Barbell curl X 7

by Po Ting
(Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia)

I am an 18 year old college student and I began working out in June last year. My roommates are kind of like my personal trainers and we workout 4 days a week.

It was last Friday and I and my gym-mate were working out on biceps. First, we did 3 sets of biceps chin up (until failure), followed by 3 sets of hammer curl 5kg X 12, 7.5kg X 8 and 10kg X 2. Finally, 7 sets 8-12 repetition of biceps barbell curl with less than 30 second breaks.

We found this so-called FST7 workout from a bodybuilding website.

I am a beginner so I started with 10Kg bar and did 8 repetitions. On the 5th set, I couldn't take it anymore and decreased the weight to 5kg and did 12 repetition. It was still hard as hell.

I felt out of breath at the end of each set and I was screaming all the way. I really suspect this is as hard as giving birth.

My roommate spotted me to make sure my form was perfect. Upper body is slightly leaned forward. The barbell is raised to the maximum and lowered without losing the tension of the muscle.

Swinging and using of momentum is avoided so that the biceps practically do all the work. My biceps have been sore for a few days and I really like the feeling.

I can't say the workout made me stronger overnight but I'm definitely sure it will improve my strength if I keep it up. I will visit the hell again next Friday.

Po Ting

Note from Dr. Dan

Po Ting,

Sounds like a killer workout.

You'll see lots of guys at the gym who are trying to "blast" their biceps. But the biceps are a small muscle and it's easy to overtrain them.

Big arms are appealing. But actually the triceps are the muscles that adds most of the mass to the arms. And you build triceps with pushing movements -- like bench press, pushups and dips.

Dr. Dan