Training Arms Directly, Necessary?

As usual the OP is long gone but I don’t train just arms, like someone said, If you are a bodybuilder then yeah but I just add in some finishing sets of rope push downs and skull crushers on chest day and dumbell curls on back day, good to go. I’m not interested in huge arms, shoulders, back and chest for me.

Blasphemy

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lol, I know right. Huge is the key word. I want nice muscular arms don’t get me wrong. My chest and legs is where i’m hurting

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I hate bicep work (but I do like fat grip reverse curls quite a bit). I’m a bit like @jimmyt73, in that I like the look of defined arms from pull ups, rows, and other gripping/pulling activities but not the inflated bodybuilder look that comes from lots of direct bicep work. Although to be fair, this is pretty much true for all body parts for me in that I hate isolation work and rarely do it.

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I like looking like a fat balloon animal.

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Once I do my compound lifts, I just wanna get out of the gym. I did some axle bar curls for a lil, so I should probably add them back in.

This. You other people are all dickheads.

Okay… dickheads is too far lol

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And he looks amazing! -lol

S

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I have pretty decent arms, but I don’t like training them in isolation. I have trained them plenty in the past, but nowadays I’m old and I just don’t do a lot of the crap I don’t like.

FTR I said in isolation because contracting a muscle under load is direct work. Presses directly work the triceps, pulls directly work the biceps. Maybe not optimally, and not in isolation, but it is direct work. If that weren’t true then squats don’t “directly” hit the legs.

If you do rows and chin ups you hardly need to do arm curls. I like arm curls but prefer to hit the back harder and only do arm curls once in a while. For triceps there’s dips and push ups. I finish off push ups with static holds and the tris are fried.

I hear what you’re saying, but then I see this

image

And I get all confused.

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There’s a video on Kabuki Movement Systems (not promoting anything, just giving you my source for this info) with Stan Efferding where he is talking about training arms for strength athletes. He says that if you are a bodybuilder then yes, it would make sense to do some curls and tricep isolation work, but for anyone else you should be fine using compound lifts that hit the biceps and triceps. He said that he does chin ups, pulldowns, and cable rows with a supinated grip to hit the biceps and for triceps you can do dips or close grip 2 board presses after benching.

Personally, I still do some direct tricep work, right now I do JM presses and recently I was doing skull crushers, but mostly I stick with compound lifts and my biceps got bigger since I cut out curls and started doing chin ups with a supinated grip.

Your body gives you pretty good feedback. If all you do is rows and chin ups and you have tooth pick arms then you may want to consider that rows and chins are not all you need.

If you do things that put your biceps under lots of stress, you may want to do biceps work for injury prevention. I get pretty awful elbow tendinitis and biceps work is a godsend.

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End of thread :slight_smile:

S

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Not far enough

Immediately thought, troll. Just in case you are not… I have never heard any dude saying they dislike doing direct work on arms before. Anyways, it’s not necessary, you can grow your biceps by doing chin ups and rows, you can build your triceps by doing bench presses, dips and pushups but they won’t be as big or impressive as they would by including some isolation work also. Doing direct work will do just that, focus on the said muscle and nothing else, it works the muscle in ways compunds can’t since there aren’t any other muscles really helping it out. It’s the whole idea of trying to get bigger, getting as many microtears in as many muscle fibres as you can so that it grows back bigger and stronger.

I dislike doing arms or chest.

My body my choice!

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Lol, by all means, skip doing arms and chest if you hate it that much. You are fully entitled to choose to take advantage of your full potential or not.

Agreed. Listen to the body. Thats what I basically do each week. If the body wants another set or an isolation exercise I do it. If the body is tanked I dont.

Every month its useful to do a test and see what your rep maxes are to measure how its going. I mainly focus on my 5,8 and 10 rep maxes rather than worry about 1rm.

Static holds and slow negatives on chin ups hit the biceps pretty hard!

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