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Thrash-Your-Guns Arm Routine

Get out of your arm training rut with this muscle-shocking routine for bigger biceps and triceps.

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  • 3 days

  • 12

  • Yes

muscular arms
muscular arms

You love to train your arms, but you could be in a workout rut. You’re constantly performing the usual suspects—tricep kickbacks, cable pressdowns, barbell curls, or preacher curls. You could stay in the gym for hours doing arms but unfortunately, quantity never replaces quality, especially when it comes to building arm size. You need to get out of your comfort zone.

Your program is only as good as the one you are not doing. If you don’t change it often, you will be wasting a whole lot of time and effort. Although results and programs should be individualized, trashing body parts will always be part of gaining new lean muscle mass and busting through plateaus.

The best ways to create chaos in those muscle fibers is to push them over their limits. Can we do that without going through excruciating pain? We can’t get around pain, but we can trick our arms and the mind-muscle connection into believing that there is still strength and energy left. Here are some principles to get you there.

Drop Sets

Usually, drop sets are done wrong. You don’t have to drop half the weight to do a drop set properly. It was proven that decreasing the weight by as little as 5-10% is the ideal drop and still respects your repetition range. For example, do tricep pressdowns with 100 lbs. for 10 reps, drop it to 90-95 lbs., and you’ll be able to crank out another clean 8 to 10 reps.

Mechanical Advantage

Start with the toughest version of an exercise and finish with the easiest. For example, start with an incline bench press at a 45-degree angle for a given number of reps—no rest—followed by the 30-degree incline bench press, and finish off right away with the flat bench press. Using this principle, you can use the same weight on all three exercises in a superset/giant set manner. 

Pre-Fatigue/Finishers

If you use them properly, finishers are great muscle thrashers. I like to use a compound movement to bring in support and finish off the target muscle without cheating too much. Example: Do a barbell tricep French press before doing a close-grip tricep press. By doing so, you can push your triceps pain threshold to new heights since the pectorals and shoulders will assist them, when he is already tired from the barbell French press. 

Without further ado, here’s a workout that uses some of these principles to thrash your guns in half the time.

Routine

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Workout A

Exercise
Equipment
Sets
Reps
Rest
Exercise 1 of 12

Barbell Triceps French Press

Equipment
Sets
4
Reps
10
Rest
10 sec
Tempo: 3, 0, x, 0 = 3 counts down, no pause, explosive lift, no pause
Equipment
Sets
4
Reps
10
Rest
10 sec
How to
Perform extension to top of head. Tempo: 3, 0, x, 0 = 3 counts down, no pause, explosive lift, no pause
Equipment
Sets
4
Reps
10 or AMRAP
Rest
10 sec
How to
Perform extension to chin with same bar and weight as exercise 2. Tempo: 3, 0, x, 0 = 3 counts down, no pause, explosive lift, no pause
Equipment
Barbell, Bench
Sets
4
Reps
AMRAP
Rest
90 sec
Use same bar as exercise 3. Tempo: 2, 0, 2, 0 = 2 counts up, no pause, 2 counts down, no pause

Workout B

Exercise
Equipment
Sets
Reps
Rest
Exercise 5 of 12

Barbell Biceps Curl

Equipment
Barbell
Sets
4
Reps
10
Rest
10 sec
Tempo: 3, 0, x, 0 = 3 counts down, no pause, explosive lift, no pause
Exercise 6 of 12

Standing Incline Prone Spider Curl

Equipment
Sets
4
Reps
10
Rest
10 sec
Tempo: 3, 0, x, 0 = 3 counts down, no pause, explosive lift, no pause
Exercise 7 of 12

Incline 30-Degree Dumbbell Supinated Curl

Equipment
Sets
4
Reps
10
Rest
10 sec
Tempo: 3, 0, x, 0 = 3 counts down, no pause, explosive lift, no pause
Exercise 8 of 12

Dumbbell Hammer Curl

Equipment
Dumbbells
Sets
4
Reps
AMRAP
Rest
90 sec
Same weight as Workout A, Exercise 3. Tempo: 2, 0, 2, 0 = 2 counts up, no pause, 2 counts down, no pause

Workout C

Exercise
Equipment
Sets
Reps
Rest
Exercise 9 of 12

Preacher Bench 45-Degree Unilateral Zottman Curl

Equipment
Sets
3
Reps
12
Rest
0 sec
Tempo: 4, 0, x, 0 = 4 counts down, no pause, explosive lift, no pause
Exercise 10 of 12

One-Arm Rope Pressdown

Equipment
Sets
3
Reps
12
Rest
30 sec
Tempo: 4, 0, x, 0 = 4 counts down, no pause, explosive lift, no pause
Exercise 11 of 12

Pronated-Grip Straight Bar Curl

Equipment
Sets
3
Reps
12
Rest
0 sec
Tempo: 2, 0, 2, 0 = 2 counts up, no pause, 2 counts down, no pause
Exercise 12 of 12

Behind-the-Back Pronated-Grip Wrist Flexion Curl

Equipment
Sets
3
Reps
AMRAP
Rest
60 secs
Tempo: 2, 0, 2, 0 = 2 counts up, no pause, 2 counts down, no pause
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