, at that midpoint – the hardest portion of the rep
– to incur, yet another negative rep, and push myself even further.
This next one is really interesting.
It's a bitch if you try it.
I promise you, you're going to be burning.
It's going to give you that metabolic training effect that I think a lot of us don’t include
enough of in our training anyway.
But we're actually using an occlusive effect, and occlusion training effect because we're
not really allowing natural blood flow through the limb.
It does give us a chance to actually do very light weights here, and still see gains.
So if you look at what I'm doing here with the curl, I'm just repping out here with 20lbs.
I can handle a lot more weight than this, and I'm only going for a certain goal rep
here.
Here, I have 10 in mind.
I knock out 10 reps, and then instead of allowing the arms to either rest, or put the dumbbells
down, we keep them in this bent position.
By being in that bent position I've basically kinked the garden hose.
I do not have the same blood flow through that limb because I've closedown the joint,
I've impeded the natural blood flow to that joint, so we're creating a metabolic overload.
We're creating and occlusive effect here that is going to allow you to see, and feel a difference
instantly.
You're going to do everything in your power to want to put your arms, and straighten them
out, and put the weights down.
But you can't.
You just do that for about 15 seconds, and then you crank out another 10 reps.
Then you do that for 15 seconds, and you crank out another 10 reps.
And you do that for 15 seconds, and you do it until you literally cannot resist that
burn inside your biceps.
You can do the same thing with your triceps and you don’t even need any weights at all.
You apply the cobra pushup, as I'm doing here.
Again, what we do is, we knock out the cobra pushups and, by the way, I'm doing these from
my knees because they are that damn hard when you do them this way.
You can't necessarily do them, at least not a lot of repetitions, if you're doing them
from your toes.
If you can, you're a better man than me.
Push yourself to do that, if that's a possibility.
But what you want to do is, you crank out a certain number of reps.
Here I have 15 as my goal, then I stay down, in that bottom position.
Now, I'm not hovering here.
I'm not making the triceps do any work.
I'm just not allowing the elbows to straighten out.
I'm not allowing those triceps to breathe.
I'm letting them stay in this bent position, again, impeding natural blood flow.
It's not dangerous, guys.
It's venous blood flow.
What it's doing is creating that metabolic overload.
Then I crank out more reps, and I keep that position, and I crank our more reps.
So you're going to find that staying in the position alone is probably harder than actually
cranking out the reps.
But at some point, you're going to have to give.
But you've created a stimulus that you probably never have before, and you're not used to,
and that is great impetus for new growth.
Finally, we saved the best for last.
This is one that I actually showed you before, when it relates to chest training.
This is an overcoming isometric.
At first glance you might think "Geez, Jeff.
Is it really doing anything here?
He's not moving."
That's the point of the isometric.
What you want to do is set the weight stack up here as heavy as it gets so you cannot
move it.
You want to try like hell to move it as hard as you possibly can.
You're pushing, and pulling here – in this case, as hard as you possibly can – to try
to make that thing move.
But if you selected the weight correctly it's not going to go anywhere.
That doesn't mean that your muscles aren't doing a lot of work.
As a matter of fact, an overcoming isometric is going to yield better gains by way of increasing
your motor recruitment.
You're pulling as hard as you can here, and building up this contraction strength over
time, and you're doing it in this very fixed range of motion.
So what you want to make sure you do is, you don’t just do it here, but you vary the
angle slightly, and do it about three, or four times so you can progressively see I'm
closing down that angle.
I'm going for more of an extended position, to more of a midrange, to then finally more
of a contracted position of the biceps.
No one is easier than the other.
They're all hard if you're using as much effort as you possibly can.
You could also do this with the triceps.
You can do it with a tricep push away.
You've changed the angle of the joint.
One from more of a flexed position of the elbow, as you work your way out, a midrange,
and then again, all the way out in that contracted position.
But the key is the same.
You're using a weight that you cannot move, but you're trying to move it as hard as possible,
getting better motor recruitment, getting a better strength and contraction ultimately,
and even when you go back to your concentric training you should have that carry over so
you have more strength, and therefore, a greater capacity to grow bigger, and stronger.
There you have it, guys.
There are four ways for you to intensify your arm training that will allow you to start
making those new gains one inch at a time, and start seeing noticeable improvements.
Guys, when it comes to arm training it really is an untapped area of potential, I think.
Your arms allow – they're begging you – "Do more!
I have more capacity for you to train me.
You just have to figure out the ways to do that."
Here are four ways.
If you haven't tried them, I want you to start trying them, and incorporate them with the
things you're doing in your arm training.
In the meantime, if you're looking for a step by step plan where we lay it all out, step
by step, putting the science back in strength to make sure you're getting the most out of
everything you do; head to ATHLEANX.com and get our ATHLEANX training program.
In the meantime, if you've found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what I can cover for you on this channel, and I'll do my best to do that for
you in the days, and weeks ahead.
All right, guys.
See you soon.