Question: What triceps exercises should I do for a big bench?
Igor Zavyalov, a Distinguished Coach of the Russian Federation in powerlifting, recommends the following unusual drill. Lie on your back on the floor with a barbell behind your head and do triceps extensions. Rip the weight off the floor! According to Zavyalov, this exercise is meant to build the triceps explosive strength that is a must following the bench press pause on the chest. But you would be smart to start out slow and tight and gradually, over a few weeks, add the acceleration into the equation.
You will have a better control of the bar if you focus on blasting the weight straight up, as if you are benching, rather than towards your feet. When you have locked out – throw the weight back! Yes, throw it rather than control the negative. And do not change your mind at the last moment; you do not want to start resisting a weight that has picked up some serious momentum.
Keep your elbows stationary; the Russian coach insists that you lighten up the load if your exercise evolves into a combo of the triceps extension and the pullover. Do three sets of 6-8 reps focusing on the good form rather than the poundage.
An important point: this drill is for experienced iron rats with pain free elbows. In the golden age of Russian bodybuilding, the 1980s, there was a strong belief that a muscle head had no business doing direct triceps work until he could bench 150% of his bodyweight. At that point triceps assistance helps to blow past the point of diminishing returns; before that it just overtrains the triceps.
The Russian powerlifting triceps blaster.
Rip the weight off the floor!
An important point: this drill is for experienced iron rats with pain free elbows.
Question: Straight bar curls bother my wrists. Should I switch to an EZ curl bar?
You could. Or just change your grip on the straight bar. Let your arms hang straight by your sides and then supinate your wrists, that is make your palms face forward as they do on the bottom of the curl. You will notice that your hands naturally move a few inches away from your body and your fingers point slightly out. Do not touch that dial; go over to the bar and pick it up with that exact grip. Curl. Chances are your wrists and elbows will give you no more trouble.
The elbow friendly barbell curl.
Question: No matter what I do, I cannot get my biceps to grow any more. I have tried biceps specialization, squat specialization, all sorts of shock treatments; all in vain. Any desperate measures for a desperate bodybuilder?
Ease off on your curls and go on an intense grip and forearm specialization routine. “Surprisingly, I also gained almost an inch on my biceps, which now measured nearly 18 inches for the first time in my life,” reported British Dr. Alan Radley in MILO: A Journal for Serious Strength Athletes after an intense stretch of specialization on grip feats. “… Please note as well that this progress is in a guy with nearly twenty years of heavy weightlifting experience…”
Heavy forearm specialization is a powerful old time secret of building loaded guns. Understand that forearm specialization does not mean doing a lot of high rep wrist curls and reverse wrist curls. You need to work the many muscles of the forearm from a variety of angles. Wrist pronation, supination, adduction, abduction, finger flexion and extension… The many degrees of freedom a human hand provides will never let you get bored with your forearm training.
To give yourself a taste of an effective forearm training drill grab a barbell plate in one hand, your fingers below on the smooth part and your thumb on the top. If you cannot find a plate to fit your strength you may sandwich a few small plates, fives or tens, together. Press up with your fingertips and curl! Do not let your wrist bend back, keep it rigidly in line with your forearm.
Go heavy and never do your Popeye work as an afterthought of your biceps work. Train your forearms at least three times a week in a separate workout or together with an unrelated body part, e.g. quads, calves, or abs. The best source of hardcore grip and forearm drills is John Brookfield’s book Mastery of Hand Strength available from ironmind.com. John shows you many unique moves with such common items as sledgehammers and bricks. Iron Mind also offers a variety of top quality grip and forearm training tools.
Question: I heard that old-fashioned Indian clubs are making a comeback and making a splash in the martial arts world. Do they offer any benefits to a bodybuilder?
I have passed your question on to Scott Sonnon, Master of Sports, USA National Sambo Coach who is responsible for the recent renaissance of the Indian club. Here is what I learned.
The clubs originated in ancient Greece and made their way to Persia. There they became favorites of wrestlers and strongmen. India was the next stop; this is where ‘the Indian clubs’ got their name. They were imported into the US from Britain in 1862. John Heenan, a famous Civil War era boxer stated that “as an assistant for training purposes, and imparting strength to the muscles of the arms, wrists, and hands, together in fact with the whole muscular system, I do not know of their equal. They will become one of the institutions in America.” They did. Club swinging went on to become an Olympic sport and endured until the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles where Americans cleaned everyone’s clock. Recently a champion martial artist brought the Indian club back as a sleek Clubbell™ available from www.clubbell.tv.
What can Indian clubs do for a bodybuilder? – “Muscle building athletes use clubbells to get a high-octane pump on the forearms and shoulders because no other equipment targets all four aspects of grip strength: crushing, stabilizing, pinching, and driving strength,” explains Sonnon. “Substitute clubbell exercises for barbell and dumbbell wrist curls at the end of your training. Here’s a super-fast and simple club program to blast your forearms at the end of a heavy day:
Head Casts: 2 sets of 15 – 25 reps
Inward Pendulums: 2 sets of 15 – 25 reps
Wrist Casts: 1 set to failure.”
Pick up the club with a tight grip and hold it like a torch for a few seconds. Tilt the bell towards you and let it rest on your shoulder, then raise your elbow. Keep raising it until it points straight up. Don’t lean back. You will end up in the position similar to the bottom of a dumbbell French press. Before the club touches your back, explode upwards. Hold the bell above you, like a sword ready to fall, for a couple of seconds. Lower the club slowly until it is in front of you and start over.
Swing the club from side to side and diagonally. Grip the ground with your toes and death grip the bell.
Lift your elbow as if you are holding a shield. Your upper arm should be parallel to the ground. Slowly yield with your wrist without moving your arm or shoulder. The club will slowly move towards you until it rests on your biceps or deltoid. Regrip, pressurize your breath, and slowly leverage the club back to the shield position.
Scott Sonnon recommends the above routine three times a week and a name change to ‘Popeye’.
Question: What is the best exercise for building a huge biceps?
It is a matter of opinion. Mine says the wide grip bench press. Before you decide that I am nuts, check out the pipes on the top powerlifters and humor me for a few weeks.
A ‘wide’ grip means the max legal powerlifting grip, your index fingers touching the outside of the power rings. Going wider invites wrist problems or worse. Keep your shoulder blades pinched together. Keep your shoulders down and force your rib cage out. Squeeze the bar but imagine that you are ‘pushing from your armpits’ rather than your hands.
Do these benches for 5x6 three times a week. Limit or eliminate the rest of the chest and biceps work. Measure your pipes six weeks later and drop me a note on the forum.
Question: I hear everyone saying that you cannot build big arms without heavy squats and deadlifts. Is it true?
I would love to tell you ‘yes’ because I like making people miserable, but it would not be true. Although heavy powerlifts will definitely help your big pipe quest, eighteen-inch guns have been built without a squat rack or a deadlift platform in sight. Just look at guys such as national arm-wrestling champion Jason Remer who sports a great bodybuilding physique. Although these days this rare gentleman athlete is serious about training his whole body, a couple years ago Remer won his first national title with no lower body work at all.
But before you let your squat rack get overgrown with spider webs you need to know one thing about Jason’s training. Unlike a typical curl artist who bounces, pumps, and burns with sissy weights and high reps, the arm wrestling champ treats his curls as serious strength training. He lifts heavy, slow, and tight. A perfect and conservative triple with 150 pounds is a routine set of barbell curls for Jason Remer.
One of the top professional arm benders in the Midwest, Marty O’Neal has seventeen-inch pipes at 176 pounds of bodyweight and the height of 5’11”. When I met the up and coming Marty about a few years ago he was wiry but certainly not bursting out of his sleeves. In other words, it is not just the genetics. It is the training: heavy curls plus arm-wrestling which is the ultimate in ‘time under tension’.
The bottom line. Big and strong arms can be built on a narrow specialization program. But there is no way around heavy weights and good form.
