It’s been long buried for decades, seen only in gyms from time to time. You’ll see it tossed in with the clutter near the pins, various handles and bars, and ropes. It is the Arm Blaster. In the past, this piece of bent metal with a single strap was used by the top bodybuilders worldwide. Yet today, we rarely see it in the gym and never see it worn by our favorite bodybuilders in the pages of muscle magazines. What is the Arm Blaster? What purpose does it serve? Why isn’t it used anymore? Let’s learn more!

The Arm Blaster is a great substitute for the preacher bench. Perhaps the bench is always busy, or your gym doesn’t have one at all. Maybe it’s dominated by the bodybuilders who will drape it with their towel and spend their rest times on their cell phone. Or, maybe you just like to train by yourself in the corner of the gym. Whatever the reason, you may find the Arm Blaster to be a great substitute. You can place it over your neck, and it will come to rest on your stomach. At that point you can pick up a dumbbell, a standard barbell, or (most often used) an EZ-curl bar. The Arm Blaster is useful because it keeps the elbows tucked firmly into place. This allows the bodybuilder to prevent any cheating whatsoever. There are times when cheating is useful in bodybuilding training, but this is not one of them!

For training the lower biceps muscles, where the muscle ends and the gap leading up the elbow begins, the Arm Blaster is superb. Pick up a dumbbell which you can normally curl for 8 times with a little bit of swing. You will immediately notice the Arm Blaster forcing your arms into the perfect position. You will not be able to let your elbows flare out, a practice which does allow you to move more weight, as the effort is transferred to the hips and back. Instead, you will be forced to keep them flexed in the starting position. This will let you keep using heavy weight, without worrying about injury as well. Either you can lift is using your own muscle and willpower, or you cannot. It’s that simple.

The Arm Blaster is also effective when completing standard dumbbell hammer curls, which target both the lower biceps and the forearms. Pick up a set of dumbbells, and make sure your elbows aren’t irritated by the angle of the movement. If they are comfortable, get busy curling!

The Arm Blaster is just a tool designed to help you do what you should be doing already – training with good form. If you find yourself regularly swinging the dumbbells around on biceps day, it’s probably a very good sign that you are using too much weight. Scale back your poundage’s by 20%, and you might just discover you are able to deliver just as great a workout to your biceps – if not better – without the use of cheating!

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