Episode 34: Loosen up, or keep it tight?

Ron Harris

It was arm day. This was a very recent change to my training program. My arms, as any of my longtime readers are sick of hearing about at this point, have always been a source of immense frustration and disappointment to me. With any other muscle group, my hard work has always eventually translated into growth, sooner or later.

In the case of my arms, ‘stubborn’ does not begin to describe their resistance to growing into the big guns I have always coveted. In fact, more than one Internet critic snidely noted that at the last Team Universe, I had the legs of a Heavyweight and the arms of a Lightweight. Ouch! The truth hurts, and that remark stung me like dumping hot sauce on an open wound. Sadly, I have seen lightweights with better arms than mine.

I could lie and say I had tried everything over the course of twenty-five years of consistent training to bring up my arms, but it wouldn’t be accurate. Ironically enough, I had ignored the very advice I had doled out on many occasions to others supplicating me for help with their lagging biceps and triceps. I would tell them to train arms on their very own training day, rather than after a larger torso muscle group like back, chest, or shoulders. This would allow for greater energy and focus to be devoted to the arms, which very often resulted in new gains even after extensive periods of stagnation and zero growth. But until very recently, I had only done it myself on sporadic occasions. No time, I figured. Four days of weight training was all I could squeeze into my busy schedule, and I liked to arrange that as chest and triceps, back, shoulders and biceps, and legs. But shortly after Team Universe I decided that my arms had to be bigger. The humiliation of walking around at 225 pounds in the off-season and seeing 150-pound dweebs with arms bigger than me was intolerable. So I found the time. Late Saturday mornings when my son was in karate class, I zipped over to the gym to blast arms for a second time in the week. I only had about forty-five minutes to work with, so I kept my headphones on and was all business while I pumped up my biceps and triceps. Six weeks into my experiment had budged the tape measure a quarter-inch. Big deal, say the young bucks out there still growing like weeds. It was a big deal to me, since that was a quarter-inch more than my arms had grown in close to ten years!

Tri’s were toast, and I was finishing up biceps with some EZ-bar curls, doing several sets with very little rest in between to force as much blood as possible in there and get a skintight, swollen pump. I kept the same 25 pounds on each side of the bar for all five sets, and by the end I had to use a generous amount of swing to heave the bar up, which by then felt like 300 pounds. Over the jarring strains of Rob Zombie on my headphones I heard someone behind me yell, “A ha!” Arms on fire with lactic acid, I eked out one last rep, which was not a pretty one, and set the bar down with a clang before flinging off my headphones and turning to see who dared disturb my sacred quest for respectable guns. Wouldn’t you know, it was sixteen-year-old Jared. I don’t know what he was even doing in the gym. Our high school football team had suffered yet another humiliating defeat the night before, making their record 1-8 as their worst season in recent memory neared its end. We had agreed it was best for him to take a day of complete rest after games, yet here he was, actually pointing an accusatory finger in my face.

“You’re always telling me I have to use good form, and look at you! Those curls are as bad as ones you talk crap about in here whenever anyone else does them. Do as you say, not as you do, is that it?”

He was genuinely upset, and I was also starting to get agitated by his tone. It was time to set him straight before this got really ugly.

“First of all Junior, you saw the very end of the last of five sets of that exercise. The first three sets were all done with excellent form, I assure you. Near the end, I had to loosen up my form to get the reps I wanted.”

“But you were cheating, and you told me cheating was bad!” he insisted.

“I should have qualified that statement. Cheating is bad when it robs the muscle of work or when it puts you at risk of injury, but you can also use cheating as a tool to extend a set and actually work the target muscle harder. That’s what you just saw. There is a huge difference between cheating just so you can use more weight and try to look like a macho man and cheating to get more out of a set and break down more muscle fibers.”

Jared pondered this for a moment. I stole a glance at the clock on the wall and saw I had to get my point across pretty soon before it was time to go pick up my boy.

“So why didn’t you tell me that, then? Were you worried my arms would get bigger than yours?”

That was a low blow. And the worst thing was, his genetics for arms, just like his dad Jeff’s, were above average. His arms would most likely eclipse mine in a year or two at most. Biting my tongue before I sounded angry, I took a deep breath and calmly explained why I had withheld the seemingly precious information from my young charge.

“Knowing how and when to cheat is something that takes a good amount of time and experience to master,” I began. “You need to have a very advanced mind-muscle connection. Remember those DVD’s I let you borrow with Jay Cutler, Ronnie Coleman, and Branch Warren training?” He nodded. “You commented on how terrible their form was a lot of the time. I told you that they can use that type of form and still hit the muscle because they have such a powerful connection to their muscles.”

“Yeah, you said that. It didn’t make much sense to me then.”

“That’s why I want you using strict form now and at least for a while longer, until you are able to use loose form the right way. I also want you to understand that certain exercises are not suited to excessive cheating. Dropping down and bouncing out of the bottom of a heavy squat or bench press is a good way to wreck your knees or tear a pec. Terrible form on barbell rows, deadlifts, or standing military presses will destroy your lower back. There’s more to it than that, but I have to get over to pick my son up in five minutes.” Jared nodded to show that he had listened and understood. I didn’t even think to ask him what he was at the gym for. My thoughts were entirely on drinking my big shake of Optimized Whey™ and 50/50 Plus™ powder, changing into a dry shirt, and getting out of there.

As I walked out of the locker room, I spied Jared over at the preacher curl bench. What do you know; the little sucker was sneaking in an unauthorized arm workout. This was like an obese person grabbing an extra snack between visits to the buffet – totally unnecessary. And he had already peeled off his hoodie to reveal a bright blue short-sleeved Under Armour shirt that showcased his arms perfectly. The last thought I had before stepping out into the parking lot was that they looked bigger than the last time I had seen them, which couldn’t have been more than a couple weeks before. No, that couldn’t be possible. My eyes were playing tricks on me. At least that’s what I told myself to take the dual sting of shame and jealousy away!