Double-Barrel Blowout!
By Charles Staley
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Taking only as long as you need is the right thing to do in a crowded weight room. But I say it's also the most effective thing you can do. Especially when it comes to building big arms. The reason: By resting for only as long as you need—less in your early sets when your muscles are fresh, more in later sets as your muscles start to fatigue—you'll be able to lift more total weight in the same amount of time each workout. That's the scientific formula for packing on more muscle. And it's literally the quickest way to add inches to your arms. Try it yourself and become a believer.
In the following workout, you'll use a method called Escalating Density Training to train the rest of your body. That's because exercises that work your larger muscle groups stimulate a greater release of testosterone, the key ingredient for maximum muscle growth. So by spending as much time doing heavy, compound exercises—such as squats and presses—as you do biceps curls and triceps extensions, you'll build your arms even faster. The best part: Your weight workout will never take longer than 30 minutes—even though your muscles will be working overtime.
The Workout
How to do it: Perform one workout every other day, resting at least a day between each. So you might do Workout 1 on Monday, Workout 2 on Wednesday, Workout 3 on Friday, and Workout 4 on Sunday. (If you aren't able to do four workouts in a week, give yourself an extra day of rest after one session and do the fourth workout on Monday, continually pushing each workout up a couple of days in the cycle.) Each workout consists of two 15-minute "groups." In Workout 1, Workout 2, and Workout 3, each group is composed of two exercises done as a superset, performing one set of each exercise before resting. In Workout 4, you'll perform just one exercise in the first group and one exercise in the second group. So for any group, the most exercises you'll do is two, alternating back and forth between the exercises for the entire 15 minutes.
Repetitions and weights: For each exercise, use a weight you can lift at most 10 times. Then start by performing sets of five repetitions with very short rest periods—say, 10–15 seconds. As you start to fatigue, increase your rest intervals and drop your repetitions as needed—to four, then three, and so on—so that you're always able to complete each repetition that you start.
Your goal: Simply perform as many repetitions as possible, regardless of the number of the sets that it takes.
Progression: Each time you repeat the same workout, you should attempt to perform more total repetitions in the same time frame. When you can increase your total repetitions of any exercise by 20% or more, start the process over again with a weight that's about 5% heavier.
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