For Mikey Mac O’Brien, strength training comes with a scoop of sideshow flair. The strong and sometimes over-the-top online coach and athlete, known to his more than 370,000 Instagram followers as @mikeymaybeme, combines extreme lifts done with eye-popping extremes: One viral stunt has him ollie a skateboard while balancing a loaded 315-pound barbell across his shoulders, while another (unsuccessful) lift had him doing trap bar pulls on a unicycle, while attached to a neck harness.
While his sketchy stunts should be left to the pros such as himself, the strength and size portion to his workouts ought to be looked at. His most recent YouTube posting, O’Brien shared his arm-blasting program that he claims led to a 3-inch growth. O’Brien says he began measuring his arms at 16.5 inches unpumped and, four years later, could reach 19.5 inches pumped. The strength-training showman acknowledges that while the exact measurements may not be totally accurate, the point to his three-plus years of this training program is solid: Making gains requires taking the time and putting the work in. And don’t expect a dramatic change overnight. “It’s just cool to see from week to week, month to month, year to year,” he says.
Building Bigger Arms, One Arm Day at a Time
O’Brien said in 2022 he decided to dedicated a single day each week specifically for training arms. He built each session around alternating biceps and triceps exercises. His workouts consisted of four to five different pairings of muscle-building moves.
Starting the workouts, O’Brien normally opted for strict, alternating dumbbell curls. Going heavy was the goal, but not too heavy to not be able to control the weights in a strict fashion for three sets 4 to 8 reps. The key, he says, was to progress in weight, only after you’re able to handle each weight consistently with good form. He pairs curls with heavy triceps pushdowns for roughly eight to 10 reps.
Another element to the workouts, he says, Later rounds, is that when his arms became fatigued, he’d drop the weight considerably on other variations, but not decrease in rep ranges or intensity. “Every single set is till failure and beyond failure,” he says, urging lifters to push each set hard.
For the final exercise, O’Brien goes with a move that will surely have you stand out at your local gym: the rarely utiliized by highly effective Smith-machine drag curls. With this move—in which you curl the bar close along your torso while pulling your elbows back, then squeezing your biceps hard as it reaches your lower-to-mid chest, before slowly lowering along the same path to full arm extension— he likes to inch his feet forward as the set continued, increasing the challenge as fatigue built.
It’s an extreme approach; lifters should keep form sound and choose intensity techniques they can perform safely. It’s that focused training, progressive loading and consistency compound over time. “Do that again next week,” he says, “and next week, and next week.” And in three years check the measuring tape.
MIKEY O’BRIEN’S ARM-DAY WORKOUT
Perform each pairing by alternating one biceps set and one triceps set. After the first pairing, in which you’ll be using heavier weight for lower reps, perform about three sets of each move for 10-12 reps. For advanced lifters, try to perform as many reps as possible (AMRAP).
NOTE: Always use loads you can control.
- Alternating Dumbbell Curl: 3 sets, 4–8 reps per arm
Triceps pushdowns: 3 sets of 8–10 reps- Alternating Dumbbell Curl (using considerably lighter weight):
Overhead Triceps Extensions (EZ-curl bar, incline bench if available):- Cable (or Dumbbell) Hammer Curl (Neutral Grip):
Decline bench neutral-grip Skull Crushers- Cable Curls or Rope Hammer Curl (supinated)
Cable Overhead Extensions- Finisher: Smith-machine Drag Curl
Bodyweight Overhead Extension (on Smith machine)