Can You Do Arms After Chest Day? (Solved!)

There are multiple factors which determine how effective your workouts are.

Common ones being:

• Number of sets & reps
• Rest time between sets
• Amount of weight you lift

One of the less common ones, however, is the order in which you train different muscle groups throughout the week.

So, in this article, we discuss whether you can train arms after chest day.

We look at the pros and cons of doing so, as well as looking at other muscle groups that you may want to work out after a heavy chest workout.

Ready?

Let’s get to it.

Can You Do Arms After Chest Day?

You absolutely can do arms after chest day, but it isn’t optimal.

Your triceps are heavily involved in many chest exercises, like bench press, so will likely feel fatigued after chest day.

So, if you were to do arms after chest day, you’d be training your triceps while they’re fatigued.

If you have fatigued triceps, you likely won’t be able to lift as heavy weights which will result in slower progress.

Benefits of Doing Arms After Chest Day

You Can Follow A Heavier Session With A Lighter Session

Your chest is a relatively large muscle group. 

So on chest day, you’ll likely be lifting heavy weights and doing some big compound movements.

(Bench press and dips come to mind.)

After chest day, there’s a good chance you’ll feel some general fatigue as you would have used a lot of energy in your workout.

So, training a smaller muscle group after chest day, like arms, allows you to train without worrying about fatigue impacting your workout as much.

Whereas if you were to train your back after chest day, you might find that you’re too tired to do some more heavy compound movements, like deadlifts.

(The impact of fatigue will be more noticeable when you train larger muscle groups.)

You Can Overload Your Triceps More

After chest day, your triceps will likely be sore and need some recovery time.

But if you do arms after chest day, you can hit your triceps a bit more which can help increase growth.

You need to be careful not to overtrain though as this can actually have the opposite effect.

As always, you should listen to your body and if your triceps are too sore, then you should maybe train a different muscle group after chest day.

Drawbacks of Doing Arms After Chest Day

Slower Tricep Strength Gains

So, we’ve just covered that training arms after chest can help your triceps grow even more.

While that’s true to some extent, you might actually see slower strength gains.

This is because to get stronger, you should aim to lift heavy weights.

But if your triceps are already tired from chest day, then you’ll likely be unable to lift as heavy as you usually do.

As a result, you’ll make slower progress when it comes to building strength.

Should You Do Arms After Chest Day?

This ultimately depends on your fitness goals.

If you enjoy training your arms after chest day and want to maximize tricep gains, then it may be worthwhile.

Whereas if you feel like your arm workouts suffer due to fatigue after chest day, then it’s probably not optimal for you.

Is It Safe To Do Arms After Chest Day?

As long as your triceps aren’t too sore and you’re lifting a weight that’s suitable to your current fitness levels, it’s perfectly safe to train your arms after chest day.

As always, you should properly warm up and use the correct technique when training to minimize your injury risk.

Is It Better To Do Chest After Arms Day?

No. If you want to train these muscle groups back-to-back, then you’re better off training your arms after chest day.

Why?

Well, it’s usually a better idea to train the larger muscle groups first.

Because your larger muscle groups typically need heavier weights to be lifted to train them properly, so you want to ensure that the large muscle groups are as fresh as possible.

Conclusion

In summary, you can do arms after chest day but it isn’t optimal as your triceps will likely be sore from the chest exercises.

That’s all for this article, but what about back after chest day? Or can you do shoulder day after chest day?

Hope this helped!

Sources

https://www.livescience.com/bench-press-muscles-worked