Strong-arm tactics: how to achieve complete arm development

Men's Fitness, April, 1999 by Jeff O'Connell

When it comes to arm training, some guys have less concern for balanced development than your average Third World dictator. In each instance, unfortunately, guns rule. In the gym, that amounts to an obsession with the biceps, the muscle that runs along the front of the upper portion of your arm. Maybe it's vanity - you see your biceps constantly in the mirror, particularly when you lift something - or perhaps genetic programming makes men more concerned with pulling things toward them than pushing them away.

Ironically, the average biceps is roughly half the size of the triceps, the muscle that runs along the back of your upper arm. This means that if your arm training emphasizes the former to the detriment of the latter, you're way past the borderline of constructive training and well into the land of diminishing returns. Since your triceps each comprise three heads and your biceps two, you can curl till kingdom come and your biceps still won't catch up with their anatomical counterparts. That's a good thing, too, unless you're angling to play Cornelius in the upcoming Planet of the Apes remake.

What you will end up with is arms that don't work as well as they should or lift as much as they could. "Most arm movements involve an antagonistic combination of the flexor (biceps) and extensor (triceps) muscles, and for those movements to be stable, it's critical for the two muscles to be balanced," says David McWhorter, PhD, assistant professor of anatomy at the University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kansas City, Missouri. When you shoot a jump shot, throw a pass or pitch a baseball, you're flexing at the elbow joint and then extending as you release the ball. As the biceps contracts, the triceps lengthens, and vice versa.

Should you neglect one group of arm muscles in favor of the other, that smooth-running machinery eventually becomes strained. And when that happens, you'll likely have more to worry about than subpar play. "Imbalances between the flexor and extensor arm muscles may predispose you to musculoskeletal injuries, just as weak abs may make you more vulnerable to back injuries," says McWhorter. Again, balance doesn't mean building biceps to rival your triceps, but developing each in relative proportion to the other. To achieve such balance, you need to train your triceps as frequently as your biceps, and you should complete a comparable number of exercises, sets and reps for each muscle group.

What's more, the biceps and triceps each perform a series of different biomechanical functions, and your selection of exercises should take each muscle through those ranges of motion against resistance. McWhorter's approach to training arm muscles is based on a detailed understanding of where they originate, where they insert, and how they work. His balanced attack on biceps thus combines three exercises with different wrist orientations: palms up (standard barbell curl), palms down (reverse curl) and palms sideways with thumbs pointing up (hammer curl).

For triceps, McWhorter recommends combining exercises in which your arms are positioned overhead (seated French press), perpendicular to your body (lying French press) and alongside your body (dumbbell kickback). By changing the relative positions of your shoulders and elbows, you can hit all three triceps heads (lateral, medial and long) in one session.

The Workout

You can train your biceps and triceps together or separately.
Beginners should train them three times a week as part of
a full-body workout. Intermediate lifters should train them
twice a week; advanced lifters, once or twice a week.

Exercise                     Sets         Reps

Biceps

Standing barbell curl          3          8-10
Hammer curl                    3          8-10
Reverse EZ-bar curl            3          8-10

Triceps

Seated French press            3          8-10
Lying French press             3          8-10
Dumbbell kickback              3          8-10

There's more than one good way to arrange your arm workouts. One option is to train biceps and triceps in the same workout; another is to separate them as part of a "push-pull" system that pairs biceps with back one day and triceps with chest and shoulders another day. If you separate biceps and triceps from their larger counterparts on different days, make sure they're separated by several days' rest to ensure that the muscles have enough time to recuperate.

As for frequency, McWhorter recommends hitting arms twice a week, and never more than three times. "Frequency is highly dependent on how hard you train, as well as your recuperation," he notes. "Overtraining is a risk for anyone who trains with weights." Symptoms can include plateauing, lingering aches and pains, decreased appetite and sleep disruption. If any of those crop up, increase your rest interval between arm workouts, and pay closer attention to recuperation and nutrition.

Hammer curl

Emphasis: brachioradialis (small muscle on the front of the forearm)