I’ve always neglected my arms. My 5 day body part split routine includes an “arms” day. I have always found arms to be downright boring. I guess because it never feels quite as intense because the biceps and triceps are so much smaller than the other muscle groups. My heart rate never gets very high on arms day, even with the heavy weights. For this reason, I’ve found myself skipping arms day altogether. Last winter my 5 day split included 2 leg days and no arms day. I just tossed in some sets after my chest or back workout. No wonder my legs got huge and my arms stayed skinny.
My new split is not a whole lot different than the split I did a year ago:
Monday: Delts (still my weakest link)
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday: Arms/HIIT
Thursday: Chest
Friday: Legs
Saturday: Arms/HIIT
Sunday: Endurance Cardio (90 minutes)
Monday through Friday I do 45 minutes of morning cardio on the elliptical and follow my afternoon lift with 15-30 minutes on the step mill or elliptical. I’ve decided to spend less time on the step mill as it’s been part of the program to bulk up my legs. Now that I’m trying to de-bulk them a little I’ve swapped the step mill for the elliptical.
Okay, so how did I make arms NOT boring? I tossed in intervals, of course! I did 30 total sets of arms and worked them as a tri-set. For example:
Olympic Bar Curls superset Single Arm Tricep Extension superset single arm dumbbell swings. Rest 30 seconds, repeat.
My average heart rate was 152 – for an ARM workout!!! I like to move, I like to sweat, I like to feel like I’m working as hard as I can, so tossing in the intervals was a good thing for me, mentally. Today I kept the interval stuff to single arm dumbbell swings and plate swings (I sure wish Gold’s would get some kettlebells!!!) as I trained legs yesterday and didn’t want to push the legs too much.
And to finish it off…20 minutes of intervals on the step mill, followed by 10 minutes of sprints at 10.5mph.
I’m hungry.
No comments:
Post a Comment