THE OG: If you want big arms, train legs

Yes, you read that right

Vince’s “Golden Boy” Larry Scott had big arms…

Welcome back, my friends, to The OG, my series on all things Vince Gironda. I sat down over Christmas and really had a good think about everything I could say with regard to the great Iron Guru. Turns out, there’s a lot.

We’ve already had Vince’s biography and two instalments laying out the principles behind his approach to bodybuilding, in both practical and more theoretical terms. After that we looked at Vince’s 8x8 workout, otherwise known as the “Honest Workout,” and how proper breathing technique is essential to being able to perform this workout. Since then we discovered that Vince actually invented German Volume Training (no, he really did), and we looked in detail at his plateau-busting 10-8-6-15 workout.

Now we’re going to look at a little titbit of advice Vince gave about building bigger arms. And everybody wants bigger arms, right?

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Vince’s reputation for giving “outlandish” advice is, as far as I’m concerned, totally undeserved. Unlike so many individuals in the increasingly crowded fitness market, Vince never courted the ridiculous merely to distinguish himself from his competitors. Actually, there’s his “liver pill” diet, but we’ll get on to that in good time, and even then I think there may be a kernel of truth to it.

Other than maybe the “liver pill” diet, everything Vince advocated—from massive egg consumption to increasing the density of work performed—had a clear rationale grounded in scientific understanding and his own experience of training himself and others.

His advice to “train legs if you want to build arms” is a case in point. Here’s what he says on the matter in his training manual The Wild Physique (p.131):

I am a firm believer of incorporating leg work with arm training. You will gain 15 percent in arm size by including leg work in your training. I say this because there are many guys around who just want big arms. They think they will get them by just training that area but it doesn't work that way. Vigorous and regular leg exercise is needed because muscle is developed only in relation to the amount of nerve force present. Leg work generates the greatest amount of nerve force of any single body part. This exercise doesn't have to be done on the days you work your arms. It can be incorporated by using a split-routine system of training.

Claim: training legs before arms could give you a 15% increase in arm size. Rationale: overall stimulation of the nervous system is increased when you train your legs as well, and greater stimulation of the nervous system leads to more muscle gain.

But is there actually proof of this? Yes, there is.

Now, it’s clear that Vince wasn’t working from specific research into the relationship between muscle growth and the training of limbs in isolation or conjunction. I think he was just putting 2+2 together on the basis of his wider reading and knowledge of exercise physiology. By Vince’s time it was already a long-standing belief that, if you want to pack muscle on your entire body, from your chest and shoulders to your arms and, of course, your legs, what you need to do is train your legs. That’s the basis of the famous “squats and milk” routine, which sees the lifter perform heavy 20-rep squat sets and drink a gallon or more of whole, preferably raw, milk a day. Vince had also trained a lot of people, and so I’m sure he witnessed this principle yielding results many, many times.