Last Update On December 24, 2011
Direct Arm Work For Big Arms ?
by Rusi
Do you need direct arm work for big arms? What a stupid question, right? It seems that today everybody is avoiding curls and triceps isolation exercises because of myths spread by the functional crowd. Even the famous strength coach Bill Starr wrote a similar approach in his article “Bigger Arms”. My apologies but this article is full of nonsense. In fact I will just pull put a few excerpts in order to illustrate my point.
Bill Starr: “You’re going to get bigger arms by making your entire body bigger. Once you pack on some bodyweight and establish a solid base of strength, you can go back and use curls to shape your biceps, but doing hour after hour of both curls and triceps work isn’t getting the job done for you right now. What you need is more mass, to get bigger.”
Of course everybody should focus on making his entire body bigger and stronger but this does not mean that you should treat curls like a “shaping” exercise. THERE IS NO SUCH ANIMAL as a shaping exercise. We are not talking about sculpting here. The only thing you can do is - gain muscle mass and lose body-fat. That's how you shape your body. Believe me....your biceps do not know the difference between curls and chin-ups. I agree that doing endless curls and triceps work is TOO much but isolation itself can be extremely helpful.
Bill Starr: “I opened another magazine and showed them a photo of Phil Grippaldi flexing his huge triceps. “Here’s another national-champion Olympic lifter: Phil Grippaldi from New Jersey. His arms got so big from doing the Olympic lifts that he had to do exercises to tone them down. They were preventing him from racking his cleans.”
The guy has big arms. Ok. But I can show you a lot photos of Olympic weightlifters with small arms. This guy was genetically gifted when it comes to arm hypertrophy and please tell me how in hell do you know that he didn't do arm isolation to prevent injuries or something?
Bill Starr: “You will be working them hard. Much harder than ever. Now for anyone to curl 225 kilograms is impossible, but both of you will be capable of shrugging that much and doing high pulls in excess of 130 kilograms in a few months. Much of the work done on those two exercises is done by the biceps and the prime movers of your upper arm - the brachioradialis and brachialis. ?”
The reason why you lift so much in exercises such as high-pulls, shrugs and so is the fact that bigger muscles such as glutes and traps are doing the work. Not your arms. In fact the arms should do close to nothing during those exercises. If you àrå shrugging and pulling with your arms your are risking biceps injury. Not to mention that at the top position of a high-pull where the arms are bent there is zero stress on them. On top of that the range of motion at the elbow joint is close to nothing. You need the best range of motion for the best growth. The greater the movement the greater the exercise. I was able to shrug 440 for a few reps and deadlift 400 (2.1 BW) when my arms were 12.5 inches. I think my DB curl was around 25 pounds.
Bill Starr: "Bert remarked, “I can see where heavy benching might help get the triceps bigger and how those high pulls can help the biceps, but how do squats fit in? I mean, they aren’t connected to the arms at all.
Well, in a way squats are connected. Squats are included in your program because they are the very best exercise to do if you want to add bodyweight. They stimulate growth in the entire body. The squat is the key exercise in this program.”
Bro-science again. Squat is a leg and back exercise. Holding and squeezing the bar during squats will do as much for arm hypertrophy as masturbation. Also the myth about how the squat makes you release a sick amount of testosterone and triggers growth in your whole body is 100% made up. You can have huge upper-body without squats. Look at gymnast and humor me. 90% of them don't squat at all. At least not with a barbell.
It seems that the functional crowd is falling for this. Sorry. I did my time training like this and I know it's a bro-science loaded concept. Curls and extensions are not bad exercises and they can certainly build a great set of arms much faster. Why? The entire stress is on the arm from the first fiber to the last. I can bet a lot of money that 99.9% of the guys with truly big arms (not me) are doing direct arm work because it's needed to trigger the most growth.
I think that the initial reason to promote similar attitude towards isolation is that most people were doing mainly curls and benches for the beach muscles and were avoiding hard and heavy exercises. However the problem here is the approach not the exercises. Also looking at the number of guys with huge upper bodies and thin legs it seems that curls and bench do build bigger upper body muscles.
In the end of the day moderation is key. But avoiding exercises when they can be exactly what you are looking for is not going to do you any good. Does it matter that the famous coaches disagree?
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