Chad A. Martin's Fitness Journal
I would like to introduce myself to the Washington Sports Network community.
My name is Chad A. Martin, I am a 9 time Natural USA Heavyweight bodybuilding champion, 3 time Gold Medal World champion, Advocare Endorser, featured on the Bowflex X2 commercial, and currently featured on Good Morning Northwest (GMNW) fitness segment throughout most of WA.
Over the next few months I will be writing tips and techniques for weightlifting and fitness for WSN community.
Any ideas or topics that you want to discuss, you can contact me through email or my website.
www.chadamartin.com
Journal Entry #3
5/15/10 Arm Blaster
Obviously one of the most used workouts in the gym is the arm workout. Over my twenty years spent in the gym I have seen many mistakes made by beginner and intermediate lifters. These mistakes consist of improper form, not knowing appropriate weight boundaries, and especially overtraining.
Tip #1
My first and foremost recommendation for training arms, which ends up surprising a lot of people, is to give them their own day. The old stand by of doing chest and triceps together, and back and biceps never worked for me. I always found that by the time I just did twenty or more sets of chest my arms were too tired to get a good workout. They always felt weak, and they were. Many times we forget that a lot of compound exercises, such as bench and pull-ups use more than one muscle not just chest or back, and by the time that workout is done the arm is too tired to work.
Tip#2
The other mistakes I see in the gym is the form of the exercise. If your doing the standing barbell curl for the biceps, then keep your back straight, elbows still and at your side. What I typically see is guys doing almost a clean and jerk, which strains the lower back and effectively only uses about ¼ of the bicep. Finding the right amount of resistance combined with almost perfect form will increase the chances of good arm gains. Also, performing supersets (alternating contradictory muscle groups) will increase the intensity of the workout and bring more blood into the whole area. Not only a physical boost, but a mental one from the nice arm pump.
Tip#3
Overtraining is what it sounds like, too much training. The old saying is that you don’t grow in the gym, but outside of it when you are resting. Your goal is to tear the muscle in order for it to use protein for the body to rebuild it bigger. But a common mistake I see is that guys will get in and think more is better. If I do fifty sets of 12 reps then my body has to grow. Not exactly, prime repetitions for muscle growth fall in the 7-12 category, and my advice is to pick four-five exercises for each area for each body part, and do 2 sets per exercise, except on the first exercise I would recommend 3 sets, the first being light around 15 reps to warm up the muscle properly.
Exercises-
Standing- Barbell Curls, Dumbbells Curls, EZ-Bar curls
Machine/Cable Curls- Single handle, straight bar, EZ bar,
Seated- (Incline\Preacher\bench)-DB, BB, EZ
Arm Blaster- DB, BB, EZ