Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2435: The 8 Best Exercises to Get Strong, Toned Arms

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

The Eight Best Exercises to Get Strong, Toned Arms ‘Toned’ is a made-up word. (1:32) The importance of feeding your body correctly to repair, build, strengthen, and adapt. (4:05) Explaining the categories of exercises picked. (5:34) Compound  #1 - Reverse grip chin up. (13:03) #2 - Parallel bar dips. (15:58) Elbows to side #3 - Barbell curls. (19:43) #4 - Tricep pressdown. (23:46) Elbows in front  #5 - Preacher curls. (26:34) #6 - Skull crushers. (29:18) Extras #7 - Hammer curl (neutral grip). (30:55) #8 - Overhead tricep extension (elbows above). (33:25) How many sets per week should I do for arms? (34:25) Is it necessary to do isolation exercises? (37:43) What do you think about BFR? (39:00) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Plunge for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump Listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP at checkout for $150 off your order ** September Promotion: MAPS Starter | Starter Bundle 50% off! ** Code SEPTEMBER50 at checkout ** Mind Pump # 2100: Big Arms Masterclass Mind Pump # 1362: What You Can Learn About Building Muscle from Inmates, Gymnasts and Sprinters Mind Pump # 1932: Lifting Heavy Vs. Lifting Light Building Muscle with Adam Schafer – Mind Pump TV How Do I Choose The Right Weight? (LIFT RESPONSIBLY) – Mind Pump TV Occlusion Training Tutorial- How to Increase Muscle Size Using Blood Flow Restriction – Mind Pump TV How To Use BFR Training To GROW Your Arms (CRAZY PUMP!) Occlusion Training Guide | MAPS Fitness Products Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Brandon Carter (@kingketo) Instagram  

With hundreds of doors across Houston, you can get expert care everywhere. That's the difference between practicing medicine and leading it. Houston Methodist, leading medicine. to go. Mind Pump with your hosts Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode the eight best exercises for your arms to get them strong and toned and sculpted. We know you'll love this episode. Now it's brought to you by a sponsor, Plunge. If you've heard of the benefits of cold water therapy, immersion therapy, this is where you dump yourself

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they look nice. Go check them out and get yourself a discount. Go to plunge.com use the code MINDPUMP get $150 off. Also, this is the final day for our sale this month. MAPS Starter, this is a beginner strength training program, is half off, and then we have a starter bundle. This includes MAPS Antibolic, MAPS Prime, and our intuitive nutrition guide. That entire bundle is 50% off. Again, this is the final day, so if you're interested,

go to MAPSFitnessProducts.com, and then use the code September50 for the discount. All right, here comes the show. All right, in today's episode, we're gonna talk about the eight best exercises for strong and yes, toned arms. Let's get to it. Let's first address what I just said.

Yes, let's address toned arms. Justin has toned arms. A-toned, yeah, it's just one singular tone. No, toned, so that we have somebody that gives us ideas for titles that'll get more engagement. And this was one of the titles they suggested. And we like the episode of eight best exercises, but toned is a made-up word.

Yeah, but I wanna make something clear about that too. In Jeremy's defense, who's responsible for sending titles and episode ideas over to us now. I use that in my even as a trainer who understood that like because I understand because common vernacular yes because my clients understood that and so there was a there was a period of time respond better to that well there was a pair there was a period of time as a trainer where I wanted to show you how smart I was that there's no such thing as tone it's a made-up word and all we're

really doing is building muscle or losing body fat. That's what equals that so it's That needed to be that guy. Yeah, and then there was a part of me He realized like man This is how everybody communicates or defines what they what they think is toned and so instead of me being that guy Sure I just I would use that and so when I would be communicating to my my especially my female clients That's typically who asked for toned arms, I'd explain them, listen what we're gonna do. We're gonna first we're gonna build muscle, we're

gonna focus on speeding your metabolism up and then we're going to lean out, lose body fat and you're gonna see that tone look you're looking for in your arms. Yeah. So I would communicate that way even though I knew that it's a made-up word. Yeah what I mean what's happening with your your arms when they feel harder, that's what tone means, right? People, oh, it feels harder. Sculpted would be kind of lean, toned is the feeling. They're just building.

They're just building to a smaller degree. So toning is the same as building. And so the exercises that we're gonna talk about today are the ones that, in our experience, training people for over two decades, not just training people, but training trainers running gyms, these are the best exercise. These are the ones that give you the most bang

for your buck and that's what you want, right? When you go to the gym and you work out, even if you love spending time at the gym, most people would pick a more effective routine over another and part of what makes a routine effective, besides sets and reps and programming, which is all very important, are the exercises, right? Those are the actual ingredients.

And some exercises are just really, really good at building muscle or sculpting or toning, and other exercises not as much. So we pick the eight best ones. I also want to, even though this is about the exercises, right, which we'll get to, and listen, I want to make it very clear too though that when we do these incredible exercises for building and toning your arms, it's also very important that you feed your body correctly in order to repair, build, strengthen, adapt, and get that muscle. Good luck building if you don't have what it takes. Materials. And so why this is so important to communicate is because so many of my clients that wanted

toned arms were also the clients that also wanted to lose 30 pounds of body fat or lean out. And so they felt like they had flabby arms, they had a little bit of a belly, and it's like, hey, I want to lose this body fat and I want to have toned arms. And the actual definition of toning is building muscle in that area, losing body fat and I want to have toned arms and the actual definition of toning is building muscle in that area, losing body fat and it's always more advantageous for us to build muscle first, to build the metabolism up and then lean out to lose the body fat so much easier. So, if you are somebody who feels like you have flabby arms and you want toned arms, the first

thing we need to do is to build muscle, okay, build our arms, which may result in you staying the same weight, maybe even going up a tiny few pounds on the scale, which is really scary for some people to hear, but ultimately we are going to be building muscle and building your metabolism and then we're gonna lean out and that's gonna give you what that that tone look that you're trying to desire. 100%. Yeah, great point. Alright, so before we get into the exercises, let's talk about the the categories of exercise or why we pick the ones that we picked. Now the first thing is to talk about compound lifts. So

for people who aren't familiar, a compound lift is a lift that utilizes more than one joint during the lift. So you're using two joints. For example, a push-up would be a compound exercise because it's my shoulder and my elbow joint. A single joint exercise or isolation exercise would be the other category of exercises. And these are ones that essentially just move one joint

So a compound lift for my shoulders, for example would be an overhead press Elbows and shoulders in isolation exercise or single joint exercise for my shoulders would be like a lateral raise Now the reason why I'm bringing this up is because when we talk about the big Especially that the the the muscles of the trunk but also even the legs the big, especially the muscles of the trunk, but also even the legs. When we talk about the best exercises, everybody knows generally speaking that compound lifts are just better, right? A barbell squat, for example, is going to build your quads better than a leg extension. Why? Because a barbell squat, among other things, is a compound lift. If I talk about the chest, for example, a bench press is going to develop your chest more than a cable fly.

Why? Because among other things the bench press is a compound lift. So this is true for all the muscles until we get to the arms and for some reason people don't realize or consider compound lifts for the arms, especially the biceps. And this just isn't true. There are phenomenal compound lifts for the arms and it's really in how you perform them and We're going to talk about some of those exercises We also talk about elbow position. This is also very important How do I know which exercises to pick from? Well, it's not just which exercises It's also which exercises you combine in a workout and really the most important thing to consider when you're working your arms out

When you're looking at different exercises, is your elbow position. And I don't mean in it inside, you know, close to your body and you know, coming out, but rather next to your body in front of you or overhead. And there's exercises that work all those different elbow positions. Then we have tension points, which we'll get to, and then ham position, which really matters for biceps, not so much. I feel like the compound lifts is the biggest point of contention. Yeah with the bros especially In which I don't really understand but I I understand to the point of you know isolation exercises and their worth and This is sort of the realm of like I'm trying to build and sculpt, you know, very specific

And develop very specific muscle groups. However, there's a lot you can gain in terms of muscle when you work just exclusively on compound lifts. And to deny that fact is pretty hilarious. There's a couple reasons why by the way. One is people say with the overall tension on the muscle. So if I did a bench press versus a cable fly, there's just, I'm pushing more weight than I'm going to fly, right? But the other one is this, really, I think it has more to do with the central nervous system. If you tense a muscle as hard as you can, it will contract harder when other muscles contract at the same time. So, I've used this example in old episodes, but if you were to squeeze your hand as hard as you could, but have to keep everything else relaxed, including your face, so everything has to remain relaxed,

and all you do is squeeze your hand as hard as you could, and then repeated it, but allowed yourself to squeeze your body and tense your face, you would squeeze stronger the second time around. So I think compound lifts just turn the CNS on more. So you're gonna activate more muscle fibers. It maximizes your force output, which is a tangible number that shows your capacity. So your body is going to respond to that higher number of force output versus a smaller number.

So that's in turn going to communicate that fact that you need to build more muscle. I've always tried to come up with a great, and I still have never come up with anything better than I think would sell speaker Yep said years and years ago on this podcast about using the analogy of Speakers and the amplifier and speakers being your muscles your ample the amplifier being at CNS anybody that understands What makes a speaker or you know or a stereo system work? It's the you know the amplifier the and the speakers are the two main components of what makes loud music come out of there.

And you have big, huge subwoofers, and you have a weak amp, you only get so much. That's right. There's no potential, nothing comes out. You only crank so much out. That's right, and same thing goes the other way, this crazy amp, but then you have these tiny little speakers, you get the most out of those little speakers,

but there's so much more potential, right? So they both kind of work synergistically with each other and they both add value to each other. And so if you think of every exercise has an attribute to making the speakers better, an attribute that makes the amplifier better. When you think about compound lifts, it gives so much to both.

Where an isolation exercise, it's really good with focusing on the speaker and the muscle side, but not the greatest on the CNS side. So you just don't, if I had to like, an exercise had a value to it and I had to have to say,

oh, this gets four points and this gets four points, or there's total eight points to give up. This one gets four, this one gets four, and a good compound lift. This one might get only three or two and then this one only gets one in these isolation exercises. I just think that that's what is missing when trying to communicate to people why you still want to do compound lifts even for the arms.

Yeah, however many muscle fibers you can activate in your biceps, more will activate because you're also activating other muscles in the body and it's just the way the central nervous system works. It fires more powerfully when it's firing to more places than when it's firing to just one isolated place. Now unless you're super advanced because very advanced bodybuilders probably can do this, 99% of people can't do this. It's like I'm not gonna be able to activate my chest as much with the fly as I can with the bench press.

And so compound lifts just deliver incredible results. And this is true for the biceps and the triceps as well. Then we talked about elbow position, changing the elbow position of exercise makes a muscle more or less stretched out and the way that muscle fiber slide along each other, it means the tension is gonna connect differently at different points. So a preacher curl versus a barbell curl versus a concentration curl,

they're gonna work the bicep a little bit differently. And then tension points, right? Is the weight heaviest at the top of the movement or at the bottom of the movement or in the middle of the movement, depending on where, you know, if I'm using a machine or free weights or my elbow position. And then lastly hand position this one I wanted to cover because a lot of people understand hand like how you rotate your

hand affects how you work your biceps so you could if your hands are neutral or facing down or facing up right supinated pronated or neutral works the bicep different fact if you look at your arm while you rotate your hand you'll see your bicep different. In fact, if you look at your arm while you rotate your hand, you'll see your bicep moving around because part of what your biceps job is to do is to rotate the hand. Triceps, no effect whatsoever. You could do all the rotating your hand and grips,

whatever, all you want, but if your elbow position is the same place, it doesn't matter. So I've seen people do like tricep press down, 50 different handles, it's all tricep press down. And I think one of the most important things to note on that is the novelty of manipulating the strength curve.

Yes. So if you always trained your biceps with your elbows positioned in the same place all the time, well then the body gets adapted to that. And then, which is also by the way, why, and we haven't even listed off what the first exercise is for the bicep, which is a chin up, right? It's a great compound lift for the bicep.

A nice supinated grip or reverse grip chin up. And part of why I think it's so awesome, it's one of the things. Obviously, to the point how we've been making this whole time is it's a compound lift and so you're getting this big central nervous system thing. I also think it's because it's a very novel place to do a bicep curl from.

So very few machines or very few people do bicep curls like this, you know, pulling down in this position. Fully stretched out position. Just not a lot of, there's just not a lot of position and it's not traditional. Traditional is you grab dumbbells or a barbell and you stand up or you sit down and you curl by your side or maybe you're on a preacher bench in front of you, rarely ever do you curl that position. So not only are you curling that position, but you're also doing a compound. That's why I think it's a banger.

Yeah, supinated grip chin ups, if done properly, which I'll get to in just a second, is one of the hardest, heaviest, most incredible bicep exercises you'll ever do. It is the mass builder of bicep exercises, and nobody does them for biceps, except for, very rarely do I see this. And I remember seeing this for the first time I saw somebody with phenomenal incredible arms years ago

doing these and I saw the way he was doing them I thought he had bad form on his pull-ups or his chin-ups but he told me no this is for my biceps then it made all sense so when you do your chin-ups or your supinated grip for your back you want to lead with your chest stick your chest out and really pull with the lats when you're doing this for your biceps you roll your shoulders forward and you're curling yourself up. You're squeezing the biceps close to your body and it will destroy your biceps. In fact, you know, 80% of people listening to this won't be able to do more than three or four

reps in that way, which makes it a heavy bicep exercise. You could use an assisted weight machine like a Gravitron or whatever, assist the pull-up machine to do this, but give this a try, that supinated grip at the top where you're curling on the way up and you're not leading with your chest but kind of bringing your chest down so you're getting full bicep squeeze. This is gnarly and will take the place of like five other bicep exercises. It's also a really, okay, so isolation curls, machine curls, breacher curls, I just don't ever see myself getting a lot of value out of doing singles, doubles or triples. But this is actually

an exercise for your biceps that I could go in and do two or three, two, three reps and it's okay. Like it's going to stimulate the bicep like a whole, like it's a whole different- Oh yeah, weighted. It's- Yes. It's gonna be gnarly. going to stimulate the bicep like a whole like it's a whole new way to do it yes so there's not a lot of things that I will do in the single double triple range for the bicep or the tricep this is and then the tricep example you have coming next is what I would also would say this these are ones that I would even consider doing three reps for totally loaded like a strength exercise yes by the way arm wrestlers do

these all the time. Arm wrestlers, we do these two arms and one arm. And I mean, we don't have to argue how arm wrestlers have incredible biceps and forearms. All right, for the triceps for a compound lift, parallel bar dips is one of my favorites. It's a body weight exercise. You can add weight around your waist. It is responsible for some of the most amazing looking triceps you'll find anywhere. And I, you know, a close grip bench press would come close. But I think because of the position of the bench press and how people have to get in position with their wrists, and I think dips on a parallel bar are better. And your elbows need to be in your body and you need to sit somewhat upright as you go down.

The more you lean forward with your chest, the more your elbows flare out, the more it's a chest exercise. If you're somewhat upright, elbows in at your sides, now it's a tricep exercise. And this one, like you said, Adam, you can go heavy on this, you know, like three, four, five reps,

weight around your waist, and it just, it does an incredible job on the triceps. Yeah, you know I've always been a huge fan of the you know incline close grip bench press for my triceps it did wonders for my arms but I still would agree with you that this still takes the cake for it and I think that has to do with the ability for you to kind of contour to your body more it's because you're not you're not on this holding this fixed bar versus I can move, I can flare my elbows in or out, I can grab a wider or more narrow on like parallel bars. I also

can go really deep so for every bit you can go down with the bar, you can go even deeper. That's my favorite part of it. It's just the range of motion and potential. Incredible range of motion coming out of that. So it's probably why it wins just barely over the close grip bench press. I would do this and make sure you get a real hard full extension squeeze at the top. That's how you get those triceps to really get activated. Now those by the way those two exercises that just said literally if you just did those you would develop great ones. One of the most viral videos we ever did is an example of us discussing this and there

Was a in our editors back then attached the video to a gymnast you remember yes So there was a gymnast and that we were making the case for bicep curls for Pull-ups for biceps and they're a great example I mean you have gymnast and not to say that none of them ever do any bicep exercises But no, but the strength training exercise they do in relation to what we're talking about are pull-ups, chin-ups, pull-ups all the time. They do their iron cross, which is also incredible tension on the biceps.

But gymnasts have incredible biceps. They almost always have incredible biceps. Well, their muscle-up is basically both of those combined. Yes. You have the false grip and you're getting it really close here. That's right. And then you transition into a dip that's low.

There's very few sports or things that we talk about that you can point to a body part or a body on them and be like, oh, they'll, every one of them like this. I guess there are some, like sprinter, you'll never see a sprinter with skinny legs. Right, right, right, right. You'll never see, like, not at the elite level, right? You'll never see an elite level sprinter with small legs.

You'll never see a gymnast with small arms. Like, they'll always have muscular defined buff arms and you cannot not attribute that to the pull ups and the dips that they have to do in their routine. And you're totally right Justin. The way that they do their chin up is the way that I described earlier on their rings. It's very close because they have to come to the bar. It's a transitionary move. It's a transitionary move.

You gotta keep it in really tight. All biceps. I've worked on that for quite a bit. It's really difficult. Yeah, but dips, parallel bar dips for your triceps. It's great because you don't need a lot of equipment for something like this. And it's just one of the best,

there was a period of time where this is all I did for my triceps and I always got great results from this. Do you have any old beefy video of you doing that? I'd love to see a video of you. I remember when you were doing that stuff. Yeah I probably do. You had to dig in the archive and see if you got some really old. Yeah I remember when you were doing those. Young face. Bad teeth. Alright next up these are exercises where your elbow is by your side. So for biceps, now this exercise you're gonna recognize, everybody talks about barbell curls, they are a great basic muscle building exercise for the biceps. And the starting position and

even through the rep is elbows by your side. Now barbell curls, most the tension is at the middle of the rep. So when you're doing a curl, obviously at the bottom it's not very heavy because you're not going directly against gravity. But once you come halfway up, this is where the bar is about as heavy as it's going to get until you pass it and then it gets a little lighter. So the tension point is mid contraction and the elbows are at your side. So the biggest point that I have to make with this point or this exercise, and I'm doing this right now, talking about this on the docuseries right now, is quality

is so important. This is an exercise that is a staple exercise for biceps, but it's also one that is often cheated where people roll their shoulders or rock their elbows to get up. Because of the point Sal is making of like this, when you're right at the middle, it's like where you're at peak stress on the bicep, if you use momentum to get through that part, it turns into a shoulder exercise. Shoulder and forearms end up working as much or more

than the biceps do, and all in pursuit of saying, oh, I curled the 35s or the 45s now. It's like, man, this exercise, I used to do this really strict, pull my shoulders back. I used to love doing a split stance, and I would just take my time real slow with the tempo and keeping those elbows What a good point because when you have that you had the reverse grip chin-ups You have the parallel bar dips and so long as your form is good going heavy is really important with those With this this exercise barbell curls. You're better off making the exercise feel heavy. That's right

Yeah In fact somebody who can make making the exercise feel heavy. That's right. In fact, somebody who can make 40 pounds feel like 80 pounds will get better results than someone who takes 80 pounds and tries to make it feel like 40 pounds with bad technique and form. So whatever weight you can make feel heavy and stay within your desired rep range, which is probably going to be anywhere between 8 to 12 or 15, you want to go as light as you

can to make it feel as heavy as you can. That's the best results you're gonna get out of a barbell curl. I want you guys to explain that a little bit more for the functional people out there. Just mainly because like if you think of it there's a way to intentionally make something more challenging, more intense, and you can do that by adding a lot more tension within that rep but maintaining really good form and focus. So obviously no rocking of the body, standing very steady and straight, and then squeezing the hell out of the biceps all the way up, all the way down, never losing tension the

entire time. Even at the full extension, I'm not relaxing my arms, but I'm keeping tension in the bicep. And at the top, I'm squeezing my biceps at the top, and the tempo is nice and controlled, four seconds down, two seconds up. It's funny you brought that up. Did you see the comment that was on my bench press technique when I was teaching that on the docuseries? Oh no.

So a functional guy got on there, right? And you know that I'm explaining an incline press, how much I like it because it retracts and depresses the shoulders because of gravity and you want to be in that fixed position as you press. You don't want to roll the shoulders forward and engage the shoulders and the triceps in a movement like that.

Well, a functional guy gets on there and is just like, well, this is like old, this is old information or whatever. And made a comment about why would you limit the movement in the shoulders? Functional would mean you want to, and I'm like, well, no, I bench press to build muscle. I do things like Indian clubs and handcuff rotation. There's exercises I do for shoulder mobility and shoulder rotation. There's exercises I do for shoulder mobility and shoulder health. There's exercises I do to-

Better tools for that job. That's right, and then there's exercises that I do to build muscle. So here's an example of what I would say to a functional guy is like, we're doing barbell bicep curls, not for the functionality. No.

We're doing it to build your biceps. That's it. And if you wanna build your biceps, we wanna keep strict, tight form. Hold up, if you're a functional guy and you're talking trash about a bicep curl, you gotta like really dig deep. It's not in the list, it's not in the top you know 50 exercises of functional exercise. It is specifically a muscle growth hypertrophy exercise. That's right.

So do it like you're supposed to, not trying to make it feel light but rather trying to make it feel heavy. Right. Now for the triceps, elbows to the side, tricep press down. So this is a good classic, everybody's done this. You can use a bar, you can use a rope, whatever works better. I like a V-bar, I like a V-bar because it allows for the most weight that I could use on the bar,

it's a nice neutral position for my hands. Some people prefer a rope. It actually literally doesn't matter. I will say this, a reverse grip, probably the worst grip to do a press down because it's hard to hold on to. And by the way, if you feel it more in your triceps with the reverse grip, it's just

because you slowed the rep down because you couldn't hold on to anything that was heavier. But yeah, just a straight up press down, full extension. Now I see, the one mistake I see people with tricep press downs is A, doing kind of what I said with the barbell curls, they try to make the weight feel lighter By leaning forward and kind of turning it into a strange looking push-up or two

They don't come all the way up when you're doing a tricep press down. Don't stop. You know a parallel It's not from here down. It's all the way up all the way down You'll get so much more of the exercise if you do it that way. When we're doing these exercises that are isolation exercises, it is about feeling the muscle through the entire movement. When we're doing compound, we want to move weight. We want to move weight. We want to, and that's, so we get those, those great- Different intention. Yes. And so the, I think for sure what you're mentioning about tricep push downs, it is the number one thing. I just was in the gym. I was at fitness 19. I made the comment. I was in there. That's where all the high school kids work out. You know what I'm saying?

So, and there's a group of like high school kids like that use the tricep pushdown right before me. And I get over there and I come in behind them and they're probably like half my size, right? Half my age too. Broccoli cuts. Right. Yes. Yes. Actually, I made a point to Sal, do you know that the style is back what I used to wear when I was 20 lifting. So now the teenager's coming up, it's the big triple X shirts with the belt on and the baggies, like baggy pants, big old huge triple.

It's come around 5C. Yes, and that was like my favorite. So I can't wait to wear that, the feel and fashion. Anyways, you know these guys, young guys, right? And they were just doing it right before me and I come right behind them and then they moved over to the seat of row next to me. And I cut the weight like in half, you know, suck my elbows in, pull my shoulders back, resist the negative on the way up, pause, get that full good stretch all the way down

like and I could see him like eyeballing me why I'm sitting there doing it. It's like man that's when you're doing an exercise like that, stacking the weight to stack the weight so your delts and your chest gets involved defeats the purpose of why I'm doing that. If I want chest and delts, I'll go do incline bench press. If I'm over here trying to work my triceps, then I'm going to choose a weight that I can hold extremely

strict form, that I can keep tension in that muscle the entire full range of motion. That's right, full range of motion with both those exercises. So next we have the elbows in front. Now the best exercise for the biceps, for the elbows in front, are preacher curls. So preacher curls, you're on a preacher bench, your elbows are in front of you, the back of your arm is sitting on a bench, and what you need to do here, there's a couple important things to pay attention to with this exercise.

First off, most of the tension and the preacher curl's at the bottom. Because of the way a free weight is set up on a preacher bench, the bottom position is where it's heaviest. So don't avoid that part of the rep. Lots of people do a preacher curl and they avoid the hardest part.

They cut short because they know if they go down too far, they're not gonna be able to get the weight up. That means go lighter. Cause this is all the work down here. This exercise is amazing with lightweight. I love grabbing a 40 pound barbell. Okay, people see me in the gym. They expect me to grab a heavier one.

I love grabbing a 40 pound barbell and getting real full extension at the bottom. Even holding at the bottom with tension. By the way, some studies will show that a muscle under tension while stretched or lengthened causes more muscle growth. So you are missing out on the most growth potential of this exercise by far by not doing that full extension. The second mistake people make is they bring their shoulders up and back as they're doing the curl in order

to get the bar up. Keep everything in position, your entire back of your arm on the on the pad and then just move, your entire back of your arm on the pad, and then just move, just bend the elbow, but fully extend it. Both those mistakes caused by loading the bar with more than what you did. That's right. I mean, and you literally just described the first one,

right, with the stopping, what I did as a kid. 100%. Oh yeah. My buddy and I cared so much about getting from the 10s to the quarters to the 35s, you know, we cared about that more than anything else. And we were, you, we were shortening that range of motion up just so we could get the heavier weight up. And it's like, man, you were missing out on the greatest part of that exercise. And now same thing, you'll see me go in the gym and I'll put the little tens on there, you know what I'm saying? And go full range of motion, even pause in the stretch position.

You got a crazy pump. Yes, you're far better off doing that. You're gonna get so much more of that exercise and then it also keeps the shoulder out of it. If you find yourself rocking the shoulder, and you'll feel it a lot of times. You'll feel it in that front delt when you're curling with the shoulders.

And so again, we're in a fixed position, we're doing an isolation exercise. And just to help, just to help, 99.9% of people don't care how much weight you have on the bar. And the people that do care how much weight you have on the bar that matter, care when you do an exercise that matters. They don't care how much you curl. They want to see how much you can deadlift or squat.

That's when they'll pay attention. Deadlift or squat, yeah. But nobody cares for these other exercises. And also, last point, you shouldn't care. Who cares what they, you're there to develop incredible looking arms. Do it the right way, because you can always make it easier

by doing it the wrong way, so it doesn't even count, right? All right, for triceps, elbows in front of the body, skull crushers. I love skull crushers. Now, they're called skull crushers because traditionally the bar comes down to your forehead. Now, I prefer bringing the bar behind my head.

So I like to bring my elbows back a little further, coming back behind my head, more of a full range of motion. It also gives me a little bit more of a stretch in the tricep. I get a fuller range of motion by doing it that way. And that's just the way I've taught. I used to teach my clients. So I taught this also, this was on one of the first days.

I like doing the body weight version of that on a bar. On a bar, yeah, love that. I love that, for that exact reason, because it rolls the elbow, and you get that full entire stretch on that. Or I like doing the dumbbells. Dumbbells are great, because you can get a full range of motion,

because it goes next to your head. Yes, like that, I'm actually, as a kid, I always did the camber. I mean, but as I got older, I realized the benefits of the full range of motion like that, the getting the full stretch on the tricep, and then moved more to either body weight where I rock my body all the way through it or using dumbbells so I could come all the way by my side. Point being

though the same rule applies to this is that the last perfect form. Yeah, elbow strict by your by your side like that, come getting the full stretch, taking your time, getting, and again, this is another one where you see people shorten the reps up. You know, they just come down to 90 or less and then they go back up and extend versus letting it come all the way down

in that good deep stretch. So let me put it this way, if you went as heavy as you could with a half rep and then went as heavy as you could with a full rep, even though they both felt heavy, the full rep will build more muscle. Even though you're using, and you're using less weight. And you're safer, and you're using less weight as a result.

So skull crusher's definitely one of the best. All right, so then I threw in some extra exercises, because I gave you three exercises for your biceps and triceps, all awesome. Then I threw in some extras that I thought would give you something that the other ones didn't. So for the biceps, I wanted to include a curling exercise where the hands were not supinated. Supinated is when your palms are facing up. So most bicep exercises like this but like I

said in the earlier in the episode rotating your hands is also the job of the biceps and so curling a weight with your hands not in the same you know rotated position works the bicep differently. Hammer curls, I like hammer curls for two reasons. One, it trains the biceps in a neutral grip position. It also works this muscle called the the brachioradialis on the top of the forearm. Very important muscle for function. Also very aesthetic when people have well developed lower arms. Typically it's the brachioradialis that people notice. And lastly, this hammer curl position, it's very functional.

Typically, when you're grabbing things and picking things up, this is the position you need. Arguably, one of the most functional grips. Yes. You don't get a lot of opportunities to be in a neutral grip position in terms of being in the gym. There's some pull-up bars that they have handled grips for that. But to be able to curl with that position,

it definitely translates to so many things. Yes, yes, and again, this is a favorite with arm wrestlers. I have referenced them earlier, but when you look at the strength sports where you have athletes that are not bodybuilders, who has some of the best biceps, arm wrestlers are way up there, and they probably hammer curl more

than they do traditional curls. You guys typically intermittently replace this with another one of the bicep exercises. So let's say you're doing traditional dumbbell curls by your side. You've done that for the last few weeks and so on. That's like, you know what, I haven't interrupted. I tend to use hammer curls as an interrupter

to my traditional bicep curls or bicep exercise. You know I do hammer curls a little bit more often than that but that's mainly because when I did jiu-jitsu, judo, a lot of the gripping was in this position here and when I had to pull on someone's gi, my forearm was never supinated, it was like this so I needed a strong, I need to be strong in the neutral position. Yeah I just noticed anytime I was in the grip like intensive type of exercise if I hadn't been doing haven't been throwing those into the routine I would get like terrible cramping and like you know it would just like speak to me I get knots there so the more

consistent I was throwing hammer curls and it helped a lot. Now for triceps the extra exercise is an overhead tricep extension you can do this this with a dumbbell, you can do this with a barbell, you can do this with cables. Now the important thing with this exercise is the stretch. So this is one of the few exercises you'll ever get a tricep stretch, an actual stretch in, especially the long head of the tricep because of where it attaches. In fact if you were to stretch your tricep that's probably the stretch you would do with your elbow up next to your head. Now, muscles under tension in a stretch position really grow.

When they compare tension on a muscle that's not stretched versus stretch, the stretch position tends to produce more muscle growth. So what's my point with this? When you do these, don't cut your rep short. The big mistake I see people doing with this is like all the other other ones is they stop short It's like you're why do this exercise if you're not gonna get the stretch go down as far as you can

Get that stretch on the triceps then come all the way up That's the way to do the exercise take a weight that you can do that with or you're missing out on the best part of That exercise for sure hundred percent. All right. We've got some questions here. The first one is how many sets per week? Should I do for arms? That's a great question. So you'll see typically on studies total sets per body part per week. Did you, but sorry to interrupt you, but did you see the video I sent you that Brandon Carter did that also Dr. Mike Isretel actually went over some like new studies that actually,

yeah, they actually, it's a little bit higher volume, like for peak. I saw that study. Yeah, it's for peak. I didn't see that study. And I don't think it's the average person. No, and it was a short period of time. Yeah Yeah, so you can definitely ramp up volume a short period of time and see some gains Yeah, but generally speaking overall. This is also based off our experience guys Like how often did you train a client and do more than like nine twelve sets for arms even your especially advanced? No, I just wanted to make sure I made that point because I know that conversation is happening

in our space right now. They did one where it was like 40 sets or 50 sets. Yeah, and they showed that there's positive, and I think it's important to our listeners understand, like, there's no reason for somebody who is a, even moderately experienced lifter, to jump all the way to that much volume. And even if you did, so here's what's important

about what we're talking about here. So we're gonna talk about how many sets per week, we'll talk about the data and our experience, but also consider that you could go outside of this for short sprints. And that's where you'll see some of the value of these more extreme applications. It's not all the time. So there's a study that shows 40 sets for a body part is great, right? Let's do that for a full year and then see what happens. For most people that'll fall. Yeah, or let's do that for a full year and then see what happens. For most people that'll fall.

Or let's do that during a, in the context of a stressful week with your family and things like that. Like a normal week for most people, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So typically you're looking at nine sets per, you know, for biceps or triceps, up to maybe as high as let's say 15 or 18 sets. Now there's two ways to do this.

I know this wasn't part of the question, but I think it's far more effective to break those sets up into multiple workouts than to do them all in one workout. I think it's way better to do three sets for biceps three days a week than it is to do nine sets in one workout and just work on one day. The recovery, the performance of it, all those things.

The way I would look at this is you're saying a number nine to 18, I'm gonna start a client at 9 and it's going to be three times a week, so three. So three on Monday, so let's talk about arms. Three sets of arms for each muscle group, so three biceps, three triceps on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And we're going to run that for a while and they're going to see great gains just from that. And then maybe we'll inch up to 12. And then so basically adding a set to each of those days.

Then we're gonna evaluate how their body's responding. Maybe we ramp up to 15 another month or two later. And let me take it a step further. I wouldn't even go from nine to 12 because what we tend to do is think you have to do the same amount of sets per week. Sure, you just have one day. That's it, four sets on Monday now and three in three.

You know, type of deal. That's the best way to kind of scale this up and then back it back down as you start to feel like you're doing too much. But that's generally how many sets you want to do per week. Plus also consider biceps and triceps are getting worked when you work shoulders and back and chest. So they're getting lots of additional volume.

And even though this wasn't part of the question, I want to add this to this point since we did a good job of going through all the elbow positions. What a great way to do this is take those exercises. Monday you do one elbow position, Wednesday you do the elbow position, and then Friday you do the other elbow positions. What a great way to do this is take those exercises. Monday you do one elbow position, Wednesday you do the elbow position, and then Friday you do the other elbow position. So now you're maximizing the elbow positions

of the bicep and the tricep, and or a compound lift day, and then you're spreading out the sets over three days. Next question is, is it necessary to do isolation exercises? It is not necessary. Now, you'll probably. I'm losing proof of that. Yeah, it's true.

Look at this. So are CrossFit. CrossFit outfits. For sure. CrossFit, I mean, I think maybe some started to do bicep curls because all the tears that were happening and stuff. But I mean, they built some pretty killer physiques

just from dead lifting, pull ups, squatting, and stuff like that. It's probably a good idea. You know, in that regard too for performance performance and even like power lifters as well. It's just like they've noticed if there's a weakness there, it's a susceptible injury. Yeah, but you don't have to. You'll get 90% of the gains you're ever going to get by never doing isolation exercise. But adding another 10% with some isolation exercises is not nothing. So I think if you're a total beginner, I mean, when I would train beginners,

people who are working out in the first year, by the way, that's a beginner. Your first year of consistent strength training. So beginner isn't just, I just started today. It's literally, I've only been working out for three months or four months consistently. So yeah, you're strong. You feel good in the gym. You're still a beginner.

You're beginner for about a year, maybe even up to two or three years. I would consider someone a beginner in that period of time, I would have people never do an isolation exercise for a full year. It was like all compound lifts and everything developed phenomenally. It's after that when the isolation exercises probably start to get more important. The next question is, what do you think about BFR? Great tool. Blood flow restriction training or occlusion training. This is a- Great tool. restriction training or occlusion training. This is a great tool, a really weird novel way of

inducing muscle growth. And so for people aren't familiar, if I was to do this on my arms, I would take a knee wrap and I would wrap it around the top of my arm tight enough to where I could feel the blood being occluded. Not so tight where I go numb, but tight enough to where I feel like I'm occluding some blood and I'm getting like a little buildup there. And then you go and you do some sets of biceps and triceps and what you'll find is because the blood can't pump out, because you're occluding so the blood can't come out, all this waist buildup happens in the bicep and the tricep and the burn is for lack of a better term intense. It's actually way worse than intense, it's nasty.

And your strength goes down real fast. Like by set two and three, you're using weights that you could normally juggle. And the studies show that this induces muscle growth. Do I think this is in the same universe as traditional exercise? No. But as a tool to like-

As a novel tool, as a way to rehab, it's phenomenal in terms of like, if you're limited in range of motion, but you still want to be able to stimulate your muscles and build strength there, you know, this is a great option to have. Well, there's two main ways that hypertrophy happens, right? You have the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy,

which is the volumizing of the muscle bellies, right? Sitting fluid and everything, which this is maximizing. then there's the you the tearing the breaking down of Lift muscle fibers the muscle fibers what you get from heavy loading and lifting So I think why it doesn't compare to traditional strength training is you get with traditional strength training you can get the best of both Worlds I can get a sarcoplasmic pump and I can break down I've experimented with it and it doesn't it's not the same. I've tried replacing you know traditional but it's a great way to complement. Yeah I'm a big you throw in a little bit of it you'll see. And we wrote a guide on this a long time ago so if you look up mind pump guide BFR is it BFR guide or occlusion guide?

occlusion. Yeah we have we have a guide for this we also have a free video on our YouTube channel that Sal you might find old Sal and Adam on there. We did that. That was one of our free. Young, out, Sal, how do you mean? Yeah, yeah, look at our kids. It's like my son is doing this. Yeah, BFR, very interesting. I think as you become more advanced, it can become more valuable, and for rehab purposes, it's actually pretty good. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram.

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