Tip: Ditch Your Arm Day

There's a smarter way to build bigger, stronger biceps. Check it out.

Tags ,

No More Arm Day, Bro

A lot of lifters dedicate one whole workout to arm training, pounding their biceps and triceps so hard that their arms are useless for two days afterwards. There's a better way.

Do This Instead

Ditch arm day and instead hit the biceps directly with one exercise for 2-4 sets three or four days a week. It doesn't matter how hard you train legs or how intense your back workout is, you can find 5 to 10 minutes to bang out a few sets of curls before heading out the door.

The High-Frequency Secret

The key to any kind of higher frequency work is managing the volume and intensity in any single workout session. There are two essential keys to getting the most from this approach:

  1. Rotate rep ranges. Do 3x12 one day, 4x6 on another day, and 2x20 later in the week.
  2. Be smart when it comes to hitting muscular failure: do it rarely. And very rarely, if at all, go beyond failure with techniques like drop sets or rest-pause. Just stop a rep short of failure.

Less Brutal, More Consistent

The biceps and wrists/elbows respond well to more consistent and less brutal stimuli. Hitting the biceps more regularly won't interfere with your other workouts if you do it right. You could do three sets of cable curls the day before back day because they're easy-ish sets and you're not annihilating the biceps, so they won't end up crazy-sore.

Find a handful of exercises you feel hit your bi's, add one to the end of a few different workouts each week without changing anything else (except that you'll now no longer have an "arm day"), and watch as your sleeves magically start tightening.