 Alright, let's talk about arms. This is probably one of the most prized body parts, biceps, triceps, forearms. They're often exposed, and this is why people like to develop them, men and women. So in today's episode, we're going to talk all about the muscles of the arms and the best exercises you can do to sculpt and shape amazing arms. This is my favorite subject. This is my favorite too. This is killing it. The first body part I ever trained, I think. When you guys were younger, was this the main one? I mean, you were big into bench pressing. I knew everything. I think arms, yeah. That was probably my first. I really liked training arms. It was just like it gravitated to me. Then chest, of course. I'm guilty of like only arms for like two or three years. That long? Yeah, because I was terrible at bench. I was a kid. I mean, that was like crazy. I almost screwed my basketball skills. Whatever the excuse was, I used back then as a kid. Didn't want to do legs for sure. And so it was arms. Arms was all I trained. When they tried to get me to bench press, my form was so terrible. I've told you guys before, like three guys. One guy would pin my shoulders down. The other two guys would spot the bar. And then I was like 135 pounds. It was just terrible. So yeah, all arms. All the time. And when I got into being a personal trainer, I had trained them so frequently, so often for all my early years, teenage years, that they became really stubborn. Like I could just, you couldn't hammer my arms and I wouldn't get sore. I mean, I had thrown something. Throwing something at them. I mean, I always train kind of everything around the gates, because I ran out the gates. I bought books and followed routines. And there's that story when I met the power workers. Just curling books. There's a reason why arms are so popular. It's because it's a proxy for a strong physique. Meaning, for the most part, if anything's exposed, unless you're at the beach or something like that, if anything's exposed, it's usually your arms. And if you have muscular, fit-looking arms, it typically tells the person that the rest of you is fit. That's what it means by proxy. There's no wonder why it's such a popular body part to train. There was a time when women didn't want to train arms, but then they became popular for women as well, because they realized, I'm not going to get big arms, I'm going to get nice sculpted looking arms. And women's arms are shown as often, if not more often, than men's. Now, what's funny is there's so many myths that surround arm training that this will be a fun thing to talk about in terms of what are the best exercises or the best, even more importantly, of exercise to develop, to get well-developed arms. So this will be a good one. But we're going to talk about the basic, because there's more muscles than the ones we're going to highlight today. There's lots of small muscles that are in there and stuff like that. We're not going to cover the shoulders, we're just sticking with them. We did a whole shoulder master class already, didn't we? Yes. And I definitely think that, you know, refer to that episode, because I do think that it's a suit of like aesthetic looking arms. You want my shoulders. Yeah, that makes as much of a difference, if not more. In fact, I think I have smaller arms today than I did in my early 20s. But I have better looking arms because they're more proportionate to my shoulders. So that makes a big difference. Now, arms feel awesome to train. That's true, that's for sure. It's a really nice feeling. It typically not hard to connect to the muscles of the arms, yet we're completely machining or whatever, a computer. So I can almost always get someone to feel their biceps, feel their triceps, and feel their forearms if I want them to. So this isn't really an area where typically it's like, ooh, we got to figure out a way to get you to do it. There's not really a loss of connection. So there is sometimes with tricep though. Tricep sometimes can be more difficult for some clients to feel. And I don't want to mess up the flow like, do you guys remember of all the things that we learned and what we're probably going to talk about in this episode as far as exercise selection and lifts and sets and reps and all these different things, do you remember what were some of the most pivotal moments when training arms were? I know there was a big one for me that made a huge difference. I think it was probably the same thing for me. It was the elbow position. That was a big one. I didn't understand that. With the stretch position versus I didn't learn that until I learned biomechanics later on. Let's talk about that first. Let's talk about the biceps. They attach here underneath the elbow and then right at the shoulder or a bit higher. There's two heads of the bicep. So because the attachments weigh up here near the shoulder I can make my bicep shorter simply by lifting my elbow and I can make the bicep longer by putting my elbow behind my body and lengthen or shorten by the position of my elbow. That's what we make by elbow position. I can do exercises where my bicep is shortened I can do exercises where my bicep is lengthened and then I can change the resistance so that it's hardest when I'm squeezing or it's hardest when it's stretched or extended. Those are the factors to consider when you're training biceps along with this is different for biceps where for biceps hand position also matters. For bicep right now if you're partially flexed your arm take your palm facing up and then have your palm facing down and then facing up. You'll notice your bicep shortens and lengthens. One of the actions of the bicep is also to rotate the hand. So that also is something you want to consider when you do bicep exercises. Yeah one of the things I was thinking of when I was just young and just starting out and especially doing curls I was doing a preacher curl and my range of motion was tiny. I would just come down and then bring it back up and get a squeeze and I thought I was doing something and then I remember a bodybuilder someone came over and was like yeah you want to go all the way and I had to drop a ton of weight and it was very humbling but then I was like oh wow okay I have to go all the way down so I applied that again to the elbow position on all the other exercises but that was like a huge thing if I was just doing short reps all the time. Three things that were very huge moments in my arm training for that. Range of motion, elbow positioning and compound lifts for that. Because it was popular when I first started learning a curl to do all these isolation exercises. Well almost every bicep exercise is isolation. And the ones that are compound are not called bicep exercises. So it's like a sneaky way for your biceps to build and nobody would label it as that and so I totally ignored that in my bicep and tricep training. I ignored the compound lifts that didn't fall under that category because they were either a bench press or a pull up or these movements that were for your back or your chest and so you're like oh this isn't for my triceps and also I was still in that trap when I was a kid of thinking that just because I felt it the most in an exercise that it must be building that muscle and that's a fallacy. Like there's exercises sometimes and we know this when we talk about things like legs. Like a leg extension you're going to feel your quads more than you will. They're going to be on fire. Yeah, they're going to be on fire compared to a squat. But they ain't going to come close to building your legs like a squat will. And it's like we knew that, that's obvious, but for some reason that same principle people it's not obvious to them when it comes to their biceps and triceps. But it's still true. The craziest mass builder you'll ever do just overall development of your bicep is going to be a supinated grip chin up or pull down. This is a compound lift for the bicep. Just like we do compound lifts for the chest, the back, the legs, and we know that those are the best for the bicep suit. Now I do want to say this. The technique's a little different. If I do a supinated grip pull up, I'm leading with my chest and I'm squeezing back. I'm trying to get my back activated. If I'm doing it for my biceps, I'm rolling forward and I'm pulling with my arms. Same thing with a pull down. I'm doing what would look like your knuckles towards you. Yes, I would look like what I'm doing is bad form. So if someone saw me do a bicep pull down like this, you might be like, oh, he does it. That's a crappy looking pull down. No, I am emphasizing the bicep on the way down versus the back with my chest out. But try those. First off, a chin up this way. Most people aren't strong enough to do it this way. So you'd have to do a pull down but grab the bar and curl it down with this kind of roll forward position and squeeze the biceps to the bottom. You have now done a compound lift for your biceps and they you'll feel the difference when you do they build doing this. And I've done chin ups like this where I'm only doing three or four reps and the biceps just I did that with a super set with oh man, that destroyed my so you've talked before about how like certain muscle or how low reps only lend themselves to certain muscle groups. This is the exception for like any we've talked about like, you know three rep range doesn't do much isn't a typical way you would lift biceps. The only way I would is if I was doing this a pull up. I wouldn't do three reps for curls. Yeah, no, it's just an isolation exercise three times. And your form is going to be off. Yeah, 100%. Kick in the shoulders and everything else to get it up. All right, today's episode is all about training and developing the muscles of the arms, biceps, triceps and forearms. Anyway, got to give away for you. Maps anabolic advanced. That's today's giveaway. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Hey, we are also running a sale on some workout programs. Check this out. Maps cardio is 50% off. The shredded summer bundle is 50% off. And the bikini bundle is 50% off. If you're interested in any of that, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. So we talked about elbow position. So the three basic elbow positions you want your bicep exercises to fall under would be elbows in front of your body, elbows next to your body, and then elbows behind your body. So here's three exercises that fit that category, which is great. Now, why all those? Because elbows in front shortens the biceps to the sides. It's kind of, you know, kind of in the middle behind the body. There's a stretch when you do a full extension. So the best exercises or some of the best exercises like this are preacher curls, elbows in front of my body, standing curls barbell or dumbbell by my body, and then incline curls where I'm sitting back on an incline my elbows behind my body. Those three exercises right there hits all three elbow positions. And then there's a muscle that we should probably talk about that you if you want well developed biceps you also need to work on, which is the brachialis or hammers. Yeah. And this is a flat muscle underneath the bicep. And when it develops, it really gives you this nice full look to your arm. This muscle flexes the elbow and it's most activated with a what's called a neutral grip. A hammer curl. A hammer curl will develop the brachialis pretty damn well. I mean, that kind of covers it. Well, so, okay, now talk about programming that and how I do this. So if I back when I was doing like body part splits and arms would be like an arm day, I'm actually going to do an exercise that hits each one of those in the workout. Correct. If I'm falling more of an MAPS anabolic routine. We're doing one. Where I'm doing one exercise, I do one on Monday, a different one on Wednesday, a different one on Friday for the week. So that in the week, I get all three elbow positions. So that's how I would program that is I want to in a week's time, I want to make sure I hit all three elbow positions, whether I'm doing all that arm workout and one or two workouts, or I'm spreading it over three or four workouts. I want to make sure within the week, I'm hitting all three major elbow positions. And then I'm going to stay with those exercises for an extended period of time in order to get good at them. Right. So I want to stick with those three movements that you're saying for at least four, six, eight weeks. And then I'm going to change the exercises up too. So then I'm going to switch up. Right. But still follow the elbow position. Now I'm going to, people are going to be like, well, what's the difference, elbows in front of you, preacher curl versus another elbows in front of you exercise? Well, here's now where it gets interesting. A preacher curl, especially a free weight preacher curl, most of the resistance is at the bottom because that's where gravity is fighting the most. Here at the top, there's not much resistance because now my form is perpendicular to the weight into gravity. Well, if I do a concentration curl where I'm leaning over, my elbow still in front of my body, but now the hardest part of the rep is the squeeze. I'm doing elbow in front of my position exercise, but the squeeze is the hardest, not the extension. So I would switch out preacher curls for something like a concentration curl because it's the squeeze now, that's the emphasis. Yeah, you're talking about triceps, then you're talking about skull crusher being the top position right here, right? And then you're talking like say you're doing like a tricep extension for neutral, I mean obviously that's probably not the best one, but then dips behind you. Yeah, we're going to get there, absolutely. Yeah, but back to your point with the biceps, like so another thing to manipulate your point, so you could also do a preacher curl with dumbbells for that for four weeks, and then I go over to a preacher curl on a machine. And now machine is different because the tension is still all the way all the way to top. So people have to understand that like you can do dumbbell curls on the which I love to do or a camber curl bar on a preacher bench and it's still it's now a different exercise when I same preacher bench, but now I'm on a machine, right? Or now it's got the cable, right? So that's attached to it or whatever, because of the way the tension is on it. So that is a way of taking a movement that is the same but then changing it because you are changing the tension on it throughout the strength By the way, if you use a bicep machine you can figure this out by looking at the pulley and the shape of the pulley and you'll notice that that it won't be perfectly circular, it'll be maybe be oval shaped, it'll be kind of odd shaped and you can tell when the resistance is going to get harder. So some machines on a preacher curl even though it says 50 pounds on the stack, it's actually 30 at the bottom 50 at the top. Now you might not be able to know this by looking at it if you're not experienced go try it. Go try the exercise and notice the most difficult part of the rep and then the next time you do a similar exercise find one where the hardest part of the rep is in a different position. By the way bands are a great way to do this. I used to do this at home when I was a kid this is before I knew anything about bands all I knew was, wow this preacher curl is easy up here. So I attached a band around the bar and I attached around a pole and I knew that the band would make it harder at the top and I used to blow my friends away when I would have them try that out. I was always surprised why those machines didn't get I don't know more talk like as far as they were casting the others. It's complicated. You think so? That's why because people don't know to change that pin that changes the pulley position. So what the you're American barbell which was gold when you worked there they still have some of those. I love those and you can change and they so there's machines if you've ever seen them so you can educate the audience that doesn't know what this is. Some gyms will have like the preacher curl machine and then on the right normally right on the side where the wheel is or whatever there'll be a handle that you pull out and it normally has numbers one two or three and what you're doing is you're changing the heaviest part of the weight to be either in the stretch position at the middle position at the top which is a cool way to manipulate an exercise that is in the same plane is virtually the same thing but now because you manipulate that it's like it's novel to the muscle because it's not used to the load hitting you like that. That's right but if you just picked an exercise from elbows in front elbows aside elbows in back you're 97% of the way there throwing some chin ups where your bicep emphasize you know squeeze now you're doing a calm down lift. How often do you do reverse curls because I know for me like if I go back to them it's always like I always do too much weight because it's a very like different reverse curls that are hammers that's I'm I'm yeah I normally bounce between so hammer curl break your alice reverse curl the weakling tends to be the break your radialis which is the top of the forum which we'll go to because we're gonna get to the forums in just a second. So next let's talk about triceps now triceps are different the biceps because the hand position matters zero yeah if I'm doing a press down and my hands are facing in facing down facing up that doesn't do anything at all. Which you will see this okay next for the listeners the next time you go to your commercial gym okay next time you go to the commercial gym storm with a young teenage boy I'm guilty I'm sure of doing this at one point in my lifting career and he'll go over the cable machine and he'll do the metal triangle then he'll do the rope push down and then you'll do the reverse grip all the same thing all the same thing and you think it's different because you're doing the rope the triangle and they may even argue like it feels different and well we know why it feels different when you supinate your hand you drive your elbows into your sides more and so it's really about that but as far as what it's targeting as far as your tricep it is it's the same thing and that that kid would be far better off you know doing the rope push downs and then moving the cable all the way down the bottom and then flipping around and doing overhead extensions like that is going to target that completely different so yes the elbow position I mean wrist wrist position no longer matters when we're talking about elbow position matters a lot with triceps because of the way the attachments are for the tricep if my arms are behind my body my tricep is shortened is I move my elbow to being above my body or where you know by my head now the tricep is being stretched at least the long head what's called long head of the tricep there's three heads the long head attaches I believe near the scapula so if I bring my elbow up now I'm stretching the tricep so shortened versus you know moderate versus lengthen you want to look for different elbow positions when you tricep exercises so you could pick three to four because you could actually pick an exercise where your elbows are next to your body in front of your body overhead or even behind your body so there's actually four choices although one of my favorite compound lifts for triceps is elbows kind of behind the body so I tend to leave that out when I'm looking at isolation exercises so the best examples of or some great examples I should say of different elbow positions are press downs press downs elbows next to my body now I elbows in front of my body skull crusher great exercise for that and then elbows here pointing up next to my head or above my body overhead tricep extension rope cable dumbbell barbell all elbow up by my head all three should be present in your routine all three elbow positions now I did say next like behind the body as well this is where compound lifts now it's not so controversial or weird to hear people say compound lifts for great for triceps just because I think it's been more communicated close grip bench press is amazing dips is my favorite I don't think you can beat dips for developing the triceps in terms of compound lifts and that would kind of qualify as behind the body as you go down to the bottom so I don't know what you guys like better dips or close I saw I'm partial to the close grips you're a dips or close grips you know I'm trying what is it about that that I like better maybe I feel like I can load the bench press more and and focus more on tricep because it's just there's more of a like dips are a better how about this dips are a better overall exercise all concede that all day long because it's more functional you have to stabilize your body shoulder stabilization in there core stabilization in there control of your own body weight it would win as far as a better exercise but I have I've had I personally think I've had more success putting mass on my triceps from close grip inches because it's easier because it's easier to control I can load it more and I can concentrate just all tricep and take it out of my chest and shoulders and put more my tricep and for that reason I lean that way a little bit more although both belong in the routine and I know there's probably a lot of people out there too I've come across it that avoid dips because of their shoulder has issues and so I get that like too so the close grip branch press is a great option for that to load I would say you may use band assisted dips if that's the case get good at them because it's such a great exercise it is by the way dips for triceps and dips for chest look a little different if you're doing dips for chest you don't want to lean forward and you want the elbows to flare out a little bit if you want dips for triceps you're going to stay more upright elbows are going to be much tighter to your body that's going to emphasize the triceps close grip presses people always screw up by going too close you go too close you are asking for trouble in the wrist this is how I tell people to line up so you pinch your elbows by your side and you want your arms bent 90 it's about shoulder width you have to slide into your ribs that's where you want your arms lined up to where it's comfortable you don't want to be like this to where you're and then another thing is if you want to emphasize the triceps with this close grip press you want the bar to come towards the chest or nipples you want that tricep extension you want the bar to come down at the belly because then what you do is a front delt lift this very front delt heavy so the bar should come back as you go down almost like a compound skull crusher not quite because there is a lift like that but do not neglect these two exercises like that and in fact when I'm building a routine for my arms these compound just like our legs legs we've convinced everybody obviously squatting and deadlifting should be the core of your leg routine well your dips and your close grip bench press and your pull up in my opinion should be the core of your arm routine and then you build the other use the elbow positioning stuff that we're talking about for all your isolation exercise but in a week those have got to be in there you can't have a week go by and there's not a dip there's not a close grip bench press and there's not a pull up involved in there if you are you're missing out on deadlifting or squatting by the way you want to know what's funny about the chin up that we were just talking about a beginner who tries to do a chin up tends to do a bicep chin up it's the advanced person that doesn't because they learn how to do it from back and then you tell them it's for bicep like what do you mean do it like you don't know how to do a chin up properly where you kind of hunch forward and you're pulling with your arms that'll hit those biceps but yeah so for triceps every week you want to do an exercise any exercises that you guys would categorize for you know triceps or biceps for that matter that you think are and I don't want to say a waste of time because there's no such thing as like an exercise it's a waste of time you know what I'm saying but that you tend to not mess too much with because you think it brings the least amount of value I think we've argued this before like I'm not a real big fan of tricep kickbacks me too that's on that list I know you argue it so but yeah no I like it I like it because it's a really good shortened position for the triceps and if you're especially for advanced lifters who often cut their tricep exercises short the reps so whenever you see someone cut a bicep short it typically means they don't go all the way down tricep exercises people don't extend all the way they do this but when you do a kickback you have to really extend the hell out of your tricep that's when you'll see the squeeze but I still I don't rank it it's not a top 10 it's that just fine yeah but people even here they do this oh I mean I still would I would still I mean full full I would still defer to our original top three things that I said you know range of motion compound lifts and then what was the other one I said elbow position those three are the good so no matter what exercise you're doing if you're not doing a full range of motion you're missing out I'll give you a tricep exercise that I think is I mean again they all have value but this one's less value is when people don't even use a handle they grab for some reason grabbing the wire I don't know why people just a tricep exercise by grabbing the wire it's so easy I like that better than a kickback because at least there's tension on the tricep through the entire exercise but why grab the cable when I grab a handle or a rope because you saw a bodybuilder do it be honest I am the bodybuilder I am the bodybuilder I am the bodybuilder I don't think I did it you know what I think the ball actually the fits in your hand is actually sometimes more comfortable grab a rope so sometimes if there's a rope there I would actually do the rope for biceps I know there's value because the elbow position right here but this is so dumb oh curling that way? no no no you mean revert you mean triceps that way no I mean curls it's like I get it like you want to put your arms up and get the elbow position the reason why because there's very few other than the chin up there's not another bicep exercise you're ever going to do with an elbow position there in that fully lengthened position there's even curls behind the head I used to do a lap pull down a lap pull down and I touched my neck so it's such a shortened position and it's so novel that there's nothing else that you do like that but it's not going to like it's not going to supplant not all gyms have where you sit down elbows are way up there and you lock your elbow in here and you curl here and it's an amazing it's an amazing exercise the closest thing to a chin up there's nothing else there's no other bicep exercise you'll ever do with the elbow position like that so I thought you met the reverse skull crusher which I would tell you that's why they named it the skull crusher because that is a stupid way to do that because there is with the pronating and subinating the hands now your grip is way worse more dangerous than you should be let's talk about forearms so forearms obviously strong forearms connect you to the world very important that you have well developed strong forearms and a lot of people don't realize, especially guys this is one of the top body parts that women use to judge whether or not you can find a man attractive also many times the limiting factor why you can't get stronger on some of your curls that's right because we use our hands so little yeah their forearms get so pumped and I've been here before where I'm like curling and it's actually the pump in my forearms and then my grip gives out before my biceps give out now forearms are easy to train wrist curls so really anything with resistance where you're curling the wrist you can do this over a bench or even just standing reverse wrist curls where you're just pulling up and then reverse bicep curls or reverse grip curls which you were talking about this right here develops this muscle here at the top of the forearm called the brachioradialis here at the top of the elbow and nothing will hit that muscle like a reverse grip reverse curl and if you've never done this before go light because they get real sore because it gets tight and sore that's one that you'll feel for a couple days and then one of my favorite exercises just for overall grip strength overall stability throughout the entire body and of course developing the forearms heavy, farmer walks like you hold on to heavy pair dumbbells for time while you're walking and it's an isometric lift it's true it's not a full range of motion exercise but you typically use your forearms in isometric ways so it's not a bad way to train the forearms and it's a very functional way to train the forearms because again you typically need to be able to hold on to something well now how do you feel in terms of like because we talked a little bit about different handles and grips and things for like bicep try some different with forearms right different thicknesses of the bar so because it's an isometric most of the strength that I'm going to build is going to be in the size that's going to be determined by the size of the bar that I'm holding but you can wrap a towel around it and you can have a thicker handle and now it's a different position or you can wrap a towel around it, hold the towel itself or you can pinch grip things in this fashion or even in this fashion and now you're working different positions now order here forearms last not beginning of workout don't work your forearms before your biceps and limit your ability to do the other unless this is like a specialized area for you it's an area you want to focus on then I'd say train them first but rarely ever I've never had a client I train forearms before biceps and triceps I finish with a forearm exercise always at the end of the arm workout and then all the other same rules apply that we always talk about with sets and reps right all the research is somewhere between 12 to 20 sets total in a month per week is what's optimal although I will say this you could probably get away with and I'm going to explain why you typically people get away with less sets for arms because you're doing it in the other compound lifts because every time you're working your chest and your back and your shoulders you're probably involving the triceps of biceps that's how my training has completely flipped from when I was a kid and all I did was triceps stuff all the time I used to do so much compound lifting which I neglected when I was younger it doesn't take much and obviously I attribute some of that to how much I train them for so long that when I do heavy bench heavy pull ups I do row even deadlifting, deadlifting stimulates your bicep you do some of these heavy compound lifts it just doesn't take that much of arm work to continue to stimulate and grow the arms on average I'll do anywhere between 16 sets per body part per week but arms are always about 9 maybe 10 or 11 because they're getting hit with all the other stuff it's like it would be over training almost or a waste of time for me to do that as many sets for my biceps they're involved with almost everything and forearms I do even way less because every back and arm extra every time you grab something you need to hold onto it I've had phases where I've been on like forearm kicks training like that just actually all focused on my deadlift no forearm training when I was in there when I was doing that because we were doing that all training together back in those days when I was chasing your deadlift number that was the strongest my forearm and I didn't do a single forearm exercise it was just from getting really really strong you can hold on to 500 pounds and I'm dead with no straps you're going to have some serious forearm strength if you like Mind Pump if you want to follow some of our workouts check this out go to Instagram Mind Pump Media for under $5 a month we will provide a new workout every single week so you don't have to get one of our full programs although if you want a full program and you want to go for it get those go to mapsfitnessproducts.com but again Mind Pump Media on Instagram under $5 a month get a new workout every single week you can also find all of us on social media Justin is at Mind Pump today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well developed chest when I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time chest was up there it was for me for sure I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique