The 8 Best Exercises To Get Strong, Toned Arms | Mind Pump 2435

all right in today's episode we're going to talk about the eight best exercises for strong and yes toned arms let's get to it let's first address what I just said yes let's address uh toned arms Justin has toned arms a toned yeah it's just one singular tone no tone does so that we have somebody that gives us ideas for uh titles that'll get more engagement and this was one of the titles they suggested and I we like the episode of eight best exercises but toned is a madeup word yeah but I want I want to make something clear about that too in the in Jeremy's defense who's responsible for uh sending titles and episode ideas over to us now um I use that in my even as a trainer who understood that like because I UND because it's common vernacular yes because my clients understood that and so there was there was a period of time respond better to that word well there was a there was a period of time as a trainer where I wanted to show you how smart I was that there's no such thing as tone it's a madeup word and all we're really doing is building muscle or losing body fat that's what equals that so it's that needed to be that guy and then there was a part of me who realized like man this is how everybody communicates or defines what they what they think is toned and so instead of me being that guy sure I just I would use that and so when I would be communicating to my my especially my female clients that's typically who asks for toned arms I'd explain them list is what we're going to do we're going to first we're going to build muscle we're going to focus on speeding your metabolism up and then we're going to lean out lose body fat and you're going to see that tone look you're looking for your arms so I would communicate that way even though I knew that it's a madeup word yeah what I mean what's happening with your your arms when they feel harder that's what tone means right people oh it feels harder sculpted would be kind of lean toned is the feeling they're just building they're just building to a smaller degree so toning uh is the same as building and so the exercises that we're going to talk about um today are the ones that in our experience training people for over two decades um not just training people but training trainers uh running gyms um uh these are the best exercis these are the ones that give you the most bang for your buck and that's what you want right when you go to the gym and you work out even if you love spending time in the gym most people would pick a more effective routine over another and part of what makes a routine effective besides sets and Reps and programming which is all very important are the exercises right those are the actual ingredients and some exercises are just really really good at building muscle or sculpting or toning and other exercises not as much so we pick the eight best ones I also want to address even though this is about the exercises right which we'll get to and listen I want to make it very clear too though that when we do these incredible exercises for building and toning your arms it's also very important that you feed your body correctly in order to repair build strengthen adapt and get that muscle good luck building if you don't have the What It Takes materials and so why why this is so important to communicate is because so many of my clients that wanted toned arms were also the clients that also wanted to lose 30 pounds of body fat or lean out and so they felt like they had flabby arms they had a little bit of a belly and it's like hey I want to lose this body fat and I want to have tone arms and the actual definition of toning is building muscle in that area losing body fat and it's always more advantageous for us to build muscle first to build the metabolism up and then lean out to lose the yeah to makes losing the body fat so much easier so if you if you are somebody who feels like you have flabby arms and you want toned arms the first thing we need to do is to build muscle okay build our arms uh which may result in you staying the same weight maybe even going up a tiny few pounds on the scale which is really scary for some people to hear but ultimately we are going to be building muscle and building your metabolism and then we're going to lean out and that's going to give you what that that tone look that you're trying to desire 100% yeah great Point um all right so so before we get into the exercises um let's talk about the the categories of exercise or why we pick the ones that we picked now the first thing is to talk about um compound lifts so for people who aren't familiar a compound lift is a lift that utilizes more than one joint during the lift so you're using two joints for example a pushup would be a compound exercise because it's my shoulder and my El double joint a a single joint exercise or isolation exercise would be the other category of exercises and these are ones that essentially just move one joint so a compound lift for my shoulders for example would be an overhead press elbows and shoulders an isolation uh exercise or single joint exercise for my shoulders would be like a lateral raise now the reason why I'm bringing this up is because when we talk about the big especially the the the the muscles of the trunk but also even the legs when we talk about the best exercises everybody knows generally speaking that compound lifts are just better right a a a barbell squat for example is going to build your quads better than a leg extension why because a barbell squat among other things is a compound lift if I talk about the chest for example a bench press is going to develop your chest more than a cable fly why because among other things the bench press is a compound lift so this is true for all the muscles until we get to the arms and for some reason people don't don't realize or consider compound lifts for the arms especially the biceps and this just isn't true there are phenomenal compound lifts for the arms and it's really in how you perform them and we're going to talk about some of those exercises um we also talk about elbow position this is also very important uh how do I know which exercises to pick from well it's not just which exercises it's also which exercises you combine in a workout and really the most important thing to consider when you're working your arms out when you're looking at different exercises your elbow position and I don't mean in inside you know close to your body and and and you know coming out but rather next to your body in front of you or overhead and there's exercis that work all those different elbow positions then we have tension points which we'll get to and then ham position which really matters for biceps not so much I feel like the compound lifts is the biggest point of contention with the Bros especially uh which I don't really understand but I I understand to the point of uh you know isolation exercises and their worth and this is sort of the realm of like I'm trying to build and sculpt you know very specific um and develop very specific muscle groups however there's a lot you can gain in terms of muscle uh when you work just exclusively on compound lifts and to deny that fact is pretty hilarious there's a couple Reasons Why by the way one is uh people say with the overall tension yep on the muscle so you know if I did a bench press versus a cable um FL there's just I'm I'm pushing more weight than I'm going to fly right but the other one is this really I think it has more to do with the central nervous system if you tense a muscle as hard as you can it will contract harder when other muscles contract at the same time so I've used this example in old episodes but uh if you were to squeeze your hand as hard as you could but have to keep everything else relaxed including your face so everything has to remain relaxed and all you do is squeeze your hand as hard as you could and then repeated it but allowed yourself to squeeze your body and tense your face you would squeeze stronger the second time around so I think compound lifts just turn the CNS on more so you're going to activate more muscle fibers maximizes your Force output which is a a tangible number that shows Your Capacity so your body is going to respond to that higher number of force output versus a smaller number so that's in turn uh you know going to communicate that fact that you need to build more muscle you know I've always tried to to come up with a great anal I I still have never come up with anything better than I think with s speaker yep said years and years ago on this podcast about using the analogy of speakers and the amplifier and speakers being your muscles your amp the amplifier being at CNS anybody that understands uh what makes a speaker you know or a stereo system work it's the you know the amplifier the and the speakers are the two main components of what makes loud music come out of there and you know you if you have big huge subwoofers and you have a weak amp you only get so much there no PO that's that's right and same thing goes the other way you this crazy uh you know amp but then you have these tiny little speakers you you you get the most out of those little speakers but there's so much more potential right so they both kind of work synergistically to with each other and they both add value to each other and so if you think of every exercise has a an attribute to making the speakers better an attribute that makes the amplifier better um when you think about compound lifts it gives so much to both where in isolation exercise it's really good with you know focusing on the speaker and the muscle side but not the greatest with on the CNS side so you just don't if I had to like you know an exercise had a value to it and I had have to say oh this gets four points and this gets four points or there's total eight points to give up this one gets four this one gets four and a good compound lift this one might get you know only three or two and then this one only gets one in these isolation exercise and so I just think that that's what is missing when trying to communicate to people uh why you still want to do compound lifts even for the arms yeah you're you're if if however many muscle fibers you can activate in your biceps they will more will activate because you're also activating other muscles in the body and it's just the way the central nervous system works it fires more powerfully when it's firing to more places than when it's firing to just one isolated place now unless you're super Advanced uh because very Advanced bodybuilders probably can do this 99% of people can't do this it's like I'm not going to be able to activate my chest as much with the fly as I can with the bench press and so compound lifts just deliver incredible results and this is true for the biceps and the triceps as well then we talked about elbow position changing the elbow position of exercise makes a muscle more or less stretched out and the way that muscle fibers slide along each other it means the the tension is going to connect differently at different points so a preacher curl versus a barbell curl versus a concentration curl they're going to work the bicep a little bit different and then tension points right do is the weight heaviest at the top of the movement or at the bottom of the movement or in the middle of the movement depending on where you know if I'm using a machine or free weights or my elbow position um and then lastly hand position this one I wanted to cover because a lot of people understand hand like how you rotate your hand affects how you work your bicep so you could if your hands are neutral or facing down or facing up right super pronated or neutral Works a bicep differ in fact if you look at your arm while you rotate your hand you'll see your bicep move around cuz part of what your bicep job is to do is to rotate the hand triceps no effect whatsoever you could you could do all the rotating your hand and grips whatever all you want but if you're all both positioned the same place it doesn't matter so I've seen people do like tricep press down 50 different handles it's all tricep press down and and and I think the one of the most important things to note on that is the is the novelty of manipulating the strength curve yes so if you always trained your biceps with your elbows positioned in the same place all the time well then the body gets adapted to that and then what which is also by the way why and we haven't even listed off what the first exercise is for the bicep which is a chin-up right it's a great it's a great compound lift for the Bice nice supered grip or reverse grip and part of why I think it's so awesome it's one of the thing obviously to the point have we've been making this whole time is it's a compound lift and so you're getting this big central nervous system thing I also think it's because it's a very uh novel place to do a bicep curl from so very few machines or very few people do bicep curls like this yeah you know pulling down in this position fully stretched out position just not a lot of there's just not a lot of position and and it's not traditional traditional is you grab dumbbells or a barbell and you stand up or you sit down and you curl by your side or maybe you're on a preacher bench in front of you rarely ever do you curl that position so not only you curling that position but you're also doing a compound that's why I think it's a banger yeah super grip chinups if done properly which I'll get to in just a second is one of the hardest heaviest most incredible bicep exercises you'll ever do it is the mass builder of bicep exercises and nobody does them for biceps except for very rarely do I see this and I remember seeing this for the first time I saw somebody with phenomenal incredible arms years ago doing these and I saw the way he was doing them I thought he had bad form on his pull-ups or his chin-ups but he told me no this is for my biceps and then it made all sense so when you do your chin-ups or or your super n grip for your back you want to lead with your chest stick your chest out really pull with the lats when you're doing this for your biceps you roll your shoulders forward and you're curling yourself up you're squeezing the biceps close to your body and it will destroy your biceps in fact you know 80% of people listening to this won't be able to do more than three or four reps in that way uh which makes it a heavy bicep exercise you could use a a an assisted uh you know weight machine like a Gravitron or whatever assist the pullup machine to do this but give this a try that super grip at the top where you're curling on the way up and you're not leading with your chest but kind of bringing your chest down so you're getting full B bicep squeeze this is gnarly and we'll take the place of like five other bicep exercises it's also a really okay so um isolation curls machine curls prer curls I just don't ever see myself getting a lot of value out of doing singles doubles or triples oh yeah but this is actually an exercise for your biceps that I could go in and do two or three two or three reps that's it and it's okay uh like it's going to stimulate the bicep like a whole like it's a whole different yeah weighted it's so there's not a lot of things that I will do in the single double triple range for the bicep or the tricep this is and then the tricep example you have coming next is what I would also would say this these are ones that I would even consider doing three Reps for totally uh loaded like a strength exercise by the way arm wrestlers do these all the time arm wrestlers we do the two arms and one arm and uh I mean we don't have to argue how arm wrestlers have incredible biceps and forearms all right for the triceps for a compound lift hey sorry to interrupt look we have a free guide how to get rid of flabby arms in it we break it down we give you the steps on how to get your arms from flabby to sculpted and toned again it's totally free here's the code go get it parallel bar dips uh is one of my favorites uh it's a body weight exercise you can add weight around your waist um it is uh responsible for some of the most amazing looking triceps you'll find anywhere and I you know a close grip bench press would come close yeah but I think because of the position of the bench press and how people have to get in position with their with their wrists and I think dips on a on a parallel bar uh are better and your elbows need to be in in your body and you need to sit somewhat upright as you go down the more you lean forward with your chest the more your elbows flare out the more it's a chest exercise if you're somewhat upright elbows in at your sides now it's a tricep exercise and this one like you said Adam you can go heavy on this you know like three four five reps right weight around your waist and it just it does an incredible job Tri yeah you know you you know I've always been a huge fan of the you know incline uh close grip bench press for my triceps um it's it did wonders for my arms uh but I still agree with you that this still takes the C for and I I think that has to do with the ability for you to kind of Contour to your body more because you're not you're not on this holding this fixed bar versus I can move I can flare my elbows in or out I can grab a wider or more narrow on like parallel bars uh I also can go really deep so B you can go down the bar you can go deeper that's my favorite part of it incred range of motion coming out of that so it's probably why it wins just barely over the the close C bench press I would do this and make sure you get a real hard full extension squeeze at the top that's how you going get those triceps to really get activated now those by the way those two exercises I just said you can all you ever those yeah literally if you just did those well we you you would you would develop great viral videos we ever did is an example of us discussing this and there was in our editors back then attached the video to a gymnast you remember yes so there was a gymnast and that we were making the case for bicep curls for for Pull-Ups for biceps and they're a great example I mean you have gymnast and not to say that none of them ever do any bicep exercises but no but the the the strength training exercise they do in relation to what we're talking about are pull-ups chin-ups pull-ups all the time now they do their iron cross which is also incredible tension on the biceps but gymnast have incredible biceps they almost always have their muscle up is basically both of those combined see you have the false grip and you're you're getting it really close here and then you transition into a dip that's low there's very few sports or things that we talk about that you can point to a body part or a body on them and be like Oh They'll every one of them like this I guess there are some like Sprinter you'll never see a sprinter with skinny legs right you'll never see like not at the elite level right you'll never see an Elite level sprinter with small legs you'll never see a g n with small arms like they'll always have muscular defined buff arms and you can't you cannot not attribute that to the pull-ups and the dips that they have to do in their routine and you're totally right Justin the the the way that they do their um chin up is uh the way that I described earlier on their par on their Rings it's it's very close because they have to come into the bar it's a transitionary move you got to keep it in really tight all bicep I've worked on that for quite a bit really difficult yeah but the but but dips parallel bar dips for for your triceps and it's great because you don't need a lot of equipment for something like this um and it's just one of the best act there was there was there was a period of time where this is all I did uh for my triceps and I always got great results um from this do you have any old beefy video of you doing that I'd love to see a video of you I remember when you were doing that stuff yeah I probably do you have to dig in the archive and see if you got some really old I'll be like yeah I remember when you were doing those young face yeah bad bad teeth young face okay all right next up these are exercises where your elbow is by your side so for biceps now this exercise you're going to you're going to recognize everybody talks about barbell curls there are they are great basic muscle building exercise for the biceps and the starting position and even through the rep is elbows by your side now barbell curls uh most of the tension is at the middle of the rep so when you're doing a curl obviously at the bottom is not very heavy because you're not going directly Against Gravity but once you come halfway up this is where the bar is about as heavy as it's going to get until you pass it and then it gets a little lighter so the the tension point is mid uh contraction and the elbows are at your side so the biggest point that I have to make with this this uh this point or this exercise um and I'm doing this right now talking about this on the docu series right now is uh you know quality is so important yes um this is an exercise that is a staple exercise for biceps but it's also one that is often cheated where people uh roll their shoulders or Rock their Rock their elbows to get up and because of the point s's making of like this when it's when you're right at the middle is like where you're at Peak stress on the bicep if you use momentum to get through that part uh it turns into a shoulder exercise shoulder and forearms end up working as much or more than the biceps do and all in pursuit of saying oh I curled the 35s or the 45s now it's like man this exercise I used to do this really strict pull my shoulders back I used to love doing a split stance and I would just take my time real slow with the tempo and keeping those elbows stick what a good point because when you have the you had the reverse grip chin up you have the parallel bar depths and so long as your form is good going heavy is really important with those with this this exercise bar bar curls you're better off making the exercise feel heavy that's right in fact somebody who can make 40 lbs feel like 80 lbs will get better results than someone who takes 80 pounds and tries to make it feel like 40 lbs with bad technique and form so whatever weight you can you can make feel heavy and stay within your desired rep range which is probably going to be anywhere between I don't know 8 to 12 or 15 you want to go as light as you can to make it feel as heavy as you can um that's the best results you're going to get out of a barbell curl I want you guys to explain that a little bit more for the functional people out there uh just mainly cuz like if you think of it there's a way to intentionally make something more challenging more intense and you can do that by adding a lot more tension within that rep but maintaining really good form and Focus S so obviously no rocking of the body standing very you know steady and straight and then squeezing the hell out of the biceps all the way up all the way down never losing tension the entire time even at the full extension I'm not relaxing my arms but I'm keeping tension in the bicep and at the top I'm squeezing my biceps at the top and the tempo was nice and control 4 second Down 2 seconds up it's funny you brought that up did you see the comment that was in the on the my bench press technique when I was teaching that on the docu series so a functional guy got on there right and I you know the you where I'm explaining an incline press how much I like it because it retracts and depress the shoulders because of gravity and you want to be in that fixed position as you press you don't want to roll the forward and engage the shoulders and the triceps in a movement like that well a functional guy gets on there just like well this is like old this is old information or whatever and I made a comment about why would you want why would you limit the movement in the shoulders you know functional would mean you want to and I'm like well no I bench press to build muscle I do things like Indian clubs and handcuff of rotation there's exercises I do for shoulder mobility and shoulder Health there's exercises I do better tools for that job that's right and then there's exercises that I do to build muscle so here's an example what I would say to a functional guy is like we're doing barbell bicep curls not for the functionality we're doing it to build your biceps and if you want to build your biceps we want to keep strict tight form hold up if you're a functional guy and you're talking trash about a bicep curl you got you got to like really deep it's not in the LI it's not in the top you know 50 exercises of functional exercise it is specifically a muscle growth hypertrophy exercise that's right so do it like you're supposed to not trying to make it feel light but rather trying to make it feel heavy right now for the triceps elbows to the side tricep press down so this is a good classic everybody's done this you can use a bar you can use a rope whatever works better I like a V bar I like a V bar because it allows for the the most uh weight that I could use in the bar it's a nice neutral position for my hands Some people prefer a rope it actually literally doesn't matter I will say this a reverse grip probably the worst grip to do a press down because hold to it it's hard to hold on to and by the way if you feel it more in your triceps with the reverse grip it's just cuz you slow the rep down because you couldn't hold on to anything that that was heavier but yeah just a straight up press down full extension now I see the one mistake I see people with tricep press Downs is a doing kind of what I said with the barbell curls they try to make the we weight feel lighter by leaning forward and kind of turning into a strange looking push-up or two they don't come all the way up when you're doing a tricep press down don't stop you know at parallel it's not from here down it's all the way up all the way down you get so much more of the exercise if you do it that way when we're doing these exercises that are isolation exercises it is about feeling the muscle through the entire movement when we're doing compound we want to move weight we want to move weight we want to and that's so we get those those great intention yes and so the I think for sure what you're mentioning about tricep pushdowns it is the number one I just was in the gym I was at Fitness 19 I made the comment I was in there that's where all the high school kids work out you know what I'm saying so and there's a group of like high school kids like that use the tricep push down right before me and I get over there and I come in behind them and they're probably like half my size right half my age broccoli Cuts right yes Yes actually I made a point to S do you know that the style is back what I used to wear when I was 20 lifting so the now the teenagers coming up it's the big triple X shirts with the belt on and the baggy like like baggy pants big old huge triple come around F and that was like my favorite so I can't wait to wear that the feel and fashion man anyways you know these guys Young say and they were just doing it right before me and I come right behind them and then they moved over to the the SE of row next and I cut the weight like in half you know suck my elbows in pull my shoulders back resist the negative on the way up pause get that full good stretch all the way down like and I could see him like eyeballing me while I'm sitting there doing it it's like man that's when you're doing an exercise like that uh stacking the weight to stack the weight so your delts and your chest gets involved defeats the purpose of why I'm doing if I want if I want chest and delts I'll go do incline bench breast if if I'm over here trying to work my triceps then I'm going to choose a weight that I can hold extremely strict form that I can keep tension in that muscle the entire full range of motion so that's right full range of motion with both those exercises uh so next we have the elbows in front now the best exercise for the biceps for the elbows in front are preacher curls so preacher curls you're on a preacher bench your elbows are in front of you your the back of your arm is sitting on a bench and what you need to do here there's a couple important things to to pay attention to with this exercise first off most of the tension and the preacher curls at the bottom because of the way a free weight is set up on a preacher bench the bottom position is where it's heaviest so don't avoid that part of the rep lots of people do a preacher curl and they avoid the hardest part they cut short because they know if they go down too far they're not going to be able to get the weight up that means go lighter cuz this is all the work down this exercise is amazing with lightweight I love grabbing a 40 PB barbell okay people see me in the gym they expect me to grab a heavier one I love grabbing a 40 pound barbell and getting real full extension at the bottom even holding at the bottom of tension by the way some studies will show that a muscle under tension while stretched or lengthened causes more muscle growth so so you are missing out on the most growth potential of this exercise by far by not doing that full extension the second mistake people make is they bring their shoulders up and back as they're doing the curl in order to get the bar up keep everything in position your entire back of your arm on the on the pad and then just move just bend the elbow but fully extended both both those mistakes caused by loading the bar with more than what you did I mean and you literally just uh described the first one right with the stopping what I did as a kid 100% I my buddy and I cared so much about getting from the the 10 to the quarters to the 35s you know we cared about that more than anything else and we were you we were shorten that that range of motion up just so we could get to heavier weight up and it's like man you were missing out on the greatest part of that exercise and now same thing you'll see me go in the gym and I'll put the little tends on there you know what I'm saying and Go full range of motion even pause in the stretch position come back up yes you're far better off doing that you're going to get so much more of that exercise and then it also keeps the shoulder out of it if you find yourself rocking the shoulder and and you'll feel it a lot of times you'll feel it in that front delt when you're when you're curling with the shoulders and so again we're in a fixed position doing an isolation exercise and just to help just to help you know 99.9% of people don't care how much weight you have on the bar and the people that do care how much weight you have on the bar that matter care when you do an exercise that matters they don't care how much you curl exactly they want to see how much you could deadlift or squat that's when they'll pay attention deadlift or squat but nobody cares for these other exercises and also last point you shouldn't care who cares what they you're there to develop incredible looking arms do it the right way cuz you could always make it easier by doing it the wrong way so it doesn't even count right all right for triceps elbows in front of the body uh Skull Crushers I love Skull Crushers now they're called Skull Crushers because traditionally the bar comes down to your forehead now I prefer bringing the bar behind my head so I like to bring my elbows back a little further coming back behind my head more of a full range of motion it also gives me a little bit more of a stretch in the tricep I get a fuller range of motion by doing it that way and that's just the way I've taught uh I used to teach my clients so I I taught this also this was was on one of the first days um I like doing the body weight version of that on a bar on a bar yeah love I love that for that exact reason cuz it rolls the elbow and you get that full entire stretch on that or I like doing uh the dumbbells dumbbells are great because you can get a full range of motion because it goes next to your head yes like that I'm actually as a kid I always did the the camber I mean but as I got older I realized the benefits of the full range of motion like that the getting the full stretch on the tricep and then moved more to either body weight where I rock my body all the way through it or using dumbbell so I could come all the way by my side point being though the same rule applies to this as the the last perfect form yeah elbow strict by your by your side like that come getting the full stretch taking your time uh getting and again this is another one where you see people shorting the Reps up you know they don't they just come down to 90 or less and then they go back up and extend versus letting it come all the way down in that good deep stretch so let me put it this way if you went as heavy as you could with a half rep and then wait as heavy as you could with a full rep even though they both felt heavy the full rep will build more muscle was and you're using less weight and you're safer and you're using less weight as a result um so Skull Crushers definitely one of the best all right so then I threw in some extra exercises because I gave you three exercises for your biceps and triceps all awesome then I threw in some extras that I thought would give you something that the other ones didn't so for the biceps I wanted to include uh a a curling exercise where the hands were not supinated supinated is when your palms are facing up so most bicep exercises like like this but like I said in the earlier in the episode rotating your hands is also the job of the biceps and so curling a weight with your hands not in the same you know rotated position works the bicep differently hey real quick sorry to interrupt you look we have a sale this month on some programs we have a beginner program map starter it's 50% off then we have a bundle that's different it's called the starter bundle that includes our most popular programs that's also 50% off so if you're interested in that just click on the link at the top of the description below now it's brought to you by a sponsor plunge if you've heard of the benefits of cold water therapy immersion therapy this is where you dump yourself or get yourself into freezing cold water your body adapts and acclimates you increase the catac colomines that burn body fat increase alertness reduce inflammation it's all real the studies show it it does support all the things that they say that it does anyway one of the problems is a pain in the butt to get a big tub fill it with ice the whole deal there's a company called plunge that makes them that filters the water keeps it cold and it's affordable and they look nice go check them out and get yourself a discount go to plunge. comom use the code mine pump get $150 off all right here comes the show hammer curls I like hammer curls for two reasons one it trains the biceps in a neutral grip position it also works this muscle called the the bracha radialis on the top of the forarm very important muscle uh for function also very aesthetic uh when people have well-developed lower arms typically it's the breaker radialis that people notice and lastly this Hammer curl position it's very functional typically when you're grabbing things and picking things up this is the position arguably one of the most functional grips and it's it you don't get a lot of opportunities to to be in a neutral grip position in terms of like being in the gym like there's some pullet bars that like they have handle grips for that but to to be able to curl uh with that position it definitely translates to so many things yes yes and again this is a favorite with arm wrestlers I referenced them earlier but when you look at uh the strength Sports where you have athletes that are not bodybuilders um who has some of the best biceps yeah arm wrestlers are way up there and they probably Hammer curl more than they than they do traditional curl you guys typically uh intermittently uh replace this with another one of the bicep exercises so let's say you're doing traditional dumbbell Curls by your side you've done that for the last few weeks and stuff like that like you know what I haven't interrupted I tend to use hammer curls as an interruptor to my uh like traditional bicep curls that or bicep exercise you know I do hammer curls a little bit more often than that but that's mainly because uh I when I did Jiu-Jitsu Judo a lot of the gripping was in this position here and when I had to pull on someone's ghee my forarm was it was never supinated it was like this so I needed a strong I need to be strong in the neutral yeah I just noticed anytime I was in a grip like intensive uh type of exercise if I hadn't been doing haven't been throwing those into the routine uh I would get like terrible cramping and like you know it would just like speak to me I get knots there so the more consistent I was throwing hammer curls and it helped a lot now for triceps the extra exercise is an overhead tricep extension you can do this with a dumbbell you do this with a barbell you can do this with cables now the important thing with this exercise is the stretch so this is one of the few exercises you'll ever get a tricep stretch an actual stretch in especially the long head of the tricep because of where attaches in fact if you were to stretch your tricep the probably the stretch you would do with your elbow up next to your head um now muscles under tension in a stretch position really grow when they compare tension on a muscle that's not stretched versus stretched the stretched position tends to produce more muscle growth so what's my point with this when you do these don't cut your rep short the big mistake I see people doing with this is like the other all the other ones is they stop short it's like you're why do this exercise if you're not going to get the stretch go down as far as you can get that stretch on the triceps then come all the way up that's the way to do the exercise pick a weight that you can do that with or you're missing out on the best part of that exercise for sure 100% all right we got some questions here uh the first one is how many sets per week should I do for arms that's a great question so you'll see typically on studies total sets per body part per week did you but sorry to interrupt you but did you see the video I sent you that Brandon Carter did that also Dr Mike isrel actually went over some like new studies that actually yeah they actually uh it's a little bit higher volume like for I saw that study yeah it's for Peak and it's I don't think it's the average person no and it was a short period of time yeah yeah so you can definitely ramp up volume in a short period of time and see some gains yeah but generally speaking overall this is also based off our experience guys like how often did you train a client and do more than like nine 12 sets for arms even especially Advanced no I just wanted to make sure I made that point because I know that that that conversation is happening in our they did one was like 40 sets or yeah and they showed that there's POS and I think it's important to our listeners understand understand like you would there's no reason for somebody who is a even moderately experienced lifter to jump all the way to that much volume and even if you did so here's what's important about what we're what we're talking about here so we're going to talk about how many sets per week we'll talk about the data and our experience but also consider that you could go outside of this for short Sprints and that's where you'll see some of the value of these more extreme uh you know applications it's not all the time so there's a study that shows 40 sets for a body part is great right let's do that for a full year and then see what happens for most people that'll fall yeah or let's do that during a in the context of a stressful week with your family and things like a normal week for most people right so typically you're looking at nine sets per you know for biceps or triceps up to maybe as high as let's say 15 or 18 sets now there's two ways to do this uh I know this wasn't part of the question but I think it's far more effective to break those sets up into multiple workouts than to do them all in one workout I think it's way better to do three sets for biceps three days a week than it is to do nine sets in one workout and just work on one the recovery the performance of it all those things the the way I would look at this is uh you're saying a number 9 to 18 I'm going to start a client at nine and it's going to be three times a week so three so three on Monday through so if let's talk about arms three sets of arms on for each muscle group throw three bicep three tricep on Monday Wednesday and Friday and we're going to run that for a while and they're going to see great gains just from that and then maybe we'll we'll inch up to 12 and then so basically adding adding a set to each of those days then we're going to evaluate how their body's responding maybe we ramp up to 15 another month or two later and let me take it a step further I wouldn't even go from 9 to 12 because what we tend to do is think you have to do the same amount of sets per week I have one day that's it four sets on Monday now and three and three you know type of deal that's the best way to kind of scale this up and then back and back down you know as you start to feel like you're doing too much but that's generally how many sets you want to do per week plus also consider biceps and triceps are getting worked when you work shoulders and back and chest so they're getting lots of additional volume and even though this wasn't part of the question I want to add this to this point since we did a good job of going through all the elbow positions what a great way to do this is take those exercises Monday you do one elbow position Wednesday you do the elbow position and then Friday you do the other elbow position so now you're you're maximizing the elbow positions of the bicep and the tricep and Andor a compound lift a and then you're spreading out the sets over over three days next question is uh is it necess NE to do isolation exercises it is not necessary now you'll probably living proof of that yeah once you're yeah that's true look at this well so so are CrossFit CrossFit Outlet CrossFit I mean I think maybe some started to do bicep curls cuz all the tears that were happening and stuff yeah but I mean they they built some pretty killer physiques just from deadlifting pull-ups you know squatting stuff like that it's probably a good idea you know like it in that regard too for performance and even like powerlifters as well it's just like they've noticed you know if there's a weakness there susceptible to injury yeah but you don't have to you know you you'll get 90% of of the gains you're ever going to get by never doing isolation exercise but adding another 10% with some isolation exercise is not nothing so I think if you're a total beginner I mean when I would train beginners people who are working out in the first year by the way that's a beginner your first year of consistent strength training so beginner isn't just I just started today it's literally I've only been working out for three months or four months consistently so yeah you're strong you feel good in the gym you're still a beginner you're a beginner for about a year maybe even up to two or three years I would consider someone a beginner in that period of time uh I I would have people never do an isolation exercise for a full year it was like all compound lifts and everything developed phenomenally it's after that when the isolation exercises probably start to get more important the next question is what do you think about bfr great Blood Flow Restriction Training or occlusion training this is a great tool a really weird novel way of inducing muscle growth and so for people aren't familiar if I was going to do this on my arms I would take a knee wrap and I would wrap it around the top of my arm tight enough to where I could feel the blood being exuded right now not not so tight where I go numb but tight enough to where I feel like I'm uding some blood and I'm getting like a little buildup there and then you go and you do some sets of biceps and triceps and what you'll find is because the blood can't pump out because you're including so the blood can't come out all this waist buildup happens in the bicep and the tricep and the burn is for lack of a better term intense it's actually way worse than intense it's nasty yeah and your strength goes down real fast like by set two and three you're using weights that you could normally juggle and the studies show that this induces muscle growth do I think this is uh in the same universe as traditional exercise no but as a tool to like as a novel tool is a way to rehab it's phenomenal uh in terms of like if you're limited in range of motion but you still want to be able to stimulate your muscles build strength there you know this is a great option to have totally well there's two there's two main ways that hypertrophy happens right you have the psychop plasmic hypertrophy which is the volumizing of the the muscle bellies right sitting fluid and everything there which this is maximizing that then there's the you the tearing the breaking down of lifting musib the muscle fibers what you get from heavy loading and lifting so I think why it doesn't compare to traditional strength training is you can with traditional strength training you can get the best of both worlds I can get a cyop plasmic pump and I can break down I've experiment mented with it and it doesn't it's not the same I tried replacing you know traditional but it's a great way to compliment I'm a big F you throw in a little bit of it you'll see some games and we wrote a guide on this a long time ago so if you look up mine pump guide bfr is it bfr guide or inclusion guide inclusion yeah we have we have a guide for this we also have a free video on our YouTube channel that Sal you might find old Sal and Adam on there we did that was one Young Sal Adam you mean yeah yeah look like our kids like my son is doing this video yeah bfr very interesting I think as you become Advanced it can become more valuable and for Rehab purposes is actually pretty good all right I know you like that episode if you did check this one out 30% body fat for men this is way too high this is actually a bit high for women as well so in today's episode we're talking about how you can go from 30 to 10 what is 10% body fat this is when you have a visible six-pack can you go from 30 to 10% yes it's possible but not if he guesss along the way so we're going to talk about how you can do that in today's episode now there's a huge range right of like body types some people can run uh a little bit heavier uh or a little bit higher body