Peace and blessings to you. My name is Hanif Tagoe and I’m a Personal Trainer and Nutritionist to men that want to live a balanced healthy lifestyle. Shout out to the guy’s built like houses, that’s all good but my focus is in helping the everyday man make extraordinary personal changes. Skinny or overweight, I’m here to help you be the criterion.
Today I will give you 5 arm exercises you can and should be using to blow up your arm strength and size. These are tried and tested moves that will be well known to many listeners, but if you’re a new lifter these are what you really want to be doing in the gym week to week.
No doubt about it, the first one is a must have in your gym programme. The Push Up or Press Up if you call it that is a body weight exercise that can be progressed by adding a weight vest or weight plate to your back as some people do. If you’re older or new to push up’s you can start with 4 point kneeling which is to have four points of contact touching the floor – your knees and two hands (6 point kneeling if you add your toes, for the super technical listeners). Your upper body – arms (triceps in particular), and core muscles all benefit from this exercise
Preacher Curls can be executed in a number of ways, using different pieces of equipment such as dumbbells, ez bar, cables and even barbell. The contraction should feel intense assuming you’re lifting heavy and the eccentric lowering should also be notable. Lower with control but don’t fully extend your arm so you can keep a degree of tension on your muscles isometrically. 10 reps is a good figure to work to but lower reps and heavier weight will make sure the gains in mass shoot up.
Hammer Curling the weight may remind you of the days when you pretended to be a robot but this movement is 10k, HD and fully digital if that makes any sense to you. As you’ll maintain a solid hand and wrist grip and position you’ll hit your bicep muscles from a different angle to the conventional bicep curl which will help sculp your muscle so you’ll be a 3D robot in 2024.
Skull Crushers are essential work for your tricep muscles. The upper arm being mad up of the biceps antiriorly and triceps postirioly. The three heads of the posterior arm muscles need to be worked regularly just as you would train the biceps. EZ bar skull crushers or unilateral dumbbell use will help you build strength and size. Supersetting Hammer curls and Skull crushers will cut your training time down a bit potentially.
Wrist Curls are also essential work although you’ll rarely see anyone training forearms. Strong wrists are helpful in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, Tennis and many other sports, and can be used to strengthen and reduce chance of injury to the wrist. Going heavy may end in disaster, the lighter weights should be more than enough. Locking this exercise and the previously mentioned with help you build stong arms and size too.
Without a doubt you don’t want to skip leg day. Most men have a common goal to build arm size. Whatever day it is, go hard in a measured and precise manner. If you’d rather not attend a gym to exercise yet still have a hunger for physical progress and good health I have the perfect solution for you, shoot me a message and we can arrange your free consultation and try one of our training programmes available at bethecriterion.com.