The Best Arm Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of
When someone mentions “arm training” to you, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? The most “standard” to thing to consider is barbell curls and pushdowns, or dumbell curls and dips, etc, right?
Well, how about thinking outside the box? As the author of “The Best Arm Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of”, Nick Nilsson says it: “it’s time to make a NEW box and think outside of THAT one!”
“The Best Arm Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of” is unique in the world muscle building exercise books because it includes 68 unique exercises for the forearms, bicep and triceps ONLY. It’s packed with training information, without the fluff found in similar books.
Why does the book on JUST focus on Arms?
As I started reviewing this book, that was the first question that came to my mind. I meant, everyone seems to be moving towards functional and “total body” training styles. These days, isolated arm or direct work appears to be taking a back seat to that type of training. So, is this just a fluff workout without any real value?
Well, below I describe the reasoning behind why direct arm training is advantageous. I think you’ll agree that it makes a lot of sense as you read this.
1. Direct Arm Training Can Help You Prepare for the “Big” Exercises
Do you have trouble fully locking the bar out at the top when you bench press? The triceps are primarily responsible for that top range of motion. You can quickly see results carry over to your big movements by directly working the triceps with effective “assistance” exercises.
Clearly, any movement with a pressing or pushing motion will use considerable tricep strength. But how important is bicep strength? Having strong biceps is critical for exercises like rowing, which involves pulling, and chin-ups, deadlifts, and bent-over rows.
Don’t forget that you can only be as good as your weakest attribute.
For example, if you were to do a bench press and if your triceps aren’t as strong as your chest muscles, you won’t be able press very much. On the other hand, if you make your weak attributes stronger, you will improve your overall power in doing the large presses.
It’s similar for other exercises, too, like chin-ups. If your back muscles are strong but your biceps are weak, your training will be compromised and it will be difficult to perform at your best.
If you want to have stronger lifts, a specific program of bicep training will give you noticeable results.
Before you jump right in, make sure your arm exercises are targeted for the right muscles or you may delay your progress.
“The Best Arm Exercises” is specifically focused on creating strong “assistant” muscles, those muscles that help the large muscles do the powerful exercises.
2. Variety in Training
A book with 68 targeted routines will provide you with the important muscle exercise change-up you need. Muscle development requires constant change; otherwise the strong muscles will get stronger while the weak muscles remain weak.
Nick does this very well and even states that his routine contains only about 75% of the more common routines like bench presses, squats and dead-lifts, the exercises you probably already know. As important as those are, the other 25% contains a mix-up of his own unique exercises, in the proper order for concentrated development.
You absolutely must be consistent in your method in order to see huge results; just doing random routines could actually do more harm than good.
According to Nick you pick a few exercises and take your time perfecting them. Use them to work your arms and biceps and notice how it feels for you. In most cases if an exercise is good for you you’ll notice some results fairly quickly. Pick the exercises that feel the best to you and give you the most noticeable changes then slowly add in other exercises in a rotation; this develops a complete regimen.
These routines in The Best Arm Exercises are excellent though some will work better for you than others. Experiment with the routine until you find the set of exercises that is most effective for you. Then “rinse and repeat” your way to a buff body.