The right to (bare) arms

People have always given me a hard time about my arms  It used to irritate– no, anger– me when people would insist that my arms were the only body part I worked on.  One of my best friends still teases me.  “Put some sleeves on for goodness sake!” he always tells me.

Okay, the truth is I do like to work on my biceps and triceps.  And even though I’ve always worked on my whole body– after all, one can’t really play college football without at least a little focus on chest, legs, and back–I’ll let the worst kept secret out of the bag; I like doing arms.  Heck, on most days I’ll even admit that I like the way they look.  Moreover, it’s become my signature body part.  Kind of like Angelina Jolie’s lips, “The Situation’s” abs, Frank Sinatra’s baby blues, or Kim Kardashian’s backside.  Well, maybe they’re not quite to those levels of fame and recognition.  But a guy can dream, right?

So Wednesdays, the day I normally do arm work in the gym, is one of my favorites.   But between meetings and a dinner at my children’s school, I was pressed for time.  I only had about 45 minutes, if that, to squeeze in my training.  And like usual, my brain was going to work, thinking “what the heck can I do in so short of time?”  Since I’ve been doing these HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)  workouts, I thought I might do that.  But even that may have taken too long.  Plus, I really didn’t want to get my heart rate up that high.  I’d hoped to go heavier this week since I’ve been doing more cross training lately.  (Us former football players like to still think we’re strong; we’re weird like that.)  But since heavy lifting requires more rest, that clearly wasn’t an option.

So I came up with something that was a little different.  I remembered one day trying to do as many burpees as I could without stopping.  I think I read in Men’s Health that it was a true gauge as to the shape one is in.  So I thought to myself, “What about doing the same thing with my arms?”  A marathon set for each, biceps and triceps.  Just one set.  As many as I can.  And if I had time and remaining energy afterwards, I could do a little more, closer to what I’d do for a normal workout.  That’s exactly what I was going to do.  That’s exactly what I did.

I started with biceps and decided to do standing alternating dumbbells.  I wasn’t sure how heavy to go, since I wanted to go for as long as I could and for a long time if possible.  I decided on using 30 pounders.  For a reference and relative comparison, in case you want to try it, for a normal workout I’ll go as high as 55 or 60 for between 8 and 12 repetitions.  The rules that I set for myself were that I would go for as long as I could without stopping.  Not too fast, but also not adhering to perfect form either.  Once fatigued, I was “allowed” to stop and rest, but not to put the dumbbells down.

Now I ain’t one to brag.  Well, maybe sometimes.  But what I did was pretty cool. Dare I say impressive.

75!

That’s how many reps I did.  75!  With 30 pound dumbbells.

In my mind, I’d set 30 as the target number or repetitions.  “30 with 30’s” had a nice ring to it, I thought.  But I did 30 before having to rest.  I could surely do 20 more for a nice, round 50.  If I broke the next 20 up into four sets of five, it was only five reps at a time.  I could certainly manage that, I thought.  It turns out, I bit off a bigger bite than Id bargained for.  But I chewed it.  It’s amazing how fast and out of nowhere the lactic acid builds up.  When I reached 50, I could barely hold the weights in my hands.  My forearms were on fire, my shoulders burned a little, and it felt like my biceps were going to detach themselves from the bones and ligaments at any second now.  I was about to walk over to the rack and put these darn things down.  But doesn’t 75 sound a lot better than 50?  I agree.  So 75 it was.  And to be honest I could have probably done one more.  You can always do one more!

I took the same plan with me over to the triceps pressdown machine, using 115 (pounds I think, but you can never tell what the units of weights are on these machines, right? )  I did one set of 75 over there, as well.  I really don’t remember at what intervals I stopped and rested; the pain was too intense.  I’d already ripped apart the muscles in the front of the arm and they were providing no assistance in moving any weight.  Making matters worse, unlike standing biceps where the hold position represents little tension on the muscle, there is no position in the triceps pressdown exercise where the muscle is at or near rest.  Needless to say, I rested many more times doing triceps than I did with my biceps. But I did 75, nonetheless.

Each one took between four and five minutes.  Which meant that, including the five minutes it took for me to get the feeling back in my hands and forearms, I had about 20 more minutes to get some work in.

To polish off the workout, then, I did a stacked superset, where “stacked” refers to back to back exercises on the same body part and “super” means any two or more exercises performed back to back without much or any rest.  I used moderate weights so that I could do between 10-15 repetitions.  Here’s what I did:

1. Seated on Medicine Ball, isolated arm pulley curls
2. Standing Hammer Curls
3. Lying on Medicine Ball, isolated arm triceps extensions
4. Triceps Kickbacks
5. Repeat 3 more times for a total of 16 exercises (8 for each, biceps and triceps)