Anabolic Academy with John Livia: Getting huge arms

How do we get huge arms?
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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Okay. What's up, guys? Anabolic Academy, John Livia. I am solo tonight. And I'll also be solo for Muscle Talk. Um, I did not uh go out of my way to see if I can get somebody to come on with me. And Lee is in Italy, he's six hours ahead, and I spoke to him today, so he's like exhausted. Uh so uh, but it'll be pretty cool because I'll be able to get to all the fucking bodybuilding gossip without any interruptions. But that's tomorrow morning. Right now, it's anabolic academy. I'm your host, John Livia. We are gonna be discussing how to get monster arms today. But before that, I got a couple of announcements. Okay. The first thing is, of course, you guys know uh Jason Owens is uh my good friend, and he is uh doing better uh after several back surgeries and some other issues that he had. He's doing better. He's not out of the woods yet, but I spoke to him yesterday. So every day is getting better and better. His link to his supplement line, iPrave Subs, is in the uh uh description. Please go and click and support and buy something. I did I actually wanted to start a GoFundMe for him, but he uh is a proud guy and he please told me please don't do that. So go and buy something. Use the discount code SNS10. I mean he's got shirts, hats, he's got plenty of good products you could uh take a look. Okay, but the other thing that I want to say is that you know, I I when I started these channels, I never realized how I'm going to influence people. And I it's something that you don't think about when you start a channel, like how you're going to influence people. But apparently I'm I'm I'm doing a pretty good job of uh of uh being a positive influence on people. Um and I hope that continues because today you guys know that if you want a t-shirt, you just message me on Instagram, and as long as you're in the States, uh I'm not gonna charge you for a t-shirt, okay? It's it's gonna be free. All right, if you guys want a t-shirt. So uh one of the guys, and he's a friend, John Mancini from Connecticut, messages me, I don't know, a couple of months ago. He wants a t-shirt. Says he'll pay for it. So you don't have to pay for it. What's your address? I got him to send him the shirt. Okay, I don't even think about it. He messages me back after he gets the shirt and he says, What's your address? I'd like to send you something. And I was like, you don't have to do that. And I totally forgot about it because we're talking maybe a month, two months ago. Totally forgot about that. I had given him the address. Today a box comes to my house, and inside this box are these all these supplements from John Mancini. And I'm wearing the t-shirt from Blackstone Labs. Apparently, he works for Blackstone Labs, and I'm wearing this this t-shirt from Blackstone Labs with with Donald Trump on on the front with the Superman t-shirt. And it also says on the back, it says, make America uh oh no, make bodybuilding great again. And there's two packages, one for me and one for Lee Priest. I'm not gonna take this out. This is so this is uh Lee's package, okay? And John, I promise you that he will receive this. I already messaged him and told him that he has gifts, and when I see him in Nashville, I you have my word that he will receive it. Now, I don't know if he's gonna be able to take a picture and put it up because he's he's gonna be on the contract with other uh supplement companies, but you have my word, he will receive the package. Um, and I just want to say thank you to all everybody that's like been so supportive. Uh it's it's just it's moving, it really is. It's moving because you guys gotta remember, like, you know, I started the body, the bodybuilding channel I started three years ago. The other channel I started several years before that, but the bodybuilding channel I only started about three years ago, and I'm a guy that goes to work every day. Okay, I'm not a professional bodybuilder, I always love bodybuilding. Um, I go to work every day. I literally shovel shit for a living. I work inside the sewer system in New York City every day, and I decided I'm gonna start a uh a bodybuilding YouTube channel podcast. And it's done well so far. Obviously, hopefully it grows and gets better. But when I have people like Holly, like John, like Forrest, and you guys tune in every week, believe me, it's moving and it means a lot to me. So I just want to thank everybody and especially thank John for these wonderful gifts. I mean, he sent me protein and pre-workouts and all different uh shake of cups and this t-shirt. So greatly moved and grateful um that this is actually happening. Very, very, very grateful, you know. Um anyway, all right. So let's get to the topic at hand. That's uh that's actually very nice of you, Forrest. I think that's the only nice thing you've ever said to me. People recognize authenticity when they see it. Now, your next comment is gonna be a smartass comment, guaranteed. Um, okay. Today we're gonna be talking about you know how to get monster arms. Uh we're gonna start off. I'm going to start off in respect to that. We all know how to work out. Um the nutrition thing is on. We understand that we go to the gym and we hit a body part, we do a gym split. This video, I want to make uh like we have a problem growing arms or one part of the army, the biceps, triceps, so on and so forth. Okay. So I've always stuck to the basics, and I've noticed that when I trained arms together, once I started training buys and tries together, I got the best progress with growing arms. Okay. Um you are going to have to see if that works for you. Some people like doing buys with back, some people like doing tries with chest, some people like doing arms together, some people like doing uh push day, tricep, you know, shoulders, chest together. You have to see what works for you. I've just noticed for myself that when I do buys and tries together, my arms group. Okay, there are people that are a lot better at explaining angles and hand placement and putting mind muscle connection into this. And one of the greats, God rest his soul, was John Meadows. And I've always kind of like looked at his content, and I've tried you know plenty of the stuff that he tried that he you know has put out there. Now he was before he passed, John Meadows was on his way to basically being one of the best. Uh, in my opinion, before John Meadows passed, in the gym, the two best were John Meadows and Charles Glass. Those two guys were like in the gym were geniuses. They were perfect for guys that like had a lagging body part and needed to bring them up. And then like you would go to one of those two guys, and they would look at you and say, Okay, this is what we have to do. I mean, they were they Charles Glass has been in the game forever, and John Meadows was just as good. So I started following a particular John Meadows page, and he has a lot of his old stuff on there. I I don't know who runs the page, but they do a wonderful uh job. So he has a lot of good workouts and angles, and he's able to articulate it really well and show you the little things that you can do to get better progress out of arm development, right? So we're gonna kinda I'm gonna kind of bring them up on Instagram and we're gonna check it out, okay? Now it's gonna be a combination, so it's gonna be a combination of uh buys and tries, all right? But believe me, there are some bicep movements and some tricep movements that I guarantee you, once you see this, you will you have never tried. And then once you see this, you're gonna try. If you have trouble growing your biceps, like my biceps were always okay, my triceps were always better than my biceps. If you have trouble uh uh bringing up your biceps, you're good. There are plenty of things that I've watched John Meadows over the years, and I used to uh try them all. And uh some of the movements till this day I still do, okay? So why don't we just jump right into it? Okay, so that's basically what we're going to do today. We're gonna look at some footage and we are going to we are going to see what little things we can do differently to help arms grow. All right, all right, so let's see here. There we go. Share screen right there. Okay, hopefully everybody can see this. So let's start, let's see. We're gonna go basically. All right, let's try triceps first, okay? He does this one incredible tricep movement. Uh it's basically skull crushers, and I've done this with dumbbells. He likes to do it with kettlebells, but he used to like to do it with kettlebells, and he explains why. So here we go.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

So, what I love about using a kettlebell on these is you can get lower and get a better stretch. You're using a dumbbell, you'd literally knock yourself out. So if you can try these with a kettlebell, really good stretch. And I want you higher reps, up around 15, we're at the set on these. This is our fourth set.

SPEAKER_03 11:48

Okay. Um, you know I'm trying to that, I'm trying that tomorrow when I do arms, or Friday when I do arms. Guaranteed, I'm trying that. Because I've always done skull crutches either with dumbbells or uh the easy bar. I've never tried them with kettlebells. But he's he was such a genius in the gym at understanding how the muscles move, hand placement, how to get a better uh stretch, how to get full range of motion. And he's able to articulate, he was able to articulate it greatly. Here's another one for triceps that I thought was just fantastic. Here's another one, okay?

SPEAKER_01 12:24

I love these because look at the stretch. We're gonna move on to a tricep exercise. We're using an assisted chin dip station, and we're doing pushdowns. Make a triangle with your hands. We're gonna do sets of eight. I like these because your chest can help you too, so you can generate more power. It's not an isolation exercise. You can use your chest, your shoulders, your tries, but these absolutely crush your triceps. So we're gonna do sets of eight here. Okay, this is our fourth set. Again, we're doing around eight reps. The goal is to use a lot of weight, but stretch your tricep and squeeze it. So big weight, big stretch, and big squeeze.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

The guy was just a genius. Like I would have never thought to use that. And these are this is what I'm talking about. These movements and these machines that they can you take a look at, and he's great for this. Charles Glass is great for this too. And he's able to take a look at that machine and say, Oh, you know what? I don't have to just use this for dips and pull-ups. I could use this for tricep. Watch this. It's it's amazing how their mind goes. There is so many great minds in bodybuilding. And sadly, we lost him you know several years back. I really wish he was still with us because I guarantee you that if he was still with us, he would have been on par with the Charles Classes, with the psycho fitnesses, with the guys that you go to. Uh I guarantee the elite guys would have been going to him saying, Listen, I have to grow cap my shoulders, I have to grow my back, I have to do that. And he would be able to help. I guarantee it would be uh because he was already on his way. If you remember, he was working with Samson Dowda, he was working with Fouad, um, but during the time when he passed. And then after John Meadows, Samson went to Milos. But uh, okay, so let's continue. I mean, try this one. This one I've actually done, okay? But this is a really great tricep. And the reason why I did this is because my brother-in-law was always more into powerlifting, he was always a big, strong dude. And we would go into the gym and he actually showed me this one. It was a little different variation, but it was great for triceps because he would tell me if your triceps are strong, it really helps your bench. Because he would he used to go into powerlifting contests and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

We're doing a floor press. When I was at uh West Side Barbell, we did a lot of pin presses. Those guys had incredible triceps, and a lot of it was from those heavy pin presses. We're not doing a pin press, but we're doing something very similar today. We're pressing off the floor, the idea being the same thing. You're coming down halfway and you're just using your triceps. The key to using your triceps is going to be your elbows. So if you come down like this, you're still gonna get a lot of pets. So, what you want to do is you want to be rotated like that so you can get your triceps. So, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to keep my elbows in and I'm pausing and I'm using my triceps. This is a good heavy basic exercise. We like to do sets of about six to eight reps on this. Pretty close grip here. You can put your knees up or your feet down, doesn't matter. I'm trying to rotate and keep my elbows in. Now you can see a lot of my reps are good, but a lot of my elbows kind of went out. Your form should look something like that. Three or four sets of these, six to eight reps. I like to pause them and really lock out good. That's it. That's your exercise for today.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

So a lot of guys would do close grip bench and it would come all the way down. I still do them, I still like close grip bench from time to time. But this takes the emphasis off most of your chest and puts it all on the triceps. You see how his mind works? He had a he had a great, great bodybuilding mind that really couldn't be duplicated. Um, there are guys like uh an acido or a palumbo or even Paul, my friend Paul Barnett, who uh the nutrition, the drugs, the peptides, they're incredible, incredible at that. And then there are guys, and the the two I name all the time is um the late John Meadows. And today it would be, I would say uh Charles Glass and uh Psycho Psycho Lewis, right? Psycho Fitness. Yeah, these guys are just fantastic in the gym, they're just brilliant in the gym. Let's see if we can get another tricep one. Um because he had so oh, this is great. Everybody knows this machine, and the way he teaches you to use this machine, everybody knows this machine, right? Okay, here we go.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Now, this machine gives you a really nice stretch. Look at the stretch I'm in right now. It's got my humerus pointed up, that means my long head's got to work hard on the inside. We're gonna work the bottom half of the rep. You don't have to lock these all the way out, so we're just working the stretch, so they're burning. So that's um that's kind of an intelligent way to sequence your triceps. And I've been talking about doing push downs and then dip variations and then stretch exercises as the right sequence to get your whole tricep, but also longevity to keep your elbows healthy because we got to keep healthy elbows. Four rounds of this, so 16 sets. Um, we're gonna do the whole basically four giant sets. So do the one round nonstop, rest for maybe two minutes and do it again. Remember, this is more of a lateral head of your tricep. Then when you get in here and you're locking out, you you start to engage, you start to bring the medial head into play more with the lockout, humorous is pointed up, or you're really stretching, you tend to get a lot of engagement and long head.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

If you guys have trouble growing your triceps, and your nutrition is good, and your rest is good, and your supplementation is good, and you do these exercises the way he wants the way he wants you to do them, it's impossible not to see progress. It's it's impossible. Let's see if we could get one more tricep one and then we'll go into biceps. Because there was one bicep one that I actually oh here we go. There was one bicep one that um I still do to this day, and that I learned from him.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

A seated overhead robe extension. These are phenomenal for the long head of your triceps. So on the inside, right here, when you have your humerus, the bone, pointing straight up in the air, this muscle gets worked really, really hard. So, what James and I are going to do is we're gonna really focus now on the long head of our triceps and get a good stretch. Okay, now let me stretch. Here we're shooting for around 12 reps, and then if you watch what we're doing after the end of your last rep, we're sitting in a stretch for 10 seconds. It's a great stretch. Really open the belly of that tricep.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

You know what's great is that I thought I was solo today talking about arms, but I'm not. I actually resurrected the late John Meadows, and he is my partner today talking about how to train arms. I mean, is he is he was fucking brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

You want to tell someone's really old if they do this exercise? This was the primary tricep builder back in the 90s and 80s. So it's just the old dip between benches exercise. Uh we put 945 pound plates. Yeah, I remember we did these and he had the biggest triceps card anybody ever saw. He wasn't really big anywhere else, but he had these gigantic triceps. But uh these are uh awesome. So here we go.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

I remember. Oh my god. I remember this. All the guys used to do this back in the 90s. We were being in high school when the guys do this.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

And now we'll go to a hammer curl alternating.

SPEAKER_03 21:06

But guys, it I'm telling you, I'm telling you, try these movements and tell me what you think when you do triceps. Because I I I it's impossible not to do these and not see progress, or at least feel it. Now we're gonna move on to biceps. And this is one of the one of the since my biceps never my trouble muscles were always my shoulders, my back, my biceps. Don't ask me why. So back in the day, I used to follow him and Charles Glass, and I still do these bicep movements till this day. Okay, this one was great, the spider curls.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

All right, hi everybody. Thanks for joining. We're getting ready to absolutely demolish. Our arms, take some notes, and get ready for some fun. All right, so here we go. This is what you're going to do: four exercises. One for buys, one for tries, one for buys, and one for tries. Starting off with a hammer curl, she's pinning her elbow into her side, squeezing her biceps. Of course, that works your brachialis too. When you develop it, it pushes your arm out, makes them look wider.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

Okay, you're so the your brachialis is the muscle in between your buys and tries on the side. And hammer curls develops that. And if you grow that, it makes your arm appear even bigger. So it's always a good, it's always a good idea to put some kind of hammer curl in your workout.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Now she's getting a good stretch. Bring it up a little higher. There, right there. She's gonna knock out a here.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

You see how she's when she was doing that tricep pushdown, nothing was moving but her elbows. She had perfect form. And Meadows was a stickler for form. If you ever watch this stuff, and glass is the same way, is a it was all about form, mind muscle connection, the little tweaks here and there that make the biggest difference.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

This was one of the best bicep exercises back in the 90s, and people quit doing them, but we really like them. It's a spider curl. We're gonna get up nice and high.

SPEAKER_03 23:20

I still do these, I still do the spider curl. The spider curl is the opposite of the preacher bend. So you know, when people do a preacher, they have the angle. You turn around and it's all the way down, so you're getting a full range of motion, and they're still great. I still do them to this day. You don't have to go very heavy, you could go very light, you could use an easy bar, you could use a straight bar, but it's a fantastic movement for biceps.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

You may have seen me do before. There, right there, right there. 30 sets of arms in about 40 minutes.

SPEAKER_03 23:57

Let's uh continue with some more bicep movements. His he this guy was just I can't express enough. This guy was a genius and gone too soon. Really, really, really gone too soon. He was just amazing in the gym. Uh, let's see if we can find another uh here we go. Here we go.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

It's just a good basic exercise.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

You pick the bar up, you crack I mean, I these two. I still do uh easy ball curls. Sometimes I do them inside, sometimes I do it outside. Most of the time I do them the way he does it now, standing. Um uh, but uh what you're gonna see now also, I also do, is he does a variation of a drag curl, and I do a variation of a drag curl, and then people are like, What are you doing? You know, you're supposed to have full range of motion, but a drag curl, as he'll explain, keeps all the stress on the bicep. Watch, you'll see.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Curl it. I started doing these kind of the same time I started doing exercise number one for about a year and a half ago. It's um it's a dumbbell preacher curl, but I call them dumbbell concentration curls. No, I don't call them that dumbbell preacher curls, but you use but you use both dumbbells at once instead of just one, you're gonna use two, and you're gonna smash your hands together to create a lot of tension in your bicep. Once you do this, you'll absolutely love these. So both dumbbells at once, smash the dumbbells together as you curl, create a lot of tension. Okay, number three for biceps is the easy bar curl. You can do a barbell curl too if your wrists are good. Sometimes I think we make training a little too complicated. So I think you'd be crazy to not include some good old regular easy bar or barbell curls. I keep them in every single bicep workout I do. It's just a good basic exercise.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

I do the same thing. Um that was the wrong video, but I want to see the one with the um the the uh barbell. I believe is this it? No, it was a drag, it's a uh bicep drag curl, and I still do these. I have to find it because I want to show you guys because it's one of my favorite bicep movements. Um, my two favorite bicep movements are you know alternate curls with the dumbbells and then drag curls. And despite a I mean, I really really um saw progress when I started changing my hand movement a little place and my my hand placement a little bit, and when I started training biceps and triceps together, you guys, you guys, you know, just give it a shot. Now, the one thing that I don't do um is I don't do one bicep movement, one tricep movement. I if I'm doing tries, I'm doing tries, and then if I go to buys, I do good byes, right? And then I go into forearms. And for me, that gave me the best progress. Here we go.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

If you haven't heard me talk about this before, preacher curls and exercise that puts a really hard stretch on your lower bicep. So we want to do these last in the rotation to keep your tendons and ligaments in one piece, and then the lining extensions that we're doing next obviously is something that can be really hard on your elbows if you go first. So notice how we did this. We got our arms pumped up, our joints working well and nice and greased up, and we save these exercises that can potentially strain your elbows and give you 10 knives for last. And now they feel great. So now you can get a great exercise and uh and do it safely.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Alright.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

So that's it for the arm workout. I want you to try it in the comment below.

SPEAKER_03 28:07

I still, I still, I know he did a drag curl. I know he did a drag curl. Let's see. Oh, that's it. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

I hope you're ready to crank on some arms because we're gonna blow them up today.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

Uh I I I absolutely love drag curls. Okay. I I I know people in the gym, if they don't know, if they're not advanced, they don't they think you don't know what you're doing. But drag curls to to build biceps are fantastic. If you guys have ever seen me do once in a while, I put it up. If you have guys have ever seen me do biceps, I always do some form of a drag curl, even if I just tuck my arms in and go down. It the pressure is always on my bicep.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Just watch what we do and then give it a shot yourself. So your first combination you're gonna do today is a push down. And for those of you who've been following my work, you know that I love these single handles for pushdowns. And then we're gonna do a drag curl. We're gonna lean our back against the pole, too. You'll see what I'm talking about. So that you can't cheat.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

Oh yes, you you put your back against the wall, which is the best form. You put I'm guilty of not doing it, okay? I'm not gonna lie. You put your back against the wall, and then you do the drag curl. It is phenomenal for your biceps.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

You're gonna literally drag the bar right up your body. So we're gonna do 10 reps here and 10 reps there to get started.

SPEAKER_03 29:34

Watch how he does this form, and then try it in the gym. And I guarantee you you will at least feel a difference. See how he how he's curling? Very different from a standard.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

This is our last set here. We've been moving real fast. So this is our fourth round. I want you to do four rounds, ten reps on each exercise.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

Oh man, yeah. I mean, the guy is just gone too soon. He really is. I used to watch John Meadows, Charles Glass, the great all the greats. I never got into the influencers. I would watch the greats, I would listen to the greats, I would listen to the Dave Palumbos, I would listen to the uh King Kamales, I would listen to the Asitos where every time he was on uh Dave Palumbo. I would listen to the Milos Sarchez, and then I would watch the footage of John Meadows and Charles Glass in the gym, and it never fails. It's the little things, and I always say this when you have a guy like like Lee Priest, Lee Priest's genetics are one in a billion, not even one in a million, one in a billion. Lee Priest looks at weights and grows, okay? So, you know, his attitude is just go to the gym, eat right, hit it hard. He never really had a weak body part, his legs were massive, his shoulders were unbelievable, his arms were the best in bodybuilding. I mean, he was it was his uh Lee Priest's arms in the the early 2000s were fucking insane. He had a beautiful V taper, his back was phenomenal. I mean, it was just so to him, when you are that that elite level, you don't have to do too much thinking. It's the guys at the third tier, the second tier that actually have to do thinking and put more thinking and emphasis and angles and hand placement just to catch up. And then those guys tend to turn out to be the greatest trainers, right? Because they know and had to study how to build a better chest, how to build a better back, how to build better shoulders. Okay. They're always, always the second tier, third tier bodybuilders are always turn out to be the best coaches. Some of them don't even turn pro, like a Dave Palumbo. They always turn out to be the best coaches. And that's the re I truly believe that that's the reason. The reason is they had to learn everything they possibly could. They had to live it, breathe it, eat it, shit it, just to be competitive. Where a guy like Ronnie Coleman, a guy like Kevin Lavron, a guy like Sean Ray, Lee Priest, these guys were gifted. Gifted, you know, and past the basics, I wouldn't listen to those guys. I would listen to the guys on that John Meadows level, that Charles Glass level level, that Dave Palumbo level, that Chris Asseto level, that George Farrell level, the guys that were good bodybuilders that maybe made it to the Olympia stage um once or twice, right? But then they retire and they are they are able to help bodybuilders move to the next level because they know what to do because they've studied it for so long. Okay. Um that is going to be it for arms. I hope you guys uh to learn something and go into the gym and try the. I'm telling you, mark my words, I'm telling you, try it, try those movements on triceps and biceps. Just try them, and I guarantee at the very least, the pump is gonna be insane. Especially try those spider curls, try those drag curls, try those hammer curls for your brachialis, try those tricep exercises that we we uh looked at. It they are incredible, and he is from one of the best guys that ever lived to do it. So believe me, I try to deliver as much information on Anabolic Academy, even though I was solo, I was not solo. I had the great John Meadows with me, the great late John Meadows with me doing this today. All right, guys, listen. Love you guys, respect you guys, all the love in the world. Thank you again, John Mancini, for all my gifts. I am gonna love I fucking love each and every one of you. All right, guys, until next time, I will check you out soon. Later, peace.