Climb Your Way to Massive Arms

by Bradford Cooke   03/14/14

Here's what you need to know...

•  Rope climbing is a tremendous grip, biceps, and upper body builder that can benefit powerlifters, football players, strongmen, arm-wrestlers, and Olympic lifters.

•  No place to climb? MacGyver your own set-up in a power rack for rope pull-ups or rows.

•  Treat them with the same respect you'd give deadlifts. Rope work is highly CNS dependent and you'll need substantial rest between sets and workouts.

•  Warm-up well. Rope climbing can be tough on the elbows. Stick to twice weekly workouts.

Rope climbing has become a lost art in physical training. If done at all, it's generally reserved for lighter athletes and gymnasts. That's a shame. Rope climbing is a fantastic grip, forearm, and upper body exercise that can benefit strength athletes, Olympic lifters, and even bodybuilders. Climbing is also a mainstay in combat training, as well as being a staple in military and police academies.

Good things happen when the body is challenged to move its entire weight against gravity in a coordinated manner. The rope climb fits into the highest category of neuromuscular activation; it's one of the best "bang for your buck" moves. For years, old school coaches have quietly touted rope climbs as a serious arm and grip builder. The problem is that so few have taken the advice seriously.

Warming Up

Jumping right into climbing cold is a bad idea. Unless you want your elbows and shoulders to feel like you've rubbed them in broken glass, put the effort into an upper body warm-up as you would for any compound lift. Remember, the rope provides a line of pull that's not common. The goal with the warm-up should be to prepare the structures of the elbow to handle this new stimulus. Take this seriously – from experience I can say that when the elbows get touchy it can take up to a year for them to heal.

Beyond your standard upper body warm-up, do some drills that are specific to the hand, wrist, and elbow, such as:

Wrist Rotation: 1 x 15-20 each direction
Sand Bucket or Elastic-Band Finger Extension: 1 x 25-50
Sand or Sledgehammer Supination/Pronation: 1 x 15-20
Wrist Roller: 1 each direction
Band Pushdown/Curl: 1 x 25-50
Light static stretching of the forearm flexors and extensors
Static Rope Hold: 1-2 x 6-8 seconds

How To Do It

There's no right or wrong way to go about climbing. Grabbing the rope at eye height each time dramatically challenges the elbow flexors in the mid-range position. On the other hand, competitive climbers reach for distance, accompanied by leg pumping to increase speed. To minimize body swing, contract the glutes, extend the legs, and point the toes downward, almost like a hanging plank. Your abs will remind you for days afterward. Vary your methods and keep your eyes on the rope at all times. Can't climb yet? Improve your pull-up numbers and relative body strength.

Where?

Despite its benefits, rope work isn't the most convenient of exercises. If your gym already has a rope, great, otherwise you'll need to get creative – scour gymnastic schools, wrestling clubs, high schools, military gyms, and rock climbing centers. Failing that, you may need to MacGyver your own set-up in a power rack for rope pull-ups or rows. You'll still derive the benefits. Also, considering common sense isn't so common, regardless of the set-up it's imperative that the rope is secure and that you have a spotter and a crash mat.

Options

1. Regular: Eventually progress yourself to doing multiple climbs without touching the ground.

2. Lead Hand: Directs most of the work to the top arm.

3. Resisted: Weight vest, dip belt, or anchored band tension.

4. Thumbs Down: AKA the hammer curl from hell.

Implementation

Much like warming up, being conservative (at least at first) is crucial to keeping your joints healthy. The length of the rope doesn't dictate how high you need to go. Your high school phys-ed teacher won't be yelling at you if you don't ring the proverbial bell at the top. Gradually progress your sets at a manageable distance and then work on going higher or moving on to a more challenging variation. For obvious reasons, avoid fatigue and technique breakdown.

Climb as the first compound exercise on your pull/back day or as a standalone workout in place of your upper back work. Treat them with the same respect you'd give deadlifts – rope work is highly CNS dependent and you'll need substantial rest between sets and workouts. Acclimatize your joints to the stress by initially reducing your training volume on vertical pulling, elbow flexion, and grip work. This isn't a high frequency movement. Do no more than two sessions per week.

This is a standalone template that has worked well for improving climbing proficiency.

Month 1 (Volume): 1-2 sessions per week

Week 1: Go halfway up or less for a number of sets, stopping 1 set short of failure.
Week 2: Add a set if possible.
Week 3: Add a set if possible.
Week 4: No climbing.

Focus on slowing down the descent.

Month 2 (Intensity): 1 session per week

Week 1: Twice the distance for half the number of sets you did the previous week. Continue stopping 1 set short of failure.
Week 2: Add a set if possible.
Week 3: Add a set if possible.
Week 4: No climbing.

Alternate back and forth until you can do 8-10 full climbs. From here you can follow the same procedure with a more difficult variation.

Ropin' To Win

If you a want a set of arms that are as strong as they look or if your biceps haven't budged an inch in years, rope climbing just might be what you've been missing. Put those callused hands to good use and start climbing your way to better gains in size and strength.

Bigger Arms – The Unbiased Truth

by Chad Waterbury on October 12, 2010

My first training article was published almost 10 years ago. When I started writing my primary focus was telling people how to get bigger and stronger across their entire body. Articles such as Anti-Bodybuilding Hypertrophy, Total Body Training, and the Waterbury Method became huge hits on the internet with hundreds of thousands of hits. However, I swore I’d never write an arm training article. It probably wasn’t the smartest marketing strategy since 99.9% of guys want bigger arms, but I didn’t care. The subject just didn’t interest me.
Don’t get me wrong: in my late teens and early 20s I wanted bigger guns as much as the next guy. And probably just like you I thought the latest newsstand muscle magazine was going to hold the key to a magical arm routine that would suddenly pack meat on my skinny arms (my upper arm girth measured a pathetic 13.5″ when I started training them). After years of frustration I came to a conclusion that I hold to this day: Curls are curls. Sure, some variations are slightly better than others, but in the end they’re all basically the same. In other words, if you’ve been doing curls there’s not a variation in this universe that will suddenly make them grow.
Yet, I was able to naturally increase my upper arm girth to almost 20 inches once I figured out how to put the puzzle pieces together. Now, before you think this article is going to be a slam against arm curls and direct arm training in general, it’s not. To this day I do some type of direct arm work because it does help. However, it has its limitations and I never would’ve built big arms if I just kept doing curls and triceps extensions.
I can’t blame a guy for wanting bigger arms, and there’s so much misinformation out there that I decided it’s time to break my personal vow and set the record straight. After all, I wish I would’ve had this information back when I was searching for my two tickets to the gun show. So here are the surefire steps that will make your arms grow.
1. “Row up, Curl Down:” This is a phrase I coined when I started training guys who wanted more muscular arms. The concept is simple: all rows and upper body pulls are performed with your palms up and all curls are performed with the palms down when you’re on an arm specialization routine. The biceps can handle a lot more load with rowing variations than with curls, so an effective strategy to overload your arms is by pulling with a hand position that maximally recruits your biceps – with the palms up. For all curls, the palms should be down (wrist pronated) to target the forearm extensors and brachialis muscles – two sets of muscles that are woefully undeveloped on almost every guy.
Strategy: For one month perform all upper body pulls with a supinated grip and all curls with a pronated grip and your arms will grow.
2. Strengthen the Posterior Chain: The collection of muscles that run from your hamstrings to the back of your neck form the posterior chain. These consist of the biggest, strongest muscles in your body. As the Russian strength coaches like to say: A strong man is strong in the back of his body. When you strengthen the posterior chain with exercises such as deadlifts, squats, swings, and cleans it increases the neural drive to your upper arms. Put another way, when your nervous system knows it has a strong foundation of support it’ll allow you to lift heavier loads with your arms. Every guy I’ve ever put on a deadlift specialization cycle was able to make his upper arms grow faster than ever before after adding 50-100 pounds to his pull.
Another effective strategy is to pair direct arm work with heavy squat variations. The front squat/curl pairing is one of my favorites. Perform 3-5 reps of the front squat, rest 45-60 seconds, then perform a set of curls. You’ll be amazed how much stronger you’ll feeling while curling when you do it after the front squat – an exercise that drastically increases neural drive to your legs, hips and core. A heavy reverse lunge works well, too. Pairing the deadlift with curls isn’t as effective since your biceps need to stay fresh while you’re pulling. My friend, Pavel Tsatsouline, is known for demonstrating the immediate neural boost to your gripping strength when you maximally tense your glutes and abs while squeezing a person’s hand. This CNS trick works awesome.
Strategy: Pair direct arm exercises with squat and lunge variations.
3. Fatten Your Grip: Performing upper body exercises with barbells and dumbbells that have a fat grip is a excellent way to add size and strength to your forearms and upper arms. However, it’s always been difficult to find fat grip dumbbells because they’re very expensive. Luckily, there’s an easy, affordable solution: Fat Gripz. This is one of the best training tools I’ve come across in years. Just slip the Fat Gripz over a barbell or the handles of dumbbells and you can instantly reap the benefits of fat grip training. I have my clients perform all curls, extensions, rows, pull-ups, and many deadlifts with Fat Gripz because they’re durable and they don’t compress like many of the inferior knock-offs. You can find Fat Gripz by clicking HERE.

4. Strengthen the Neck Extensors: There’s a direct correlation between the strength of your neck muscles and your overall strength. This is especially true with arm exercises, for reasons that aren’t fully understood. The mechanisms aren’t as important as knowing that it’s another CNS response. When the neck is weak it limits neural input to your limbs as a protective mechanism.
Strategy: Buy a head harness and perform 3-4 sets of 13-15 reps of the neck extension 2-3 times per week and watch your arms grow.
5. Try High Frequency Training (HFT): If underdeveloped arms are your problem (and they most certainly are if you’re still reading this) it’s important to understand that stubborn muscle groups require extreme strategies. If training your upper arms two or three times per week isn’t working, try training them six times per week. Some strength coaches scoff that doing more curls is a waste of time if curls are working to begin with. I understand their argument but I don’t agree. Some muscle groups require a lot of volume to grow – much more than what you’re currently exposing them to. Since biceps and triceps are small muscle groups they can recover quickly and there’s little risk of burning out your CNS when you up the frequency.
The trick to making HFT work is to add your extra arm work at a different time of day than your regular workout. Sure, you can still do arm training in your current routine – let’s say it’s three full-body workouts per week – then you’ll add three more sessions at least 6 hours before or after those workouts.
Strategy: Perform 4×6, 5×5, or 8×3 for curl and triceps extensions variations for 3-4 extra workouts each week.
6. Increase Your Body weight: Fast muscle growth requires you to stay anabolic. It’s very difficult to remain anabolic when you’re consuming fewer calories than your body needs each day during cutting phases. The only time my arms got bigger was when I was trying to add body weight to my frame. In order to stay sane, keep in mind that the scale should be going up when you’re trying to fill out your shirt sleeves. When my arms were biggest I weighed 286 pounds. When I started lifting weights I weighed 160 pounds. So it took a lot of body weight to add six inches to my arms, but the concept can’t be refuted…or can it?
You can add size to your upper arms without putting on a lot of extra body weight but it requires a serious investment of time and energy. Basically, you’d need to start training for the rings event in the Olympics (I’m sort of kidding). Those guys have the best arm development on earth but they don’t have work, school, and family demands. If you’re fortunate enough to spend hours each week on the rings, start doing it. If you’re not one of those guys, start eating more high-quality nutrients.
Strategy: Add an avocado, a few yams, and wild fish to your daily diet.
Stay Focused,
CW

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