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Tip: Building 'canned hamm'-sized biceps

Paul and Morgan Hamm, 19, are twins and 2000 Olympic gymnasts. In 2001, Paul earned the team bronze medal at the World Championships and was the top American finisher in the all-around with seventh place. In 2002, Paul won the 2002 Senior Pacific All-Around Championships and his first-ever U.S. National all-around crown in August. Morgan was not far behind, finishing fourth overall.

One of the striking things that stand out with gymnasts are their amazing arms and shoulders … even the guy, who finished 30th at Nationals, was ripped with each and every nuance of the deltoids, triceps and biceps shredded. Both of the Brothers Hamm have biceps the size of canned hamms and they shared their secrets on building fabulous physiques with usolympicteam.com just moments after National Championships concluded.

If you don't have time to read all of these insider secrets, let us boil them all done to one tip: If you want biceps like a gymnast, go do gymnastics.

Building biceps the size of canned hamms

Secret #1 - Stop focusing on one muscle
 Paul: "In general, in gymnastics we don't focus on one muscle as much as the entire body. Just rings alone is an event that is going to build your biceps. If you do rings, your biceps are going to get bigger."

Secret #2 - Don't bother with the push ups
Paul: "We don't do too many exercises … I don't even do push-ups or anything. I don't do any cross training with weight lifting or anything. In our sport, we're lifting ourselves; it's like lifting weights constantly, so that's why our bodies look like this.

Secret #3 - Handstand Push-ups
Paul: "Let me think of a good one … well, handstand push-ups … their biceps, triceps, shoulders, a whole lot of different things … but that's one of the good exercises that we do.

Secret #4 - The ol' Alternating Descending Exercise 
Paul: "When I was 7 or 8, we use to do 10 push-ups, 10 sit-ups, 9 push-ups, 9 sit-ups and so on until you get to zero. But once again you just do gymnastics. We don't really just focus on one muscle group."

Secret #5 - Dips, shoulder shrugs and more handstand push-ups
Morgan: "We do stuff on the rings where we'll do a handstand and do handstand push-ups. We do different things like dips on parallel bars, shoulder shrugs … all of that stuff is going to build your arms a lot."

Secret #6 - Strengthen your arms with a big rubber band
Morgan: "A lot of gymnasts, to prevent injury, will do shoulder exercises with thera-bands to help strengthen your arms in the opposite way. A lot of gymnastics are too strong this way (strikes a quick Hans and Franz type flex), so they do thera-band to strengthen the backside."

Secret #7 - A good place to start
Morgan: "My brother can do 15 handstand push-ups by himself. Some people, if you do it against the wall, it's a good place to start. Obviously, if you're not a gymnast, you can balance perfectly. So you put your feet up against the wall and do your handstand push-ups from there and have somebody spot you too. It helps a lot; it gets so many muscle groups."


 
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