get bigger arms with no weights (poor mans arm blast)

A year ago, I tried an 8 hour arm workout I got from a video I saw on youtube. The whole video looked like a supplement ad, but I was sick of having 16 inch arms and wanted to get out of the plateau. I looked up reviews online and everyone said that it was rubbish and would not work. I now realize that these keyboard twerps had never tried it before because I gave it a go and added half an inch on my arms!! in one day! obviously I measured them after a couple of days of healing, crying and therapy sessions. One reason why you have to try something before you make a decision on whether it works or not. Our knowledge on hypertrophy and strength is a lot more limited than people think, we know nothing really.

This is all good if you have ~50kg of plates to be using, but what if you do not have a gym set up at home? or don't want to spend 8 hours in the gym? I am going to give you a few ideas on how to have this effect at home with little or no equipment.

Resistance bands

This is an obvious choice, resistance bands are cheap, cheaper than plates and can be used inside if needs be, or you can bring them out to a field somewhere and be one with nature while you blast your arms. I bought the bodylastics strongman set, which set me back £75. But that's only because I have issues saving up money. Before I bought them, I owned a cheaper set I got from eBay, and they worked fine. I would buy a couple of sets, so the total tension of all the bands is about 200 lbs, just so you can set up the triceps and biceps exercise and do not have to fiddle around with bands. You will have to adjust the exercises to make it work. I would recommend a standing band curl and tricep pushdown for both work out 1 and 2.

Body-weight variations
There are 2 body-weight arm exercises that I would recommend using for this workout. They are both illustrated below, to make the variation harder, for both exercises, just raise the feet up on something. It may take some experimentation to work out what heights are your 10 and 12 rep max before hand.

Tricep blaster:

From this position, push up a bit like a pushup, but keep the upper arm around the same angle as the starting position, it should feel like a reverse skull crusher.

Body-weight curl

 It should look a little bit like this, but you should be directly under the rings, so that the webbing is vertical, if you do not have a pair of rings or a TRX (don't get one, their a waste of money) just use a hanging rope or karate belt and do a hammer curl.

This work out is brutal, give it a go, and you will be rewarded.

Enjoy the gains,
Alex