Strength coach and Athlean-X founder Jeff Cavaliere C.S.C.S. regularly shares workouts and training advice aimed at fostering sustainable muscle growth with a focus on good technique. In a new video on the Athlean-X channel, he shares five common mistakes which might explain why you might not be seeing the progress you want in your arms, and offers up some simple solutions.
No direct arm work
A common misconception is that you can adequately train your biceps and triceps through your routine compound movements across a traditional push/pull split—but if your goal is muscle growth, this probably won’t be enough. “That may not be the best approach, because you’re simply not getting enough direct arm volume needed to grow them maximally,” says Cavaliere.
Instead, he recommends incorporating moves into your workouts which primarily engage those muscles, such as standing dumbbell curl, spider curl, waiter curl, overhead extensions, and cobra pushups. “The additional volume not only helps us grow bigger biceps and triceps, but more aesthetically pleasing,” he says.
You’re not making the most of the strength curve
In order to get the most out of your arm day workouts, Cavaliere suggests doing exercises which complement each other in terms of the strength curve. In other words: the point of the movement that is most difficult. For instance, a barbell curl is hardest in the middle of that motion, while a spider curl puts the most tension on the biceps at the upper end: doing both of these will fill in that strength “gap” and hit the short and long head of the biceps.
Your idea of overload is “one-dimensional”
At its simplest, progressive overload is about adding more weight to an exercise over time to continually develop strength. But that’s not the full story. “Arm exercises don’t have that capacity for simply adding weight,” explains Cavaliere. “When’s the last time your standing dumbbell curl increased by more than 5 pounds?”
A more realistic way to increase overload on arm day is via technique, rather than load. For instance, performing a set to failure, dropping the weight, and repeating the exercise to failure again. Alternatively, mechanical dropsets allow you to continue doing reps of the same exercise at the same weight after hitting failure by simply switching to a more efficient position or variation.
You’re moving the weight wrong
It’s not enough to simply move the weight through space when doing a curl; you have to be contracting it through space. “Of course your arm contracts to get you into that position, but I want you to contract your bicep into that position,” says Cavaliere. “Flex it as if someone just told you to make a muscle, and you have to make the hardest muscle you ever did… Now do that with a weight in your hand.”
You’re lifting too light—or too heavy
“You don’t do one or the other, you do both,” says Cavaliere. “You need to make sure that sometimes you’re mixing in heavier weights, even if it’s in the 3, 4, 5, 6 rep range, it’s going to be good for stimulating growth.” He also recommends doing “cheat” variations using heavier weights, such as the cheat curl, which introduces momentum to the movement and enables you to do more eccentrically overloaded reps.
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