“Just the arms, mate – they’re the only things on show.”
Sam Worthington’s brief to movie star trainer Simon Waterson for Wrath of the Titans was all about arm muscles. As a general rule, men want big muscles, but especially – sometimes only – big arms, and especially – sometimes only – big biceps. As the Encyclopedia Britannica notes, the size of the biceps is “a conventional symbol of strength” – perhaps because, being on the front of arms that are often exposed partially (sometimes fully), they’re also “prominent”.
Biceps curls, especially when performed in the squat rack, have to some smart trainers become a conventional symbol of basic gym bros who don’t know what they’re doing, or care too much about how they look. But whether or not bicep curls – which are perfectly ‘functional’ – are a waste of time depends on the amount of time. As smart trainers will tell you, there are better and more responsible ways to build stronger and bigger arms than Ron Burgundy’s: “1001, 1002…”
“My arms ‘workouts’ are normally like finishers,” Waterson tells GQ. For instance, after a chest session consisting of push exercises that have already partially worked the triceps (if you haven’t yet noticed them, on the back of your arms). With the bigger muscle group out of the way, you may as well. Conversely, you wouldn’t train triceps before chest, he says, “because that’s just crazy”. And you wouldn’t be able to, say, bench press as much.
And while you’re there, says Waterson, you may as well also hit your still-fresh biceps, which by this point will feel like a treat: “It looks great, it feels good.” Similarly, after a back sesh he’d finish off biceps, already partially worked by all those pulling movements, then hit triceps.
Triceps get less attention than biceps despite making up as much as two-thirds of your upper arm. Waterson likes to hammer the ol’ horseshoes – not his terminology – with rope pushdowns, pressdowns or even pulldowns from two different angles. First, facing the pulley, elbows tucked into your sides, splaying the rope as you pull, press or even pull it down – without leaning forwards, which is cheating. Don’t rush either: count three seconds down, squeeze at the bottom for two seconds then control the weight back up for another three seconds.
Then, the other way: literally, facing away from the pulley, your body hinged at the hips and the rope moving from above your head, just behind your ears, to out in front of you – an overhead or, as Waterson calls it, “French” extension (mais oui): “Like doing a skull crusher, but stood up.” And with greatly reduced likelihood of, you know, crushing your skull.
Waterson’s go-to for gun show tickets – as used by John Boyega in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, and Jake Gyllenhaal for Prince of Persia – is a “matrix” of three biceps exercises performed back to back. First, dumbbell curls with arms about six inches away from your legs, which Waterson believes puts more emphasis on the biceps and in a more natural anatomical position, reducing your risk of ‘tennis’ elbow. Then pistol or hammer curls with palms facing each other.
Finally, medial and lateral – or internal and external – rotations. With your arms by your sides and bent at 90 degrees, palms facing up, move the dumbbells as far apart as you can, keeping your arms right-angled, then bring the weights back in until they kiss. Good for your posture and rotator cuff, these rotations also work your biceps isometrically – that is, statically – throughout, says Waterson: “And they’re great for forearms as well.”
Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy built on Waterson’s arm muscles matrix by adding triceps or bench dips with feet elevated to raise the intensity. For even more, says Waterson, hold the top position for three seconds while looking up, almost behind. And feel free to add resistance. (Thanks!)
Along with press-ups and lateral raises, bench dips were part of Tom Hiddleston’s “matrix of finishers” for Kong: Skull Island. For Dr Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch did bench dips wearing a weighted vest, having earlier done bodyweight dips on parallel bars (all in a park near his London home).
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Dips are “a great barometer” of strength, writes Waterson in his book Intelligent Fitness, which details his stellar clients’ training programmes: “There is no better feeling than being able to dip your own bodyweight repetitively.” I’ll take his word for it.
Pull-ups completed, Cumberbatch finished off his biceps with curls on a TRX suspension trainer: the closer you stand to the anchor and more you lean back, the harder, and vice versa. For No Time To Die, Daniel Craig alternated TRX curls with palms facing him and rows with palms facing each other (in a minimally equipped cave in the rock-carved city of Matera, Italy).
For biceps, Waterson is also a fan of curls with an EZ-bar, mixing up narrow and wide grip. And one of his favourite biceps moves is a single-arm overhead cable curl: standing side on and slightly away from the pulley, your working arm outstretched at shoulder height then flexing into what’s basically a single front biceps pose. “You’re having to use a lot of core stability to keep you in that position,” says Waterson. Which way to the beach? That. Way.
Waterson’s suggested protocol for arm exercises is three sets of 15 reps. You could in principle schedule a “purist” arms day, he says, but it’s important not to overtrain them, given that they get a workout whenever you train larger muscle groups like chest and back. The time you spend on arms should, like the limbs themselves, be proportional to your other body parts.
And besides, your arms gains will mostly come from the big ‘compound’ (multi-muscle group) moves for your chest, back and even legs: training your gams immediately before biceps has been shown to produce better sleeve-filling results than blasting bis alone. For Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, Waterson had Adam Driver doing dumbbell reverse lunges into bicep curls, which if nothing else saved time.
Ultimately, your arms can only get so much bigger without also having a bigger chest, back and yes, legs. If spending hours repping curls worked then a lot more men in gyms would have big arms – and only big arms.
