Do You Even Need an Arm Workout?

The Truth About Triceps Training

Many lifters don’t need direct biceps and triceps work. Some lifters need just a little bit, while others need a lot. Here’s how to know what’s best for you.

Is a Arm Workout Really Required?

Bodybuilding is all about exaggerating the size of your arms. “look.” It is rare to achieve this look without some form of direct arm work. If your goal is to compete in bodybuilding, or you want a bodybuilder-like physique, you’ll likely need direct arm work.

But most people won’t need direct arm work to get their arms relatively muscular and proportionate. You can get there by simply training hard on the basic lifts, including the pulls and presses. There are exceptions. But those shooting for a strong, athletic, jacked look, won’t need direct arm work.

Let’s break that down.

Know your Goal

I’m not against direct arm work. You can read This is the advice I’ve given before on it. But the body has a limited capacity to handle systemic stress from training and you don’t need to train every muscle group equally.

Consider your time and effort as money. You need to invest it where you’ll have the greatest return possible. To put it another way, you should spend more money training your muscles to achieve the results you desire.

I’ve trained female figure and bikini competitors who only focused on hamstrings, glutes, upper back, and shoulders. They simply didn’t need to train arms, chest, or even quads to get the look they needed to win. That’s why it’s important to know what kind of look you’re shooting for and which muscles need to be emphasized to get that look.

You aren’t training just to train. You’re training to achieve a certain goal, either a certain look or performance improvement. But if you don’t know exactly what you want, you can’t do exactly what you need to get there.

Study on Direct Arm Training

An article by TC Luoma was published Article Research has shown that isolation work for arms did not increase strength or hypertrophy in comparison to multi-joint movements training (1).

Researchers conducted an eight-week study of experienced bodybuilders. The basic multi-joint exercises were followed by all participants. Half of the participants did additional arm work.

After eight weeks, no differences were observed in strength or arm growth among the subjects. The conclusion was:

“The addition of single-joint exercises to a resistance training program that already contains multi-joint exercises brings no additional benefit in terms of muscle performance and anthropometric changes in trained men, whether they’re using anabolic steroids or not. These results might help to design more time-efficient resistance training programs since it suggests that trained men can save time not including single-joint exercises in their routines and still achieve optimal results.”

Problem is? What can a bodybuilder who is already an experienced one achieve in only eight weeks? This was the main limitation of the study.

It’s an important one. A beginner can gain good muscle mass (newbie gains) but muscle growth will be slower after the first two years. It is possible to gain five to seven pounds in one year after three years of hard training. You might’ve gained 20 pounds your first year of training and 10 in the second, but it slows down after that.

If you can gain five to 7 pounds as a seasoned lifter in one year, how much muscle growth can your body achieve in eight weeks?

And if you built 0.8 to 1.2 pounds of muscle in that timeframe, you’d gain that amount across your whole body – not all in one place. So think about that: 1.2 pounds of muscle spread over your whole body won’t lead to visual changes in your arms. So the fact that the direct-arm-training group had no significant benefit doesn’t mean that there are no benefits at all.

Strength is more important than muscle mass. And since the groups using isolated arm work didn’t get any stronger than the group not using it, we can conclude that direct arm work isn’t necessary to get optimal strength gains.

This means you can still get nearly the same overall gains by focusing solely on multi-joint movements, and this backs up what I’ve seen while training experienced athletes.

If you’re a normal person with a full-time job, a family, financial stress, etc., doing more work might actually hurt your results, especially if you’re Natural. You might find that you can achieve the same results with no direct arm work. If so, it may be worth focusing on training efficiency.

Is pulling as effective as curling?

The proper multi-joint exercises can stimulate the triceps and biceps just as effectively as direct work.

For an exercise to stimulate growth, you must recruit a large proportion of the muscle fibers, and you must, at one point during the lift, lengthen or stretch those recruited fibers while they’re under load. This is called the eccentric, or negative phase, of the lift.

For example, a muscle could be heavily recruited in an exercise, but if it works isometrically (think abs in a squat) it won’t be optimal for growth. You’ll still get growth, and the muscle will still get stronger (mostly isometrically), but you won’t get maximal gains.

Bret Contreras Details He measured the muscle activity in multiple back and bicep exercises. He looked at the muscle activation (via EMG), in several movements. Many pulling exercises resulted in similar or superior biceps activation to those of direct biceps movements.

The bicep activation for a loaded chin up (supinated grip), and neutral-grip pulled-up was greater than any other curling exercise. The chin-up and neutral grip pull-up had a mean muscle activation that was greater than the preacher curl and dumbbell curl.

However, the horizontal rowing exercises didn’t have the same effect on the biceps. The biceps activation in rowing variations was half that of the other exercises.

The take-home message: If you do chin-up or pull-up variations (and likely other forms of vertical pulling like the supinated lat pulldown and neutral-grip lat pulldown), you’ll get plenty of biceps stimulation.

If your pulling work is only horizontal (barbell row or seated row), you will need to add some biceps work.), you’ll likely need to add some biceps work for maximum growth.

We know from experience that horizontal pressing is a great way to stimulate the triceps. Two of the most effective triceps builders are close-grip bench presses or dips. The triceps will likely require even less work than the biceps.

If your goal is to build an athletic, muscular physique, you likely don’t need direct arm work. You can either skip it to recover quicker from your workouts, or to invest in more multi-joint moves without exceeding your systemic ability to handle stress.

How to determine if you require direct arm work

Do you not know how much, if any, direct arm work should you do? You can choose which one best describes you.

1. Lifters Who Don’t Need Any Direct Arm Work

• The majority of athletes. CrossFitters are included in this category.
• People who simply want to look good. Imagine a MMA-type appearance, a sprinter, a CrossFit competitor, with strong shoulders, solid legs and round pecs. Your arms should be in proportion to the rest of your body.
• People with great genetics or who are physically fit. This category includes bodybuilders. Here’s an example of a competitive bodybuilder trained by Jean-Philippe Ferland.

His arms really stand out, yet he doesn’t do any direct arm work. Direct arm work is unnecessary because of his good genetics and a physical job that requires him to carry heavy items and do a lot of sledgehammering work.

• The people who are big and strong. Many strongman competitors, as well as many powerlifters, do very little triceps isolation and zero biceps training. Most Olympic lifters don’t do direct arm exercises.

2. Lifters who need to do some direct arm work

These lifters don’t need as much direct work as they might think. A couple of biceps/triceps exercises per week should suffice.

• Persons with a physical handicap when it comes stimulation arms will not be able to do as much vertical pulling or horizontal pressing work. Long-armed people are more able to press and pull on the pecs and triceps, but less stimulation is received during these lifts. They’ll likely need a bit of direct work to develop their arms in proportion with the rest of their body.
• Those who, for some reason, don’t include vertical pulling work (focusing instead on deadlifts and rows) are also likely to need some direct biceps work.

3. Lifters who require significant arm work for a period of time

A good amount of work will be done for approximately 4-6 weeks to improve the mind-muscle connection between your arms and your brain. When your mind-muscle connection is poor, you’ll have a harder time involving these muscles optimally during the compound movements. As a result, you won’t get properly stimulated to grow by using only multi-joint lifts.

You can more easily increase your muscle contracting and feeling abilities by doing isolation work, whether it’s for arms or any other purpose. It’s much easier to concentrate on contracting your biceps if it’s the only muscle involved in the exercise than if several other groups are working at the same time and can take over most of the work.

Therefore, it is a good idea to do regular direct arm work for at least 4-6 weeks. This will help you improve your mind-muscle connection and your biceps/triceps connection, which will make your future multi-joint training more effective.

The lifter should continue to do some direct training after the block. This will allow them to retain the motor skills and adaptation necessary to contract the muscles correctly.

4. Lifters that require a lot of work with their arms

Competitive bodybuilders will likely require some arm work each week. A distorted view of optimal arm size is essential in bodybuilding. Arms are the main focus of stage performance. “wow” muscles.

According to bodybuilding standards, the ideal arm size is an overdeveloped level (compared with the rest of the body). Dorian Yates (pre biceps tears) had 20-inch arms, but was said not to have had any problems. “small arms” Comparable to the rest of his body

Unless you have God-like arm genetics, you’ll need a good amount of direct arm work if you want to compete. Direct arm work may not bring you huge benefits, but it will make a difference. In the long run, it’ll make a significant visual difference.

Invest Your Training Volume Wisely

Over the past 22 years, I’ve trained a lot of competitive athletes: pros (football and hockey), Olympians, top CrossFitters, and amateurs in over 28 different sports. We rarely use direct arm work because it’s not a great investment of training volume. Their arm size has been proportional to their body, despite the lack of direct arm training.

In some cases, I’d use one biceps and one triceps exercise per week for certain training phases if these muscles were obvious weak links in the big compound lifts.

If your goal is to look muscular and athletic, you likely don’t need a lot of direct arm work or any at all. I will concede that if you’re after a bodybuilding-type physique, you’ll likely need a good amount of direct arm work.

Remember that your body is limited in its ability to deal with stress training and still grow from it. You should invest your training volume where it’ll give you the most bang for your buck for what you’re trying to accomplish.

The Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Sport Science and the Publishers of this article have retracted the article.

Two of the original investigators doubted the integrity of the data, and a whitepaper that was published was questioned by them. “Having considered the evaluation report from the external review, as well as author and institutional responses, we find the data and findings in the article to be unreliable and invalid.”

Your years of experience in training clients does not diminish your knowledge.

Donald F O’Brien, P.T

For a long time I used a minimalist approach to exercise. Now I do 3-6 sets/1-2 tris/bis exercises each week. This seems to put me in a perfect place recovery-wise and doesn’t leave me feeling like i’ve left something on the table. This is a nice way to align with some of the things you have said here.

It’s my pressing and pulling that is 95%, and isolation the 5%. That is how I see it. If big arms are a big part of your goals, there is NO problem with that if you want to do more variations and it doesn’t get in the way of other movements you’re trying to improve on… Me though? Listening to the bros discuss twisting their pinkies, how an incline curl works better at 30 degrees or what a tricep kickback does for them is fascinating. It’s a real treat!, but it goes out the other ear because I’m just happy the chin-up bar is free. Maybe my arms won’t ever get to a magical amount of inch-age, but I’m okay with that.

…but who knows maybe one day I’ll do a split with an arm day. My training experience is changing so my philosophy can change. I have to add that overhead tricep extensions help my pushing strength regardless of what science says. Also, I feel that doing a couple of sets of higher rep hammer curls keeps my elbows healthy which leads to better pushing. Perhaps it’s psychological.

I train arms directly because it’s fun and I believe it works.

Training is fun. I have been doing it for over 25 years.

At 23 years in, maybe THIS is what I’m missing…haha

Since a trainer told me to paraphrase, I have adhered to no arms work for years. “If you get your squat, bench and deadlift up to decent poundages your arms will grow…” They did. “proportional” Based on my wrist size, and some other body parts comparisons such as calf/neck, they were at one point quite impressive for a natty. “freaky.” Nowadays I am in alignment with what CT is advising here – multiple sets of various bicep/tricep moves don’t really pay off for me and recovery is more key than ever at my age. As a finishing touch, I only do one or two sets of biceps/forearms. Instead of doing tricep exercises directly, I also include a set narrow-grip bench press on my bp days.

Arm-wrestlers require a lot of armwork, Greco Roman wrestlers also need to do a lot.

Yes, Barbalho published a few articles that were later retracted. This was written before Barbalho was arrested for altering data

This is your most outstanding article!

Well done!

Marc

To fail, I only do 1-2 sets. One day I do a supinated curl, one day I do a reverse curl and one day I do a triceps exercise. This works well for my needs and boosts my pull up performance.