Looking for Ham Hocks for Arms? – Use my three keys
This article is going to be weird, as it comes from a guy with arms the size of…wait…Pee Wee Herman on a diet. Still, I can only work with what I have and what I have is the genetics of a beetle. The information and ideas are still good and will work for you, unless your initials are PWH. In which case, sorry, but keep trying.
First of all, I think that in order to build big arms, you have to think about building a big and strong body. That should go without saying, but it always needs to be said. People always prioritize and focus on big biceps with mountain peaks. The truth for most of us is that attractive, decent-sized arms will come, as the overall body gets bigger and stronger.
I always use the adjective strongest because that should be the measure of progress for most of us. Yes, it’s nice to be able to show off those ripped abs and ripped pecs, but what matters most is that we get stronger and healthier as a result. Perhaps that is the bias of someone who has had to fight for every ounce of muscle (I define it as a hard gainer). I measured my progress by how much more I could push over my head than my measurements were.
And for me that is real life. Real life is being strong. It’s in moving the furniture for your wife without throwing your back, without walking with a permanent bend.
Still, walking around with a pair of ham hocks dangling from your polo shirt, stretching over your door-wide shoulders, is cool. I get it. Now let me help you get it.
Since I’m not a rocket scientist, I just need to keep it simple. Your arm is made up of the triceps, biceps, and forearm. Why is it called that, look it up on the web. Again, keeping it simple, the biceps are in the front of the upper arm with the triceps in the back of the upper arm. The forearm group is the entire forearm.
The biceps brachii is the smaller of the two upper arm groups and has basically two functions. Rotate your forearm and flex your arm toward your shoulder. The triceps brachii is nearly two-thirds the volume of the upper arm. Its main function is to extend the arm.
The first key to having big arms is to get strong. The second key is to build the muscle that is bigger, obviously again, on the right. It’s the triceps that will dictate the size of your arms, not the biceps. More to the point, the hocks hanging off your shoulders as you walk down the boardwalk are all triceps. I mean really, how often do you walk around doing a biceps pose?
In building muscle, all the principles of weight training remain the same. Heavy weight using compound movements stimulates the most muscle growth. You need to rest and give the muscle ample time to recover, and of course feed it nutrient-dense foods.
And therein lies the biggest challenge in building big guns. Yes, you need heavy, compound movements. However, you will never use weights for the triceps extension that can even come close to what you do on the bench press or standing press. In the same way, you will never curl as much as you will row. However, in all those movements of the chest, back and shoulders; the arms are directly involved.
In fact, some suggest not doing direct curls or extensions.
Well, you need to do some tricep and bicep work. All pressing movements will explode your triceps, but that movement is based on the movement of the elbow. Extensions keep the elbow stationary. The same goes for back movements versus curls. Therefore, you need to make arm movements that keep the elbow stationary.
So the third key is to understand the force these smaller muscle groups receive when you work your core and don’t overtrain your arms. After 3 chest swing exercises and 2 or 3 shoulder roll exercises, you just need one quality exercise to finish off the triceps. As an example, I would suggest the following:
– Incline Dumbbell Press
-Bank openings
-V-Bar Dips
-Press seated with dumbbells
-Close-grip upright oars
– Lying EZ bar triceps extensions.
For biceps I would suggest:
-Wide grip pull-ups
-Inclined over rows
-One arm dumbbell row
-Standing dumbbell curls (together or alternate)
So, there you have it, my three keys to building big arms. I didn’t talk about forearms, as that’s a story for another day.
