Train Like an Athlete by ATHLEAN-X (Video Podcast)

Here are 8 arm exercises you have never done. Use them to build bigger arms by providing your body with a new stimulus for growth after you have long adapted to the staple arm exercises you have used in every arm workout. There is nothing magical about these bicep and tricep exercises other than the fact that they are going to force you to use your arms in ways you likely haven’t felt before. Often times, this is enough of a spark to get you out of your training rut and kick start your gains again.

In this video, I’m showing you four arm exercises you can do at home and four that you can use at the gym with equipment. In each category, I’m giving you two for your triceps and two for your biceps. You do not have to use all of them in a single arm workout, in fact doing so would likely be too much volume especially if you do your staple arm exercises as well. Choose just one or two and mix them into your workouts accordingly and feel the difference they make.

First up are the weighted arm exercises. Here I show you something called an Eccentric Incline DB Curl. The benefit of this movement is that it helps you to overload the biceps in the eccentric portion of the movement with more weight than you could generally curl out of the bottom of the incline curl. We know that the biceps muscle is stronger eccentrically than concentrically and can therefore handle heavier loads in that portion of the lift. Done traditionally however you are limited by the strength in the concentric portion of the exercise. Do it as shown here however and you get the best of all worlds and greater biceps mass gains.

The elevator cable curl is another great biceps exercise capable of adding size to your arms. The key here is that it allows you to keep your wrist bent back slightly to maximize the activation of the biceps and minimize the dominance of the forearms. Lift your hands straight up to the ceiling for the entire movement and be sure to get your shoulder lifted as well to complete the full contraction of the biceps.

Triceps pushdowns are one of the most commonly performed arm exercises for your tricep muscle however there are different ways you can do them to promote all new gains. The first is the rowing tricep pushdown. Here you want to stand far enough away from the machine so that you have to row the hands into the chest to start. From here, forcibly contract the triceps as hard as you can and pull your arms behind your body. This will not only engage the long head of the tris but also involve your back muscles in a synergistic way to intensify the exercise even more.

The rotational pushdown is an athletic variation of the triceps cable push down that gets the lower body involved to increase the power output of the exercise. Rotate through your foot and drive the arms down to the side to get the core working together with the triceps and increase the amount of weight you can press down. Once again, the long head of the tricep muscle will get an added hit because of the arm traveling back behind your body into extension.

If you prefer to use just your own bodyweight you can do that as well with the 4 biceps and triceps arm exercises shown in the second half of the video. First is the pendulum inverted chin curls. This will allow you to get your shoulders flexed while curling up your own bodyweight for a powerful contraction. You do not need any fancy equipment to do this. Use a simple broom stick and the back of two pieces of furniture to do the same thing I’m showing you in the demonstration.

Wide elbow wall pushups are a lateral head killer that starts with your hands overlapped against a wall