What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere. Athleanx.com. And Jesse.
Thank you, I'm so glad you're in this video, because we're talking about I can't get my
arms to grow, what do I do? So this is Mr. I Can't Get My Arms to Grow. I don't know about that. All
right. Enough. You see, this is just showing off that tattoo again. He's trying to get his money's
worth after that bad Disney tattoo on the other shoulder. All right, so today, let's say you're in
the same position though. Jesse certainly did have a hard time building his arms, right? But we've
been working on that by having him focus on the same things I'm going to have you focus on today,
and that is getting stronger in your arm exercises. And you may not even be doing
arm exercises, right? You were doing what? I was really focusing on my leg exercises, actually.
Trying to build my quads. And obviously, as you can see here, it's been working. Your legs have
been getting a lot bigger. But, I will say one of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking that
just doing the heavier compound lifts is enough to maximize your arm size. While it will help,
heavy Roman will build your build your biceps, right? Heavy pull-ups will build your biceps.
Heavy benching will build your triceps. It's not enough to get your arms as big as they can be.
And that's what I want you guys to focus on today. So what we're going to do is break down these
areas here, five of them, that I promise you if you follow what I'm saying here are going to add
size to your arms regardless of how hard you might think it is right now. And so if you
want to get bigger arms, the best place to start is by simply making sure you're performing both
ends of every single repetition you're going on every exercise. We're talking about not skipping
the eccentric because that is where a lot of the gains can be had. If you look at the basic curl,
we know that we're lifting the weight up, but it's also just as important to focus on slowing
it down on the way down. Because eccentrically, there's a lot of opportunity here for growth.
The beauty about focusing on the eccentric during a curl or any pulling exercise is that you have a
built-in safety factor. If I get too tired to be able to control the weight on the way down,
it's simply just going to be dropped down to the floor. It's not going to come crashing
down on top of me like it would, let's say, in a bench press. So I could allow for a little bit of
extra momentum concentrically when I'm getting fatigued and still have the ability to control
eccentrically a few more repetitions to push it just where we need to, to create that overloading
growth. Or I could do this, and this is something I included in my Sore in Six Workout for biceps.
It's just an adaptive curl. I perform the initial concentric from a seated position.
And then to take advantage of the fact that I have more in me at a higher capacity eccentrically then
I just go back into this inclined position where I can have a longer excursion, a greater stretch,
more eccentric overload, and I continue to push myself even further for more gains.
Now we don't have to leave the triceps out either. We have a great opportunity to do
this with a lying tricep extension. Because we have a couple things happening here. Number one:
we have a greater effect on the long head of the triceps because we're putting our arms in a
greater position for a stretch. So that gives us that better opportunity for eccentric overload.
But if we get too tired here, and we can't do this anymore, we also have an adaptation here,
and that's simply to sort of cheat yourself back to an easier version of the exercises,
which would be a close group bench press. And then once we get to the top concentrically,
then we lower back down again as we traditionally would on the lying tricep extension. So there's
some obvious places here, guys, to eccentrically overload. You just have to make sure that you're
not forgetting to do it. Remember, half the repetition, guys, is still half the repetition.
So now while eccentric focused training allows us to use those heavier weights, and at the same time
create that additional overload to create new size, that doesn't mean that if we want to go more
strict in our repetition in our form that we have to sacrifice the ability to use relatively heavy
weights. Take a look here at the strict curl. See, this requires that you put your back and your butt
up against the wall, and you do not allow them to leave at any point during your curl.
This is a great opportunity here to force the work to be performed strictly by the biceps,
right? We're not allowing any momentum, but it doesn't mean that we can't still have a relatively
heavy load. Yes, it's less than what you can curl, but it still is a great load on the biceps,
particularly here, because the biceps are handling all of that load. And we can take the same
principles and apply that to the triceps with this incline overhead double extension. You simply lay
back against an inclined bench and anchor your back to that bench throughout the entire rep.
The same as a strict curl, you're not going to allow yourselves to lean forward and gain momentum
to try to get that dumbbell up. You have to rely on the strength purely of the triceps to do that.
So with that back firmly planted up against the bench, you want to get those elbows slightly out
in front of your body to protect your shoulders, and then simply extend your elbows as far out as
they can. The goal is to once again use as heavy a dumbbell as you can to perform this exercise
to cause that growth and force the new growth that's not occurring right now,
but not to divert from the form restrictions that we put in place by making this more strict version
of the overhead dumbbell tricep extension. And we could do one more thing as well. I like this,
it's just an overhead push away modified. You see, I've shown this before. A lot of people
perform this exercise and then use a lot of body sway in order to get that rope out away form the
body. But again, if we want to make sure that the triceps are doing the work and still be able to
handle a relatively heavy load, we would want to get our arms up as high as we possibly can.
Because what's going to happen here is if you try to utilize any type of cheat,
and you allow yourself to bend backwards in preparation of leaning forward, you're going to
lose the stability through your core and probably wind up falling backwards. So you keep your arms
up high and simply look to extend the elbows with just the brute force and strength of your triceps.
All right, so the next thing you want to do when you want to build bigger arms is you
want to make sure you're training your brachialis. And you've probably said,
I've heard that before. It's that muscle that lies underneath the biceps, got to push it up.
Yes, but you got to make sure you're training your brachialis heavy. Because perhaps here
more than any other muscle of your arm you have the opportunity to train with heavier
exercises because it's not just the brachialis that works. It is a primary elbow flexer,
but we also get help from the biceps, and we also get help from the brachialis. So you want to
take advantage of the fact that those muscles are working synergistically to give you the chance to
lift more. So don't just relegate these exercises to the end of your workouts. Like a hammer curl,
a lot of people will say, I'm just going to do a few sets after I've done all of my primary bicep
work. But if arm size is your problem right now, you better start from the inside and work out,
and that's where the brachialis becomes your main focus. So instead of just grabbing those light
weights, try to lift heavier and heavier weights, form repetitions in the five to eight rep range
on an exercise like that. And don't forget that it's not just relegated to the curling exercises.
One of the best ways to build the muscles of your upper arm is with an exercise like the pull-up.
Yes, you're going to hit the brachialis here, and yes, you're going to hit the brachioradialis,
which we're going to come back to in a second. But just doing so and utilizing your body weight,
which is a great form of overload. But the point is, brachialis, yes. But are you training
brachialis hard enough and heavy enough? Probably not. Which brings us to another important point,
and that is you don't want to use your body weight exercises as simply burnout exercises.
Because they're capable of so much more if you just realize that you can load that. So you can
take an exercise like the chin-up and simply throw a weighted vest on and now you've got an
opportunity for tension overload to force new muscle growth as opposed to simple just adding
repetitions to a weight you can already handle. Metabolic stress is a way to build muscle,
but if you're at a dead end right now, you're likely not creating enough tension,
and this gives us a chance. And you don't have to have a weighted vest. One of my favorite ways
is to simply utilize a dog leas for your dip belt, and you're off and running. Now we could take
this to another exercise entirely because maybe chin-ups just isn't your thing. And this is the
inverted chin curl. Essentially what we do is we take another body weight exercise, throw that vest
on, and overload it, and we've got a body weight version of a curl. You see, instead of curling
the bar up to your body, you're basically curling with your body to the bar with the elbows in that
same end position. Bent at around 90 degrees, and again, elevated slightly into shoulder flection
to insure that you're getting a good peak bicep contraction. But it's not limited just to biceps.
We have so many different things we could do for the triceps. Lots of different push-up variations.
One of my favorites is the tricep cobra push-up. And this here, again, can utilize that weighted
vest or someone can simply push down on your back if you're not training with any equipment at all,
but you have a partner around to create additional overloading force that you have to push through
that takes that ordinary burnout exercise that you were relegating it to and create something
that's capable of delivering new muscle growth. Which brings me to my next point,
and that is if you want to get bigger arms, you realize that arm size doesn't just stop here,
but it goes down here too. And we need to fill in the gap with this muscle right here that
I mentioned called the brachioradialis. The good news is we have a lot of ways that we can train it
effectively. In order to do this, we need to have that muscle get into a pronated position
to discourage a contribution of the biceps and the brachialis to the move. The more pronated,
the more this muscle will do the work. And we can also do this by getting our elbows
flexed as much as we possibly can. So the first place we could actually turn is an odd exercise,
but it works really, really well, and it utilizes a lap pull down machine. You can see that by
having my arms up in this position, I can get a fully pronated hands down grip on the bar, and
then when I bend my elbows, I don't get stopped by my chest like I would with a normal reverse curl.
I could take that elbow flection back even further behind my head so I get a bigger excursion,
more range of motion, more load, and more growth. But if we want to stick to the more traditional
options, we have a couple choices. The first is the offset dumbbell curl. And by offsetting
the hand here, we actually get an overload into pronation. Right, remember I said that pronation
is part of what this muscle does. So as we curl up and flex the elbow, we have to overload that
pronation and overcome the pronation to get there. So we give ourselves a chance to focus the load
a little bit more on that brachioradialis and away from the brachioradialis and biceps. If you want
to take this even a little bit more traditionally, then we can just simply use an easy curl bar.
But instead of going completely face down like this in a fully pronated position,
we now cheat it a little bit up, a little bit more to the supinated grip with the purpose being
that you want now the additional help from the biceps so that you can handle more load. Look,
being in this neutral to somewhat pronated position is always going to be more of a
brachioradialis exercise. But because we have a little bit more help, we can increase that load,
and if the tension overload is what you're looking for, that is the way you're going to want to get
it. And with those guys, you have a game plan now to start attacking the size of your arms. Get them
larger, guys, both the biceps and the triceps. If you follow what I'm saying here, just like Jesse,
I promise you results await. If you're looking for programs where we break everything down,
step-by-step. Because as you see, all the details matter in the long run. All of our
programs are available over at athleanx.com. And if you found the video helpful leave your
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so you never miss a new video when we put one out. So, what do you say? I'm learning from the
king of biceps and I'm definitely growing some size. Great. Now do you want to learn
from the king of beards how to grow some facial hair? At lease a little bit? I think I'll pass.
Is it because you don't want to or you don't have any? I think I'll pass. All right.