WE’VE WORKED HARD to redefine the Dad Bod. From serving as shorthand for out of shape and over the hill to becoming the basis for our top workout plans and video programs, the term has morphed from a mark of shame to a badge of honor for guys with kids who put in extra work on themselves.
Still, there are aspects of your fitness that can fall by the wayside, especially when you have the responsibilities that come with fatherhood. It’s easy to lose focus—especially on individual muscle groups that thrive with dedicated attention. That’s why we’re dialing in on a specific body part with our latest training plan: The Dad Bod Arm Shred.
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This four-week program is designed to build up your arms—but don’t worry, you won’t throw out the rest of your workout for endless rounds of biceps curls. Strength coach and MH writer Andrew Heffernan, C.S.C.S., designed the plan to balance the arm-focus with work on your other muscle groups, too. You’ll hit the gym hard four times per week for no longer than an hour, relying on progressive overload (key to building muscle) and time-saving techniques to keep your training smart so you can beef up your bis, tris, and forearms and shred your dad bod, too.
The Dad Bod Arm Shred Game Plan
Train Using Supersets and Circuits
Time is your biggest hurdle as a dad. Gone are the days when you’ll be able to spend multiple hours on your workouts every day—so you’ll maximize each minute by using techniques like supersets, which feature pairs of back-to-back exercises with no rest, and circuits, which stack more moves on top of each other. By using these protocols, the workouts in the program should be done in less than an hour.
Use a Variety of Rep Ranges
The days of repping out three sets of eight reps for muscle building are behind us. You can build muscle with a wide range (anywhere from 5 to 30 reps). But you need to be smart with your split structures, since not all exercises are best with specific rep ranges (compound moves can be more fatiguing to your entire body than isolation exercises, so performing fewer reps for multi-joint exercises and higher reps for single-joint exercises can both get results). You’ll lift some exercises for high reps and some for heavy weight, conditioning your body for various situations.
Go All-In on Arms
To beef up your arm muscles (shoulder, triceps, and biceps) while being mindful of your time in the gym, Heffernan has programmed two arm days and two full-body days. Assuming you have some experience lifting weights, muscles often respond better to increased volume. You’ll accumulate 10 to 12 weekly sets for your shoulders, triceps, and biceps (which make up your arm) while dialing down the total weekly sets for your other muscles. Expect to lift bigger weights in the final week of this program, as your body masters the motions.
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What the Dad Bod Arm Shred Program Looks Like
You’ll use an easy-to-download PDF for this plan, which includes all of the introductory information, exercise descriptions and reference images, and an editable table of the program you can use to track your progress when you’re in the gym. Just pull up the file on your phone, and you’ll be ready to take on your workouts.
Here’s what one of these tables look like:
You’ll be hitting your arm muscle with some certified classic exercises—think curls, chinups, and triceps extensions—but you’ll also train your other muscle groups with deadlifts, swings, and even bouts on cardio machines like the airbike. You’ll be able to reference every exercise using simple cues and clear diagrams, like this:
What You Need for the Dad Bod Arm Shred Program
You’ll train for four days in this program for about an hour per workout, so you won’t have to commit all the time in your busy schedule as a dad. You will need more equipment than just a set of dumbbells, however—think preacher curl benches, pullup bars, airbikes, and more—so you’ll probably need to do the workouts in a gym.
The program runs for four weeks. After that, if you’ve put in the work, you should be will on your way to bigger, more muscular arms and a solid dad bod. Ready to take on the challenge? Get access to the plan here.
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