Bri­an Chin Le­ung

?Skin­ny arms on men and women are most un­at­trac­tive. If your arms are flab­by, in ad­di­tion to be­ing skin­ny, then there is cause for con­cern. As a mat­ter of fact, if you suf­fer from this af­flic­tion, it could give peo­ple the im­pres­sion that you are weak and phys­i­cal­ly in­ac­tive. Re­mem­ber, arms are most vis­i­ble at eye lev­el; es­pe­cial­ly when they are in a Car­ni­val cos­tume.

Arm anato­my

The up­per arm is com­posed of two ma­jor mus­cles–the tri­ceps and the bi­ceps. The tri­ceps oc­cu­py two-thirds of the arm and is, in fact, the larg­er mus­cle that con­tributes to re­al arm size; de­spite this fact, most peo­ple flex their bi­ceps when show­ing off arm size. The bi­ceps get the fame, but the tri­ceps are the re­al work­horse. How­ev­er, for great look­ing arms, it is im­por­tant to main­tain mus­cle tone in both the tri­ceps and the bi­ceps.

Tri­ceps train­ing

For men, a pow­er­ful-look­ing arm is a sign of raw mas­culin­i­ty. For women, a toned arm adds to an ex­ot­ic look in any evening dress–just think of Michelle Oba­ma. Most of the time, when you are in a stand­ing po­si­tion, your arms hang in a re­laxed man­ner at the sides of your body. How­ev­er, if you have very de­fined tri­ceps, even in this re­laxed po­si­tion, the cut of your tri­ceps would be most ev­i­dent. The pri­ma­ry func­tion of the tri­ceps is to ex­tend the el­bow (straight­en the arm). As a mar­tial artist, it be­came most ob­vi­ous from very ear­ly in my ca­reer that strong tri­ceps con­tribute to de­vel­op­ing a more pow­er­ful punch; since the tri­ceps are in­stru­men­tal in quick­ly mov­ing your fists away from your body and to­wards the face of an un­lucky op­po­nent.

Try this awe­some tri­ceps su­per set:

Lie on a flat bench and per­form the "busshead" ex­er­cise (ly­ing tri­ceps ex­ten­sion) for ten reps; with­out stop­ping, use the same bar­bell and switch to ten reps of nar­row grip bench press. Af­ter com­plet­ing the bench press, move quick­ly, with­out paus­ing, to dips be­tween par­al­lel bench­es for an­oth­er ten reps. On com­ple­tion of the dips, hus­tle over to the dumb­bell rack and per­form ten reps of dou­ble tri­ceps kick backs. Con­sid­er the above rou­tine one gi­ant set; com­plete four gi­ant sets in your tri­ceps work­out to put them (your tri­ceps) on fire!

Bi­ceps train­ing

Many times in gyms, you see guys with puny arms per­form­ing ca­ble curls, preach­er curls, con­cen­tra­tion curls, etc, in their quest for arm size. These ex­er­cis­es are good for shap­ing your bi­ceps; but be­fore you shape your bi­ceps, you must first have some. There is ab­solute­ly no ex­er­cise like the straight bar­bell curl and dumb­bell curl, if you are look­ing for awe­some arm size. Once you have achieved sub­stan­tial arm size, you can then start the chis­el­ing process with the oth­er ex­er­cis­es men­tioned above. When per­form­ing the straight bar­bell and dumb­bell curl, go as heavy as you pos­si­bly can. Work your arms hard and keep them strong be­cause you may have to grab on to a gy­rat­ing waist come Car­ni­val 2010. Keep train­ing.