Training arms is definitely a love / hate relationship for most lifters. They love to train arms and feel the ‘pump’, they love to have their arms grow, and they love to be noticed for having a great set of guns. But this love comes at a cost.
Most lifters train arms with too much volume and too frequently. This leads to overuse injuries, inflammation, and (wrist, elbow, shoulder) joint pain – especially if they’re using a straight barbell for most of their exercises. Using dumbbells can add some relief to your joints, and training smarter can get you in and out of the gym faster.
Train Smart
Training smarter means understanding that you don’t have to perform six different exercises for biceps and six different exercises for triceps in one workout – to see gains. If you can perform 2-3 exercises for each muscle group and see explosive gains if the intensity is high and you focus on good quality repetitions.
Intensity doesn’t only mean lifting a maximum weight, it can also involve making every rep and every set count, and two ways to do that are to control the tempo of the rep and attack the muscle from different angles within the set. And, as always, we want to try and perform a full range of motion for each and every rep, which would define good quality form and engage the maximum number of muscle fibers.
To increase the intensity of a set and to improve your muscle building potential, you need to:
1. Perform a full range of motion.
2. Challenge the muscle from different angles.
3. Create a lot of tension, stress, and damage in the muscle fiber.
Old-School 21’s
The traditional version of 21’s are where you grab a barbell or EZ curl bar and perform the following:
7 reps – with partial range of motion at TOP of curl (from the top of the curl, only curl down to halfway, and then curl back up)
7 reps – with partial range of motion at BOTTOM of curl (from the bottom of curl, only curl up halfway and then back down)
7 reps with a FULL range of motion
While partial reps do work, I never really liked traditional 21’s. I would prefer doing a full range of motion as long as possible before switching over to partials to finish the set.
The New 21’s
With this new version, I perform a full range of motion, control the negative for a 3-5 second count, and hit the biceps from 3 different angles. Try this routine and let us know what you think.
Special Notes: This type of high intensity finisher is typically thrown in once a week. Progress through each 7-7-7 set adding a small amount of weight with each set. We usually work through 3-4 sets. If the straight bar hurts your wrists or elbows, switch to an EZ curl bar.
