JJ Virgin says skip isolation curls and build arms with compound movements instead. Push exercises like dips and overhead presses hit triceps plus shoulders and chest. Pull exercises like rows and pull-ups work biceps and back. Aim for 20 sets of pushing and 20 sets of pulling per week.
People talk to me and they think JJ must do a lot with just her arms. But when I think about doing arms, I always move into more compound movements. I like to say that I'm training to get better at life, not training to get better at training. If you want your arms to look great, sure, you could spend your time doing bicep and tricep curls. But the reality is, if you're doing things like push-ups or pull-ups or bent-over rows, You're going to be using your bicep muscles every time you're doing a pulling exercise. You're going to be using your tricep muscles every time you're doing a pushing exercise, but you'll also be using other muscles as well. So I prefer to focus on compound movements for the majority of what I'm doing. So here's what that might look like. Upper body pushing exercises, because we're focusing on arms, of course, in this video. Upper body pushing exercises are things like push-ups. A push-up is also like a chest press, right? You could do a push-up, or you could do a dumbbell chest press, or you could do a seated chest press. There are incline presses, there's overhead presses, there's dips. And when you're doing chest presses or dips or overhead presses, not only are you using your triceps, you're also using the front of your shoulders, you're using your pec muscles, you're using your, your trap muscles. You're pulling in a lot more things. So for upper body pushing, you're going to want to do 2 to 3 different exercises 2 to 3 times a week. So that could look like a push-up and an overhead press, or a push-up and overhead press and a dip. You're going to want to be accumulating 20 total sets a week. That's the best for your volume load to build muscle. So what that could look like for you is that you are twice a week doing 5 sets of push-ups, 5 sets of overhead presses, or 3 times a week maybe you're doing 3 sets of dips, 3 sets of overhead presses, and 4 sets of push-ups. But getting in 20 sets total week of your different pushing exercises. For upper body pulling, think of things like a bent-over row, an upright row, a pull-up. And again, same thing here, 20 sets a week. So you could do 2 days of, say, a pull-up and a bent-over row, or 3 days a week of 3 sets of pull-ups, 4 sets of bent-over rows, 3 sets of upright rows. And with upper body pulling, you're using your lats, You're using your rear shoulders, you're using the middle of your shoulders, you're using your biceps. So you're using more than just your biceps.
