If bigger, stronger arms are what youโre after, stop with the endless biceps exercises and start concentrating on the muscle group that really matters: your triceps.
Your triโs make up at least two-thirds of the mass in your upper arms, and they should be afforded proportionate amounts of timeโand respectโin your training. Below, weโre going to give you a different way to look at triceps trainingโone that doesnโt concern itself, like most bodybuilding programs do, with the inner, outer, and lateral heads of the muscle.
Itโs important to know your anatomy to build the muscle you want, but when it comes to working hard, choosing the most effective exercises you can find, and getting real results, itโs your approach that countsโand the one weโre offering here wonโt let you down. Now, get to work.
Whether you include it in your program or not, thereโs no upper-body exercise quite like the bench press for recruiting massive amounts of muscle. Itโs a compound, multi-joint lift that hits virtually every muscle in your upper body, so improving your bench strength will help you everywhere.
And one of the best ways to get a bigger bench is to work your triceps, shoulders, and lats harder. All three muscle groups play major roles during the performance of the liftโespecially your triceps, which help to lock the weight out in the upper half of your bench press. The more narrow your grip, the earlier in the lift your triceps kick in, so including extra triceps work in your training will have a direct effect on your bench press.
Your primary goal with these workouts is to perform the prescribed number of reps and sets with more weight each time you train. With the moves weโre suggesting here, this wonโt be a problem over a four-week period because youโll improve quickly as you learn how the exercises work. To really gauge how well youโre doing, try this template for four weeks, take a few weeks off to see if your bench-press strength improves, then go back, plug this regimen in again, and see what you can do once your learning curve flattens out a bit.
If you keep adding weight to these movesโeven small, gradual increments will doโyour triceps will get bigger all around. For bench-press strength, each head of your triceps needs to get bigger and stronger, but if you simply train for strength the way weโre advocating hereโas opposed to worrying about isolating everything with cablesโyouโll gain startling amounts of mass in an aesthetically pleasing way.
The strength-endurance work youโll be doingโin the form of backward and forward bear crawlsโwill pay dividends as well. After four solid weeks of our brutal bear crawl circuit, you should notice an ability to bang out more reps with heavier weight.
For the next four weeks, try this program on your chest day and arms day. Since the two workouts listed here both lead off with a form of weighted dips, youโll have to take a long, hard look at your chest and shoulder training volume, as dips place a great deal of strain on both of these muscle groups, especially the shoulders. You may have to compromise here. For example, if your chest day includes two or more variations of bench presses, take one of these moves out of your workouts for these four weeks to concentrate on your triceps without risking overuse injuries.
This routine is structured to give you the best of two worldsโstrength and endurance. For the two kinds of dips and your dumbbell exercises, the idea is to move a load in a controlled fashion, with proper technique, as quickly as possible. This entails lowering the weightโor your bodyโsmoothly, then exploding back to the top of the movement with everything you have. Learn to train this way and youโll make much quicker progress overall.
As a finisher on your second day of this workout, weโre throwing in a bear crawl circuit you can perform on your gym floor, in an aerobics room, or outside. Backward bear crawls are triceps killers, and by the time youโre finished combining these with pushups, your arms will be absolutely smoked, and youโll be thankful for a few days off before itโs time to do it again.
