Arm workout

Arm training is a very important part of the bodybuilding training system, but it is not the key and not paramount. Nevertheless, it is important to know the basic principles of exercise technique, the secrets of working out different bundles of biceps and triceps, the place of arm training in a training split, and other features of working out arm muscles. First of all, this training system is suitable for athletes whose hands are lagging behind, the same athletes whose hands do not lag behind will not be hindered by information on how to swing them correctly, but since they do not lag behind, it means that you are training them more or less correctly. On the other hand, if you want a hand not 42 cm, but 47 or 50 cm, then, of course, you won’t be able to pump them up at random.

This article will look at an arm training program, that is, a program that specializes in the development of biceps and triceps. The principles of training, technique and many practical recommendations can be used in your regular workouts, but in this case we will talk about how to build a system of training and recovery in order to level the backlog of hands. Why lagging behind, because maybe you just want to have big hands? The bottom line is that small muscle groups can only be pumped up if you already have a large muscle mass. And this is the first rule of arm muscle training!
Key points of arm training

Arm muscles are subject to exactly the same biological laws as other muscles, so the stress and recovery scheme works in this case too. More than that, there can be no other scheme! What happens in practice? People do beautiful isolation exercises without progressing the load, and then wait for the arms to still grow. They won't grow! The growth of muscle mass is the most difficult process of adapting the body to an ever-increasing load. But progress should be made at the expense of a greater loading of the target muscle group, and since the arms are weaker than the back, legs, chest and deltoid muscles, all the more so if they lag behind, then there is a need for their high-quality isolation. In this connection, priority is given to technique during hand training, hands are lagging behind, most likely due to the fact that you violate the technique.
It is recommended to use elbow locks during biceps training, California press or reverse grip press during triceps training time, and in both cases, manipulate not only the working weight, but also the number of repetitions. To fix your elbows, you can use the Scott bench, you can lean against the wall and rest your elbows against the wall, you can ask a partner to hold your elbows, there are also more special devices for fans that Arnold Schwarzenegger used, for example, a nylon belt. As for the technique of weight manipulation, it must be applied so that during the progression of loads one does not have to sacrifice technique. In practice, it will look like this: you work with some weight and perform 12 repetitions with it, gradually you reach 15-16 repetitions in a set with this weight, after which you take more weight and perform 10-12 repetitions with it, gradually progressing by increasing repetitions further.

You can train your arms quite often, about once every 3-4 days, since small muscle groups recover faster than large ones. But the duration of the workout itself, or rather, its volume, should be lower. You can determine if you are overloading your arms during a workout with the help of muscle pain, if krepatura is present, this indicates acidification of muscle fibers, which prevents protein synthesis. If you do not want to specialize in arm training, but just want to train them correctly, then you can use the biceps and triceps workout that we will offer you, but apply this workout once a week. The fact is that the triceps get the load during chest training, and the biceps during back training, so one specialized workout will be enough. But, if you want to specialize in the muscles of the arms, since the arms are lagging behind, then such a training should be done 2 times a week, and the rest of the muscle groups should be trained optionally, that is, in support.

Conclusion: it is necessary to observe the principle of load progression without violating the technique, that is, the increasing load should be accumulated in the target muscle group. Arm workouts don't have to be long, but arms can be trained relatively often as small muscle groups recover faster. If you train your arms more than once a week, then you train the rest of the muscle groups less, just to support them in form.

Anatomy of the muscles of the hands

The arms are made up of biceps, triceps, and the radial muscle, as well as the forearm. So, from the point of view of training, it is better to divide the arm into flexors and extensors. The extensor arm is a triceps, it consists of three heads, differing in their length and, accordingly, strength. The strongest head of the triceps is the medial, the weakest internal, so the emphasis should always be on the inside of the triceps, since two muscles are always stronger than one! The flexors of the arm are the biceps and the radial muscle. The biceps consists of two beams: internal and lateral, the internal one is larger, and the lateral one is smaller, but both of them must be trained, while it is better to do this with different exercises, that is, one emphasizes pumping the internal head of the biceps, and the second external. The radial muscle works during any bending of the arms, but it turns on more when your hand is pronated, that is, turned with your palms to the floor, or when it is in a neutral position.
In order to accumulate the load in the triceps, you must exclude the shoulder joint from work and shift all the work to the elbow joint. When you do close grip presses, the amplitude of movement from the top of the press up is carried out only due to the extension of the elbow joint, when you do French press, then the shoulders are in a fixed position. In order to load the inner bundle of the triceps, it is necessary to reduce the elbows, because if you spread them apart, the load will go into the lateral and medial bundles, as well as into the pectoral muscles. It is best to train triceps in a rep range large enough so that each set will take you 30 to 50 seconds, so 10-15 reps is optimal.

During biceps training, the position of the elbow depends on which biceps bundle you are training. If you are training the internal beam, then the elbows should be brought forward, pressing the hands against the pectoralis major muscle, so that the elbows are against the front of the obliques. If it is necessary to load the lateral bundle, then the elbows, on the contrary, must be pulled back so that a gap is formed between the elbow bend and the latissimus dorsi. The arms should be fully unbent, stretching the biceps as much as possible, but bending to the point at which the peak contraction occurs, since the load is further shifts from the biceps to the elbow joint. In addition, in your arm training, you should also take into account the fact that the biceps still performs the function of turning the hand, so the arm must not only be bent, but also supinated.

Wrist supination is not necessary in all exercises, especially since this is only possible when you train your arms with dumbbells, but such exercises should also be used. The principle already known to you works here - two are always more than one! Since the biceps performs two functions, then by training them both, you will achieve more than by training only one thing. Moreover, the flexor function is mainly performed by the radial muscle, therefore, if you “do not have weights,” then you should include hammers and reverse curls with a barbell in your workout, and not try to “hammer” the biceps with concentrated flexions. However, such special isolating exercises also need to be included in the training split, it’s just that everything has its place and time.

Reasons for lagging hands

Well, let's say the athlete knows the basics of arm training and practices in practice, but why do the arms lag behind anyway? It's all about genetics, of course! The same muscle group in different athletes can be very different in its structure. In some people, the biceps are long, in others, the biceps are short, and so does the triceps. Accordingly, if the muscle is short, then the tendon is long, so it is more difficult to use the muscle, and if it is more difficult, then the body tries to do the work at the expense of other muscles, since it is easier to do it. Hence the conclusion: if you have a short biceps, then it must be isolated very high quality. The same rule works with long triceps. True, in return for great efforts when training the triceps, the athlete will receive a more beautiful muscle, but the short biceps will not look very good in any case.
Muscle composition is the second factor. Muscle fibers are subdivided according to the criteria of ATP-ase of myofibrils and according to the