Sun's out, Guns out

Ed Coan, one of my favorite powerlifters and one of the greatest of all time, once said “Biceps are like ornaments on a Christmas tree.” As much as I liked this quote, it came back to bite me in the butt. The reason was because in all of my years of powerlifting, I never did any arm workouts, not a dumb bell curl, not reverse curls, nothin’—and any tricep movement was to complement my bench pressing. So when I made the decision to go into bodybuilding, I had to find out a way to get my arms up as soon as possible. I thought to myself: my chest and back are thick of heavy deadlifts and benching, and my legs are big from squatting heavy. So in the same line of thought—if I make it a priority to make atleast one heavy lift for bicep and one heavy lift for tricep on my arm day, they should follow suit and get big. And I was right. First and foremost, I found that my arms respond the best to supersetting, so I definitely integrated that into my program design. My arm workouts are what I would call progressively reversed pyramid sets, meaning I start with a heavy supersets with a lower rep and set range, and with each new superset, I’d lower the weight and increase the set and rep range. Sounds a bit complicated but once you see a sample of my workout, you’ll see that it’s pretty simple: (all sets are working sets) Superset 1 (3 sets): Close Grip Flat BB Bench 265x4-6 s/s Standing Barbell Curls 125x4-6 Superset 2 (4 sets): Seated Overhead DB extension 110x6-8 s/s Close Grip EZ Bar Preacher curl 70x6-8 Superset 3 (4 sets): Floor Skull Crushers 90x8-10 s/s Reverse EZ Bar curls 60x8-10 Superset 4 (drop sets up to 5 sets) Straight Bar Cable Pressdowns s/s Standing Wide-Grip Cable curls The rest between the sets is up to you—for the first super set, and maybe even into the second one, longer rest periods will probably have to happen because you’re going heavier. As you start moving to supersets 3 and 4 rest time should start shortening and it should almost feel like a circuit. Try this out and I bet you’ll get a good response out of your arms. The weights listed are from my last workout log—do what you can to challenge you but try to stay in the rep and set ranges. And every week push your weight up (as much as you can for good form) because that’s the basis of this workout split—lift heavy, get big arms. Danny Quach is a senior at the University of Georgia and he’s studying Health Promotion and Behavior.  He’s a powerlifter at heart and has done it for over six years.  He just competed in his first bodybuilding show in Summer of 2011.  For powerlifting, he holds some Georgia records.  In his first bodybuilding competition, he placed 2^nd in Novice in INBF Southern States.  On his spare time he’s a part of the University of Georgia’s cheerleading co-ed squads; his favorite past-time? Throwing girls around and catching them.