An Economic Arm Schedule- Eberhard Schneider (1978)

Are you a hard-gainer who fizzles out on the champions' purported marathon workouts? 

Do you want to have bigger arms, yet can see no point in enslaving yourself for hours on end until your nerves feel like overstretched expander cables? 

Here is a tough but very brief  arm schedule embodying the most sophisticated training principles to jolt your arms into new growth. Supersets, negative work, pre-exhaustion, burns -- you name it, and the schedule has it. 

The need for toughness is self-explanatory: Doing what you have been able to do for the last dozen or so training sessions does not tax your muscles beyond their present performance capability and thus lacks the element of progressiveness. No one can hope to gain from such maintenance work. 

The need for brief programs has long been elucidated by Arthur Jones . . . 

library of some of his articles and papers here:

http://www.arthurjonesexercise.com/home.html 

Long workouts use up most of your recovery ability, thus depriving your body of the very energy which it requires for overcompensation, i.e., strength and muscle gains. This, too, is the reason why you should not train a particular muscle group more than twice a week: A hard schedule tears at your tissue, an if your organism is not afforded sufficient time for cell repair, you will end up looking like a long distance runner. 

Should that be your goal, you might as well skip the rest of this article. 

Anyone who tries this routine for the first time will find his arms quivering with exhaustion and feeling taut from the pump. But the pump is not extreme, and the delightful thing is that the trainee will be, apart from his arms, completely recovered about a half an hour later. 

There is one very important point which cannot be stressed too strongly: The keyword of this program is "economy" which, in this contest, is interpreted as 

maximum-possible dividends of muscle 

from minimum-necessary investment of time and energy.  

Economy in this sense is only practicable, however, if the trainee has already built some basic muscle bulk with basic exercises. [square one first, idiot]. Anyone who wants to try the schedule should, therefore, take an honest look at his own standard. 

If you cannot squat and bench press with bodyweight on the bar for at least a dozen easy reps, then this arm schedule will do you no good. You'll get sore arms, all right; but what is the advantage of sore arms when they don't grow because the foundation isn't there? 

This applies particularly to the shoulders. Increasing deltoid size via presses and upright rows is an absolute prerequisite for continued arm growth, or have you ever seen a melon-sized arm dangling from a tennis ball sized shoulder? So, if you are a rank beginner or near to new to this, train for all-round strength first instead of trying to hang 18" arms on a 140-lb. frame. Such science fiction is simply not realizable. 

Note: have a look at something like this three part article by John McCallum: 

https://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2009/04/gain-weight-to-build-your-arms-john.html 

Or straightforward, basic gaining layouts like the ones included here: 

pdfcoffee dinosaur arm training

Start the program with one set of seated presses with a light weight. 15 reps should not even find you winded, but they warm up the shoulder area and, much more important, the triceps tendons just above and around the elbows. Personally, I do even more than that: I lean forward against a windowsill and press out 10-15 very light reps in a sort of close-hands pushup. As the inclined posture leaves most of the bodyweight resting on the legs and puts no appreciable resistance on the arm muscles, this warmup movement does not drain any energy; it is exclusively intended to grease the injury-prone elbow region. 

The first arm exercise is the standing EZ-bar curl with a slightly more than shoulder width grip. Arthur Jones would probably like to rip my head off for propounding the sacrilege of not using a straight bar. 

But do it before you ditch it. 

The special quirk is that the movement is not the same as in the normal barbell curl, where the elbows come forward at the completion of the curl, but that the elbows are kept back as far as possible all the time. This assures tension in the biceps throughout the whole range, and there is no slackening effect in the top phase of your curl. Moreover, the EZ-bar forces your brachioradialis to work more than does a straight bar, which makes for better forearm development, and you need no extra exercise for this purpose. 

Remember . . .

So, take a weight that permits just seven very hard, concentrated reps; which means: Concentration in the concentric AND eccentric phases.  Now it's getting more intense: When the barbell hangs there without the slightest willingness to go up for another full rep, swing it up with a wild cheat and, with the elbows still held back, let it travel down very slowly for about 3-5 reps in negative fashion. More will be impossible, if you really concentrate. This gives you 10-12 reps in all, and your biceps will feel rather beat, because they have been forced to work beyond their normal performance capability. 

As this exercise is highly anaerobic in nature, your organism will try to make up for the oxygen deficit, and you should be somewhat "air-hungry." If not, then you have not grasped what hard work here is and would be better off with golf. 

After a rest of one minute, start with lying triceps extensions, lowering the EZ-bar over and behind your head with a close grip an with the upper arms held parallel throughout the movement. 

Choose a poundage that, again, permits seven concentrated reps. Most persons stop here and wait for the ensuing pump to make itself felt. But in this schedule the exercise goes on beyond that point. Without letup or loosening of the grip the trainee pulls the bar over his face and onto the chest, only to press it up in a sort of close-grip bench press, and then lets it travel down the old route of regular triceps extensions. 

In other words, the positive part of the exercise which the trainee finds momentarily impossible to perform is replaced by a combination of bent-arm pullovers plus close-grip bench presses, while the negative part is carried on along the regular lines, until the weight nearly falls down, because controlled negative action becomes impossible. This should happen after 3-5 of such negative reps. 

You might think that the triceps have had it, but this is not the case, and, consequently, the exercise is not finished yet . . . 

Without giving the triceps any rest you pull the bar over your face and onto your chest for a last time -- and then do close-grip bench presses with your elbows held out. When full reps are becoming impossible -- this should happen after 4-9 reps -- do partial movements near the lockout position (burns), until the bar comes thundering down and does not budge an inch. Then, and only then has the triceps exercise come to an end. 

The problem now is how to get the weight off your upper body. 

You'll find a way and figure it out. 

Thus, you have three triceps training parts rolled into one continuous exercise:

1) regular triceps extensions;

2) negative-only triceps extensions; and

3) close-grip benches plus burns.

This threefold combination goes far beyond anything that your triceps could normally manage and gives a terrific growth stimulus. 

The second (and last) biceps exercise is the standing one arm dumbbell concentration curl performed in a bent-over manner and with a heavy weight. But again, that's only half the story. 

When you have done five very concentrated peak contraction reps, and another full clean rep is absolutely out of the question, you simply push the dumbbell up with your other hand and then let it down in a slow, controlled negative fashion for 4 or 5 more reps. Your biceps will start screaming for mercy, but even when the negative reps are becoming jerky, the exercise is not through yet . . . 

Without delay you pronate your hand to the halfway mark so that the palm points to your body and then switch over to one arm bentover dumbbell rows. With the assistance of the bigger muscles that effect the lat row movement, the biceps is forced to work even more. This is the pre-exhaustion method developed by Robert Kennedy and popularized by Arthur Jones. And exhausted your arms will be! After 10 reps of lat rows the dumbbell will literally fall out of your agonized hand. 

You will need at least one minute's rest before you can work the other arm fully in the same manner. And after that you will be breathing almost as heavily as after a set of hard 20-rep squats. 

Here, you have three biceps training parts combined into one continuous exercise: 

1) regular peak curl;

2) negative-only peak curl; and

3) lat rows. 

If you should suspect that after such an ordeal your biceps have really had it, you are ever so right. Or, you got that fuckin' right, pal. 

The last exercise is a reiteration of the triceps combination already performed. Use the same poundage, but do not be surprised if you cannot squeeze out the same number of reps as in the first set. 

Finish off with a light set of deep-breathing flyes or straight-arm pullovers with 10 or 15 lb. dumbbells to stretch the ribcage. 

To recap: 

1) Warmup of the triceps tendons. 

2) EZ-curls, elbows held back, 7 reps, followed by 3-5 negatives. 

3) EZ-bar triceps extensions, lying, after 7 reps do 3-5 negatives, followed by 4-8 close-grip benches plus burns. 

4) Bentover peak or concentration DB curls, after 5 reps do 4-5 negatives plus 10 lat rows. 

5)Same as 3. 

6) Light breathing flies and pullovers for the ribcage. 

The whole schedule does not take more than 20 minutes twice a week. Again, before you embark on this compact arm-specialization schedule, be certain you have laid a solid foundation already. After a maximum three months on the program, go back to your all-round strength training on the basics and build up a little more . . . and continue to alternate between these two schedules, three months each, until you're happy with what you've achieved. 

Enjoy Your Lifting!