I’m on week 5 of the General Strength & Conditioning 1 template. I’m trying to broaden my sense of what’s available to me in terms of GPP arm work, and would love to hear what sorts of things others do for it.
I do one day a week at the gym where I currently superset straight barbell curls with triceps push downs. Plus one day at home with dumbbells and superset hammer curls with overhead triceps extensions.
^^ That’s what I do. Barbell Curls with tricep push-downs (using resistance bands). I workout in my basement so i don’t have a lot of options for accessory work. Also, I really like Myo Reps for arms. Get it done quick as i’m a busy guy with job, kids, etc… Being able to accomplish all of my arm work in such a small window of time is awesome. Since i’m doing a lot of chins and pullups for my upper back GPP, i don’t feel i need to do a whole lot for arms anyway. Back in my late 20’s i did enough isolation arm exercises to last me a lifetime. Arms were same size then as they are now doing myo reps 1-2x per week.
Triceps: There are two very good reasons why you’d want to mix up what exercises you do for tri’s 1. Different shoulder angles place emphasis on different heads of the triceps.
2. Andy Baker likes to emphasize trying to set some kind of weight or reps PR every workout for assistance work, and rotating out which variation you do is a big part of this. So if you aren’t switching around what triceps exercises you do, you might not be getting the best hypertrophy response across the whole muscle, and there is a possibility that for hypertrophy if you don’t switch around how you load them, the exercise variant’s stimulation/response may get stale.
Andy’s advice is why I took up Dips, which work the tri’s from one extreme of shoulder angle, but I also love overhead triceps extensions. For variety I’ll work in some skull crushers or various pull downs.
If I’m not currently relying on heavy ass rows or pull ups for my biceps work, I’ll do hammer curls, preacher curls, or occasionally isolation curls.
As @gmorf33 says though, I don’t do nearly the arm isolation work I used to do, and they are the same size as they were before I put so much priority on barbell/compound work.
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Superset Rope press down w/ Cable Curl
Supeset Lying Floor DB Ext with Hammer Curls
3 sets 15-10 reps, 90s rest between supersets
I do pretty much the same - I switch exercises regularly (usually to coincide wih general training blocks). I like it because of the psychological satisfaction of (a) experiencing a new exercise and (b) getting that “newbie” effect as progress comes much quicker than it used to with the old exercise.