5-Minute Finishers To Build Powerful Arms

Finishers are a great way to fully exhaust muscles at the end of a workout, helping to increase their endurance, capacity and size. 

Powerful arms are something a lot of athletes seek for aesthetic reasons, but they’re also a key component for performance in a lot of cases.

There are loads of good finishers that you can use to give a boost to your biceps and triceps at the end of an arms session, or a full-body strength session for that matter.

But finding one that you enjoy and that works well for you can be a challenge. Here, Built for Athletes provides three options. 

EZ Bar 21s

An EZ bar is a great tool to isolate your biceps and this particular exercise is a fantastic method of exhausting the muscles. 

Do seven reps from the bottom curl position, bringing your arms up to a 90-degree angle from your torso. Then, with no rest, go straight into seven reps of bringing your arms from a 90-degree angle until you have full flexion of your elbows. Finally, do seven reps using the full range of movement.

Max Rep Press-Ups

This is essentially a drop set of press-ups. While press-ups, of course, target the chest, your triceps and biceps get a good working over too - the biceps while you’re lowering yourself to the floor and the triceps when you’re pushing back up. 

It’s pretty simple - start with decline press-ups until you can’t do any more, then move straight into a set of neutral press-ups until failure, then go for a set of incline press-ups. You can set a timer for five minutes and aim to complete as many rounds as possible.

Curls For Time 

Dumbell curls are the go-to exercise for most people when it comes to building their arms, and their biceps in particular. This finisher uses lots of variations of curls to really challenge different parts of the muscle.

Do 30 seconds of the following exercises and rest for 10 seconds in between: reverse grip curls, dumbbell curls, hammer curls, and drag curls. Do two rounds, back to back. That’s a total time of 5 minutes and 10 seconds including rests.