6 Decisive Home Arm Training Tips
You want those nice big guns and get them by doing your arm training at home? Here’s what you need to heed to get there!
1. Don’t Cheat
No arm exercise is as popular as the biceps curl. No arm exercise is also done badly more often than the biceps curl.
If you swing the dumbbell or lean back to get it up, you are using too much weight! That destroys most of the gains you could get!
This is especially important for you guys training their arms at home, because most of you have no one to watch your form!
The same of course goes for every other arm exercise. If you do triceps extensions, for example, and don’t hold your upper arms steady, you aren’t training your triceps!
2. Use Enough Weight
Using too much weight leads to the cheating above, but using too little weight is as bad.
If you do 10 barbell curls in a set, but could have done another 5, you didn’t give your muscle enough incentive to grow. That only happens when you use a weight where you can’t do more than 12 reps with good form in a set. The last rep of a set should really be the last you are able to perform!
3. Switch The Rep Ranges
If you always go for the 6 – 12 rep range, your body gets used to it. Doing about 1 in 5 workouts in the low rep range (3 to 5 reps) keeps your arm muscles engaged.
With these heavy sets you have to make extra sure that you are using good form!
4. Don’t Overdo Arms
I know guys who do 3 biceps exercises, 3 triceps exercises and another 4 for the forearms as their arms workout. And they do it 2, or even 3 times per week.
That’s way too much and doesn’t make your arms grow, because it doesn’t give them time to grow! Muscles get bigger not during your training, but afterwards.
5. Don’t Forget The Brachialis
Most people wanting to get bigger arms think biceps training, some others realize there’s also triceps training. The majority forgets that there’s a third large muscle sitting on the upper arm: the brachialis.
Training it via concentration curls bolsters the biceps from below and can add a good bit of volume to your arms.
6. Easily Overlooked: Your Nutrition
A prime reason why many guys fail to make (arm) muscle gains is that their nutrition is lacking. If you don’t give your body the building blocks it needs to build muscle mass, protein, where do you suppose the mass can come from?
Aim for 1 g of protein per lb of body weight per day. You can do that by using protein powders or, best, foods rich in protein.
No comments