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You want to sell tickets to your own gun show? Well, guess what, you don't have to do one single bicep curl! Blasphemy, you say? Read on my muscle isolating friend.

According to a 2002 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , isolated arm training produced no increase in arm size compared to training with only compound movements.

Lou Schuler explained it this way in The New Rules of Lifting

"Chances are about 100 percent that any increase in arm size in a seasoned ironhead would be accomplished by increases in the size of all the muscles surrounding the shoulder joint-delts,pecs,lats,traps. Even then, the changes in size wouldn't be dramatic, unless the lifter had been starving himself before the program began (thus deliberately shrinking his muscles so that they would grow faster when he started eating again) or unless he had overeaten to the point that he had gained a lot of fat along with the muscle size. Bottom line: curls are mostly for newbies and juicers. Unless you have a specific reason for doing arm-isolating exercises, save your time and energy for other pursuits."

Still not convinced? We did a test study with our very own Joe Rummell. Joe is extremely consistent in his training and eating habits so he makes for a perfect test subject. He also has the physique that every guy aspires to build. He has worked at NPPT since 1993 and I have never known him to have more than 7% body fat with an ideal level of muscle mass.

For 6 weeks, Joe dropped all isolated arm work from his training program. This was not easy for him psychologically because, like a lot of us, he comes from a traditional bodybuilding background. Much to Joe's delight, after six weeks of no specific arm training, Joe's arms actually grew 1/4 of an inch! Why, you ask? Joe replaced curls and press downs with chin ups and push ups at the end of his workouts. Like Lou Schuler mentioned above, an experienced lifter like Joe is not likely to add mass to one specific part of his body without adding size to the surrounding musculature. The extra compound movements probably increased the size of Joe's back, chest and shoulders as well (he only measured his arms for this experiment).

So you want big guns fellas? Spend more time on rowing, chinning and pressing and skip the mirror time with the dumbbells.

Rick Mayo