The Most Effective Arm Workout (100 REPS IN TOTAL)

Check out the most effective arm workout, with a total of 100 reps, designed by Jeff Cavaliere.

Jeff Cavaliere was the head physical therapist of the New York Mets for 3 years and is now a YouTube sensation. He delivers clear information without noise on his ATHLEAN-X YouTube channel.

Most Effective Arm Workout

Why is this called the most effective arm workout? Because it doesn’t count the number of reps you do in total, but rather what Cavaliere calls the “effective reps.” When you are doing 10 reps in a set, usually the first few are not challenging at all and perhaps the last few are the reps that promote tissue damage and muscle growth. Those are the reps that we will be counting in this workout.

Each exercise will begin with an “ignition set” in which you will pick a weight that causes failure at 12 reps or so. So pick up that weight, do as many reps as you can until you reach failure and then stop for 15 seconds.

After resting 15 seconds from your first set of failure, then you begin counting the reps for that specific exercise. Every time you do as many reps as possible until you reach the desired number of “effective reps” – you may take a 15-second pause every time you can no longer perform reps with perfect form.

Before you move on to the next exercise, after you’ve completed the effective reps, you should take 3-5 minutes of rest, Cavaliere says.

Here is the spreadsheet for the most effective arm workout:

Exercise	Effective Reps
Barbell Curls	20
Dumbbell JM Press	20
Dumbbell Crossbody Hammer Curls	20
Triceps Pushdown	20
Chin-Ups => Negative Chin Hangs	10
Weighted Upright Dips => Paused Upright Dips	10

Although you will be doing more than 100 reps in total, you must disregard that first “ignition set” where you reach failure for the first time.

For the fifth exercise, you begin with chin-ups, a great bodyweight exercise for the biceps. You perform it normally until you hit failure. But then, after a 15-second rest, you do not perform the chin-ups any longer, rather the negative chin hangs and only one at a time. You simply pull your body above the bar and fight the negative one time on the way down – descend as slow as possible. Do this a total of 10 times.

The same is true for the upright dips. Firstly you perform the exercise with weights to reach that 12 reps failure (you don’t need to have weights if you reach failure only with body weight). After the ignition set, rest for 15 seconds and perform 10 paused dips by taking longer at the bottom of the movement before lifting your own weight. You should not perform these effective reps with weights.

And that is the most effective arm workout from Jeff Cavaliere. You can also check a similar effective workout for the shoulders here.

If you want to see how to perform each exercise or a better explanation from Jeff himself, click on the video below.