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Written by Ron Harris
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Monday, 07 July 2003 |
To say Dave Palumbo is not your average bodybuilder is stating the obvious. With close to 20 guest posing appearances a year plus the fact that Dave makes it to all the major NPC and IFBB shows he can, the fans get to see a lot of this guy. And the crazy thing is that no matter when you see Dave, whether it’s weeks away from a USA or Nationals he’s competing in, or deep in the off-season when there’s no contest in sight for many months, he’s always ripped to the bone. The muscle separations are clear and deep, the striations are gnarly and the veins creep and crawl all over him like angry garter snakes just under the skin. If he were a smaller guy, it wouldn’t be such an unusual accomplishment. But for a man who is 275 pounds of totally shredded beef at only 5-foot-10, you can’t help but be impressed. Ronnie Coleman guest poses at over 310 pounds sometimes without the slightest hint of a cut, as do a few of the top 10 Olympia competitors. Jay Cutler is respectably lean at around 290, but Dave literally looks like he could step onstage and compete in razor-sharp condition 24/7, 365. You hear a lot of haters trying to attribute this to growth hormone keeping him lean, but guess what? I know a whole lot of guys using a whole lot of GH, but not a single one stays as lean as the Anabolic Freak. It’s just the result of a metabolism perhaps one in a million humans are born with.
Diet Secrets of Big DaveIt gets even freakier. Dave only “diets” for four weeks before a contest, and even in that time he still hits Mickey D’s every day or else he flattens out. He has learned a few things about nutrition that he thinks all bodybuilders should be aware of. “I never combine fat and carbs in the same meal,” he shares. “That makes your body store more fat and also kills the appetite when you should be eating frequent, small meals high in protein to get the metabolism going faster. I also think eating too much carbs and fat, like a lot of guys do when bulking up, takes away from the amount of protein you should be consuming.”
No, His Arms Weren’t Always as Big as Your ThighsIt’s easy to imagine Dave was spit out of the womb looking like he does today, but it’s far from true. As a distance runner in college, Palumbo was a scrawny 140 pounds with arms no more than 12-13 inches in circumference. He actually competed for the first time at only 168 pounds after six months of weight training and no running. Eight years later, he stepped onstage ripped at 281, his heaviest ever. Palumbo has since streamlined his waist and glutes and recently has had better placings at 260. The guns have been as large as 23-1/2 inches, and even now they are still only an inch less. Dave insists that along with calves, his arms were the last muscle group on him to grow. “The torso came first, then the thighs,” he says. His arms were a frustrating problem for several years. “I would do heavy barbell curls and never get sore. I did heavy lying triceps extensions and never felt them where I was supposed to, only in the joints and front delts. In fact, they were wrecking my shoulders.” That’s no understatement. Dave actually had impingement in both shoulders and had arthroscopic surgery in 1993 and again in 1996. It was actually after the second surgery that he at last stumbled onto the key to improving his arms.“I had to start training light at first, and I knew free weights forced me to have to constantly stabilize them [shoulders], and I didn’t want any more trouble with my shoulders,” he tells us. “Barbell curls and skull crushers were out of the question, even with light weights. So I started trying different exercises with cables, and right away I noticed I could feel the biceps and triceps working a lot more than I ever had before with free weights. Then I noticed my arms were growing. At first I thought it was just because I hadn’t trained for a while and it was just muscle memory, but soon it was clear my arms really had grown bigger than they had ever been before.” Palumbo has had several other top bodybuilders try his cable routine, and some have had remarkable results. Probably the best example is Dave Watson, with whom Dave also worked on diet leading up to last year’s Nationals, in which he placed second in the heavyweights. “Watson was already a big guy, but his arms were not proportionate to the rest of him,” Dave explains. “He had been doing a lot of heavy barbell curls and close-grip bench presses, which supposedly are the sure-fire exercises for arm mass. A couple of months after he switched over to my routine, he had put two inches on his arms. I think the free-weight basics might work well for beginners, but after a certain point you need to start doing a better job at really isolating the biceps and triceps instead of just throwing heavy weights around.”
Mistakes Most of Us Make Training ArmsAs someone with arms that seem to belong on a guy with 20 to 30 pounds less muscle on his frame, I cleverly used my MD assignment as an opportunity to pick Dave’s brain about the major errors most bodybuilders make when trying to gain arm mass. I was probably guilty of one or more of them anyway. “There are a few things that contribute to an inability to make the arms grow,” the master expounded, for our edification. “First is bad form. A lot of guys cheat and use other muscle groups like the front delts instead of truly isolating the biceps or triceps. Of course, with heavy free weights, that’s practically guaranteed to occur to some extent. “The next area to consider is overtraining. Some guys do 30 sets for biceps, more than they do for legs! Then they go and do that twice a week. The bi’s and tri’s are small muscle groups and they can’t recover and grow from that level of volume and frequency of training. The last mistake is to train the arms after a torso muscle, like back and biceps in the same workout. By the time you finish training back, you just want to go home. There’s no way you can put out 100 percent focus and intensity doing biceps after back or triceps after chest. Unless your arms grow very easily, they should always be trained on a separate day. Put all those problems together and very few guys will be able to get their arms to grow past a certain point.”
Dave’s Arm Routine Can’t Possibly Work— Can It?You will see from Dave’s training split that he only trains biceps and triceps once every eight days, a far cry from many of the guys in these pages who do them twice a week. He also does just three exercises for each, with one warm-up set and two work sets per exercise. And if you’ve already flipped through the pictures in this piece, you’ve seen that everything Dave does for his arms is inside a cable station. I told him sarcastically, “That can’t possibly work, you know.” But arms like this should be proof enough to the doubters among you. If someone this huge gets much better results from just a few sets with cables than he ever did with heavy barbells and dumbbells, there simply has to be some merit to his methods. If your mind is now open and you are willing to listen, here is what Dave does for those monster arms of his.
BICEPS
Single Cable Curl“Biceps are really such a simple muscle group if you really know your anatomy,” Dave says. “All you need to do is something for arm flexion with your palm up for the biceps, and something with your thumb up for the brachialis.” Dave attaches a stirrup handle to the low cable, stands up nice and straight and does a very strict curl. “I really squeeze and concentrate on making the biceps work as hard as possible,” he explains. “I find it amusing when people want to know how much I can lift in this or that exercise because it’s really completely irrelevant. The muscles don’t know how much weight they’re lifting and I can make a moderate weight feel much heavier. These days I’m thinking a lot more about longevity. Dorian trained super heavy and was an incredible champion, but the heavy weights did him in and ended his career prematurely. Ronnie has been very fortunate not to have any injuries thus far, but the heavy squats and deadlifts he continues to do are just thickening up his midsection more and more.” One warm-up of about 12 reps and two work sets of eight to 12 very strict reps for each arm is all he needs here on the cable curl.
Hammer-Grip Cable CurlDave swaps attachments so he can now do the same exercise with a hammer grip. “I can’t emphasize enough how important it is on all arm exercises not to cheat,” he adds. “Always cut the weight if you aren’t doing it right and feeling the exercise exactly where you are supposed to.”
Cable Bar CurlOften, those two exercises are all Dave will do for his biceps, but about every fourth workout he’ll finish off with a bar curl with two hands. “I don’t do these all the time because I think movements with two hands always lead to one arm working harder than the other,” he says. “We all have dominant sides that will take over no matter how hard we try to make sure both arms are getting the same degree of stress.” Palumbo keeps his torso motionless as he curls, never letting momentum or other muscle groups rob his biceps of the work they need.
TRICEPS
One-Arm Reverse-Grip Cable PulldownI found it odd that Dave does this exercise first, since every other bodybuilder I have ever spoken to does it last, almost as an afterthought. I also thought it strange that he calls it a pulldown, though it makes perfect sense if you think about the motion. “This hits that rear head, the part of your triceps that hangs down when you hit a front double biceps pose,” he informs us. “It’s a frequent weak point, and this is really the only exercise that gets that rear head so well.”
Overhead Cable ExtensionNext up, Dave does the overhead extension behind his head. “I never could get this darn exercise right with a dumbbell, but the cables finally felt right,” he says. “These also work the rear head.” If you’re wondering what type of attachment he’s using because you can’t seem to see it, it’s because on these and cable kickbacks he only holds onto the rubber stopper ball. “It’s the only way to get my hand into the proper position,” he notes.
One-Arm Cable Pushdown“The pushdown is best for the lateral head of the tri’s, the horseshoe,” Dave tells us. “I always do one arm at a time to give both arms equal work and also to keep the front delts out of the action. I also stand up straight and never lean into the weight. That cuts your range of motion short.”
Cable KickbacksThis is the last thing Dave will do for his triceps, and it’s what he considers a great finishing move. “You have to go pretty light or I guarantee you won’t do these right,” he cautions. “Keep the elbow high and stationary. I see a lot of guys doing this exercise with a dumbbell and their arms are swinging up and down like crazy. That type of loose form can’t possibly isolate the triceps.”
FOREARMS
Cable Wrist CurlDave also works forearms with cable, and all it takes is two exercises. For the forearm flexors, the muscles on the underside of your forearm, he does wrist curls. “I use my thigh as a sort of preacher bench to stabilize the arm,” he says. These are done with his palms facing up, and only his hand moves, inward toward the wrist.
Cable Reverse CurlThe other exercise is the one you see here, reverse curls for the forearm extensors on the top of your forearms. “A lot of bodybuilders who train forearms only do wrist curls, but they are missing the whole other half of the forearm,” states Dave. Please God, Make Dave a Pro in 2003! I interviewed Dave for this article a bit more than three weeks before the USA Championships in Las Vegas, which marks his fifteenth attempt at a pro card since 1994. “Some guys can tell you every little detail about the shows, but honestly I have done so many now that it’s all a blur,” he laughed. “I have a hard time remembering what city or state some of them were in.” Palumbo admittedly doesn’t have the prettiest shape, but there is no question he would be a huge draw in IFBB shows. Can you imagine this native New Yorker competing in the Night of Champions? The fans would literally tear the roof off the mother. And Dave promises he wouldn’t make the common mistake of rookie pros and try to come in 20 pounds heavier at his debut. “The physique you win your pro card at is the same one you should show the judges on the pro stage,” he comments. “You can’t sacrifice condition for size, especially at that level. I am not trying to be any bigger anyway, just reapportion the mass I have to improve my shape as best as I can.” My fingers are crossed for Dave, because he really does belong in the IFBB. I’m sure a lot of people who don’t pay attention to the contests already assume he is a professional. And as far as training theory goes, I consider Palumbo the E.F. Hutton of bodybuilding. When he talks, I listen. With a degree in biology and biochemistry and three years of medical school completed, this dude makes the average bodybuilder look like a slobbering moron. If your arms haven’t been responding lately and the conventional methods aren’t doing jack shit for them, you owe it to yourself to give Dave’s routine a try. I know I will. Hopefully, by the time the Olympia rolls around, we’ll all have bulging bi’s and tri’s and Dave Palumbo will be a pro. SIDEBAR:
Training Split Day one: ShouldersDay two: LegsDay three: BackDay four: OFFDay five: Triceps and calvesDay six: Biceps and forearmsDay seven: ChestDay eight: OFFREPEAT
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