15-Minute Arm Workout

The Workout

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The Explanation

If you thought it was impossible to train just one muscle group in 15 minutes with sufficient volume to promote real size gains, I'll go one better than that: here you'll push the envelope and hit two muscle groups in under 15 minutes. And rest assured, this is no half-assed  arm workout where you do a couple exercises and get on with it. When you finish this workout your arms will be so pumped and sore that it will feel like you've been training them for over an hour!

This workout uses the popular superset technique, which involves doing two exercises back-to-back with no rest between them. And no two opposing muscle groups are better suited for superset training than the biceps and triceps. They're easy to do at the same station, so you don't lose the equipment/machine you're working on. And the opposing movements help to enhance muscle strength and result in such a massive pump that your arms will feel like they're going to explode.

You'll start the workout by supersetting barbell curls and lying triceps extensions. You can use either a straight bar or an EZ-bar for both – whatever you prefer. Load the bar with a weight that allows you to get about 8-10 reps on barbell curls. Complete as many reps as possible to reach muscle failure. Then, immediately lie down on the flat bench and perform a set of lying triceps extensions with the same weight taken to failure. Do three supersets in this fashion, resting less than one minute between supersets. On the third superset, perform a "super" drop set by immediately dropping 20%-30% of the weight from the bar and going immediately into a final superset of barbell curls and lying triceps extensions.

The next superset will consist of cable triceps kickbacks with behind-the-back cable curls. Choose a weight that allows you to get about 15 reps on kickbacks and cycle through three sets on each arm by doing kickbacks on the right arm and immediately supersetting with behind-the-back cable curls on the right arm. Then do the same on the left arm and immediately switch back to the right side. Continue in this manner until you've done three sets for each exercise on each arm. Your arms will be blasted after going through these two superset pairings non-stop. But you're not done...

You'll finish the workout by supersetting dumbbell hammer curls and dumbbell overhead triceps extensions. This is fairly straight forward. You'll need a set of dumbbells for the hammer curls and one heavier dumbbell for the overhead extensions. Set up your dumbbells at a low-back bench and go to it, resting less than one minute between supersets.

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