Arm and Shoulder Workouts

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Few bodybuilders are made in the mold of Arnold Schwarzenegger anymore. Sure, everyone wants to be the next Arnold, but who could conceivably duplicate the mind-numbing training volume and frequency he achieved? He didn't just train shoulders and arms for 60-plus sets—he did it three times a week with incredible intensity!

That's one reason "The Oak" stood out among his peers. Where others would call it quits, Arnold took pleasure in his own pain. The barometer of a good workout was quite simply how much it hurt. The more, the better.

Arnold didn't just train shoulders and arms for 60-plus sets—he did it three times a week with incredible intensity!

While this kind of volume can't be sustained long-term, it certainly can flip your personal anabolic switch—provided you can learn to love a bone-crushing delt-and-arms workout.

Here's a blueprint of how Arnold trained these body parts!

ARNOLD'S SHOULDER WORKOUT

Arnold trained shoulders with the same high-volume approach he employed with other body parts, ensuring that each deltoid head was targeted from different angles. Because multijoint presses from the front of the neck recruited the anterior (front) delts to a greater degree than behind-neck presses, he typically included both in his shoulder workout for maximal development.

"There's no one exercise that will work all three areas of the deltoids, " Arnold once said. "Therefore, when you're planning your shoulder routine, you have to include the right variety of movements, so that you get full shoulder development."

Arnold trained shoulders with the same high-volume approach he employed with other body parts, ensuring that each deltoid head was targeted from different angles.

His full-throttle approach occasionally meant that he did 50 or more sets in a single workout! Remember, too, that Arnold trained shoulders with arms three times per week—an impossibly challenging combination of volume and frequency that helped build the biggest delts the world had ever seen at the time.

In addition to the multijoint presses, he added single-joint moves to better isolate the front, middle and rear delts.