When YouTube’s Simple Man accepted a viewer’s challenge to try doing 50 bicep curls every single day for a whole month, he took it as an opportunity to get an arm pump the likes of which he hadn’t seen since he’d worked out as a teenager.
But he wasn’t going to just take on the same mindless motion every single day. To prevent the challenge from becoming too repetitive or boring, and to maximize his results, he changed up his daily workout with different variations. “When it came to my routine, I constantly tried to switch things up, so I wasn’t doing the same thing over and over,” he explains, adding that he would focus on his biceps and triceps on alternating days.
The workout he devised include an array of different arm exercises to hit different parts of the muscles. These included hammer curls, concentration curls, skull crushers, bench dips, bar dips, chinups, pushups, tricep extensions, close grip press, triceps pushdowns, and waiter curls.
He personally found that using the heaviest weights for a lower amount of reps was what helped him achieve the best results. “I started with 25 pounds, around day 14, I switched to 45 pounds,” he says. “When I switched to 45 pounds, I was only getting like 4 to 6 reps before my arms were dead, but by the end of this, man, I was knocking out 12 reps no problem, so I definitely saw my strength grow.”
In addition to the daily 50 curl reps, he upped his calorie intake, focusing especially on eating more protein. By the end of the month, he had succeeded in putting on muscle mass: his right arm grew by .35 inches, and his left arm grew by .6 inches (this greater increase is likely down to him using his non-dominant arm more frequently during the training).
While he saw some gains during this challenge, he adds that he doesn’t necessarily endorse it as a practice. “I don’t think this is the best way to grow your arms,” he says, “I did this because a viewer requested it and I thought it sounded like a lot of fun.”
If you want to try out something new to grow your arms, don’t just go for blind reps. Instead, add volume in a strategic way—like this smart dropset series from MH fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S.
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