What is the Best Arms Day Workout Routine?

December 30th, 2009 | by admin |

Your Questions

I get plenty of questions in various comments throughout the website, but I also get comments and questions via the Project Swole Contact Form.

Generally I address those questions through e-mail, but often I do not have the time to reply to each and every question personally.

The category, Your Health Questions is a more proactive approach to answering your questions with equal reason that everyone can benefit from the Q & A.

Scott wrote:

“First off, I would like to say your site is great. I’ve learned a lot reading your articles.

I just had one question: when you say not to have an ‘arms day’, should I just include a few biceps and triceps exercises everyday? And how many different exercises of each should I do?”

Response:

First off, thank you in favor of the kind words. I’m glad some of my ramblings help others get swole.

Furthermore, there has always been conflict in the debate about the need for an ‘arms day’. This is usually the favorite workout of the week for teenagers and newbies.

Fortunately, the biceps need very little work to grow properly if you are using the best compound exercises to train the rest of your body. The triceps are a little different in that they comprise twice as a great deal of muscle mass as biceps, and can require supplementary work depending on your goals.

Arnold’s Arms

Bench press – flat, decline, close grip, incline
Board press – more boards = more triceps isolation
Floor press
Military press (to a lesser extent)

Barbell rows
Dumbbell rows
Machine and cable rows
Pull ups
Chin ups

your triceps make up 2/3 of your arm muscle and the biceps fill in the gaps, which inherently means the bis need even less work than the tris. I find that half of the time I end up skipping biceps in order to do something that I don’t normally do, like shrugs or pullovers or glute ham raises.

Full Body Training

If you are using full body discipline, lifting 3 times a week, you should probably train triceps 3 times and biceps 1-2 times. As long as you are training your back properly, you won’t need to train your biceps 3 times a week, or have a dedicated arms day.

If you are prioritizing your triceps training, either to increase your bench or to increase the size of your arms, you could substitute close grip bench or board press for your chest exercise on one of the three days, and include direct triceps work later in that workout.

Full Body Split

If you are using a full body split, training a different muscle group each day for 4-5 workouts a week, you should train triceps on chest day and biceps on back day if you are not prioritizing triceps training.

If you are prioritizing triceps training you could probably train triceps on back day and on chest day in order to hit them twice in one week. You could also replace one chest exercise with a big triceps exercise, on chest day.

The Best Arms Day Workout Routine

The only way I could really see integrating an arms day, is if you plan to use compound exercises to train the arms.

One possible ‘arms day’ routine:

Close grip bench press – 3 sets x 5 reps
Chin ups – 3 sets x 7 reps
Dips leaning forward – 2 sets x 10 reps
Supinated (underhand grip) barbell rows – 2 sets x 5 reps
Diamond push ups – 2 sets x as many as possible
Hammer curls – 2 sets x 7 reps

I might be grasping for straws here, but this is basically the only kind of ‘arms day’ workout that makes sense to me, but it is also a back and chest workout at the similar time. Making an ‘arms day’ workout full of curls and triceps extensions is futile in my opinion.

Best of luck!

Acai Berry Diet