Classic Bodybuilding: Bill Pearl's Arm Training Secrets

 The Old-School High-Set, Low-Rep Arm Building Secrets of the Great Bill Pearl!

A young Pearl flexes his peaked biceps.  At the time, he would have used a method similar—if not the same—as what is written here.

The other day, in my post on "Ageless Bodybuilding for the Young," I made a brief mention on how a young Bill Pearl trained.  And, although I have done a couple of Pearl pieces in the past, I thought this might be a good time to look at his arm training "secrets" since I think Pearl had something unique to offer the muscle-building world—and still does to this day.  (Just a brief mention that Pearl will also be instrumental in explaining some of the details in my Ageless Bodybuilding System in a future post.  Pearl, in fact, had a very unique way of training as he got older that I believe a limited number of people are actually aware of.  But I got the scoop!  And I digress—back to this post...)

A lot of what I am going to write here comes from a 1998 "Mass from the Past" article of Gene Mozee's that he wrote for IronMan magazine.  I remember it well—and still have the magazine—since I wrote regularly for IM at that time.  If anyone reading this is unaware of Pearl, here is how Mozee began that article:

I first saw Bill Pearl compete in the '53 Mr. Southern California contest. He was an unknown at the time, having done all his training at Leo Stern's gym in San Diego.

Pearl decimated the pre-contest favorites including Zabo Koszewski, Joe Barrata and Dom Juliano, winning the title as well as Best Arms, Best Legs, and Most Muscular awards.

Six weeks later, he returned to the Embassy Auditorium in Los Angeles, the scene of the first contest, and won the highly coveted Mr. California title.

Two months after that he won the AAU Mr. America.

Shortly thereafter he flew to London, where he won the amateur Mr. Universe crown.

When you consider he won them all on his first try, Pearl's clean sweep of four major titles in one year has never been duplicated. In his final competition 18 years later he defeated all of the top bodybuilders in the world - Reg Park, Sergio Oliva, Frank Zane, Serge Nubret, Franco Columbu and Dave Draper -- with the exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who declined to enter because he was obligated to compete in the IFBB Mr. Universe. Pearl had issued a challenge a year before the contest to every bodybuilding superstar on planet earth to compete against him at the NABBA Mr. Universe in London on September 17, 1971. Only Arnold was a no-show. In the estimation of many bodybuilding authorities this was the greatest muscle contest ever held.

When Bill Pearl won the Mr. America in 1953, he weighed 202 pounds. When he won his final Mr. Universe in '71, he weighed 242 with laser-sharp definition. It was one month before his 41st birthday.

In other words, Pearl wasn't just a bad-ass—which he most clearly was—but also, perhaps, the greatest legend the sport of bodybuilding has ever seen.  And that's saying something.  Now, I'm not saying that he is the greatest of all-time, but I think he is one of only 5 bodybuilders that could possibly take that title.  (Who do I think is the greatest?  I've actually written that elsewhere on the blog, so I will leave it to you to explore my answer.  However, I will give you my top 5: Pearl, Lee Haney, Arnold, Sergio Oliva, and John Grimek top my personal list.)

But no matter what I think, Mozee was adamant in his '98 article about his opinion:

In my opinion, Pearl deserves to be heralded as the greatest physique champion of all time. In 18 years of major competition he was only beaten once, in 1956, when he over-confidently entered the Mr. Universe and didn't even shave his chest, and lost the overall title to Jack Delinger. Pearl did win the Mr. Universe tall class at that contest, however.


His total of five Universe titles and his unmatched record of longevity as a world champion rank him as Number One in my book. What other champion has been at the top for 18 years? None. Case closed.

One thing is definitely for sure: Pearl's arms are some of the greatest that the bodybuilding world has ever seen, in part because his biceps, massive as they were, never overshadowed either his forearms or his triceps, which were equally as huge and detailed—more so even— than his biceps.

Later in Mozee's article, he interviewed Pearl about his arm training secrets, and this is what Pearl had to say:

My approach to training has always been to push yourself in your workouts, but do NOT train to failure! The last rep should be difficult, but not impossible or unachievable. And I've always been a great believer that you should leave the gym each day feeling like you had a great workout, but you've still got a little bit left in the gas tank, so to speak.

So, speaking from experience, I urge you:
Train hard, yes, but not to failure.
Complete what you start, and that means every single rep.

Big arms dominate the thoughts of all bodybuilders. I've had more requests for advice on arm training than any other bodypart. I'm going to tell you about a terrific mass-building program that also builds shape and definition. It not only works for me, but I've given it to many of my pupils, and they've made excellent gains on it.

I train my arms three-days-a-week. On those days, I do abdominals first as a warmup, then move on to back, arms and calves. I work my abs and calves at each of my six workouts a week.

I've tried every known arm-training technique. I've always done arm exercises that enabled me to use heavy triceps. For triceps, for example, I was never much for repetition dips or kickback exercises, and was more inclined toward heavy dumbbell triceps extensions, heavy barbell curls, and heavy lying triceps extensions. The lighter stuff was okay for pumping and shaping, but it didn't trigger the growth factor. I have always handled as heavy a weight as I could in the strictest style.

With that out of the way, you may be saying to yourself, "Okay, Sloan, that's great and all, but what did the man's actual workout look like?"  Then, without further ado, here is the workout that Pearl gave Mozee:

Barbell or Dumbbell Triceps Extensions, 5 x 6
Lying Barbell Triceps Extensions, 5 x 6
Lying Dumbbell Triceps Extensions, 5 x 6
Reverse Grip Bench Presses, 5 x 6

Seated Dumbbell Curls, 5 x 5
Reverse Grip Pressdown, 1 x 15
Lying Barbell Preacher Curls, 5 x 5
Reverse Grip Pressdown, 1 x 15
One Arm Concentration Curls, 5 x 6
Reverse Grip Pressdown, 1 x 15
Standing Barbell Curls, 5 x 6
Reverse Grip Pressdown, 1 x 15.

Now that you've seen it, let's unpack it a little, and then I'll give you some advice for how to make this gem of an arm program work for you.

Pearl clearly loved both low reps and high sets, which I have always said is one of the best ways for male bodybuilders to train when building muscle.  A lot of folks look at anything under 6 reps as a "strength" or "power" movement rather than a "hypertrophy" movement, but this can often (though not always) be a mistake.  When I was younger—in fact, when I first started writing for IronMan in 1994—one of the things that made my training unique was that I liked employing much lower reps than most of the other bodybuilders in the gym.  Anytime I did higher reps—such as 8 or above—I would actually lose muscle.  But anytime I did multiple sets of low reps—the kind of workouts that resembled to most people "powerlifting" instead of bodybuilding—I would "blow up."

If you think that this might be the case with yourself, then there's something you can try called the "80% Technique"—well, that's what I call it; I don't know what the actual term may be, if there even is one.  Anyway, find your one-rep maximum on, say, the barbell curl and the close-grip reverse bench press.  (Don't go for a one-rep maximum on an exercise such as lying triceps extensions; the "stretch" portion of that movement would be too dangerous for one-rep maximum training.)  Once you know your one-rep max, drop down to 80% of that, and see just how many reps you can do.  I could never do more than 5 or 6 reps with 80%, meaning that Pearl's style of training was perfect for me.  At the time when I tried this technique (the '90s; yes, I'm old), I had two training partners who tried it as well.  One of them, as I expected, was just like me, and could only get 5 reps.   The other training partner could get 12 reps!  That's a big difference, and I adjusted both of their training programs from that point forward.  This technique, by the way, is not perfect, but it's still pretty damn close.  Whatever rep range that you find yourself in, do about 75% of your overall training in that rep range.

There's a "problem" with lower-rep sets, however, even for the Pearls of the world that respond best to them.  You need to couple them with high sets, which Pearl clearly did.  Although you may not be able to do it at first, you should work up to the point, like Pearl, where you are performing upwards of 20 to 25 sets per muscle.

In fact, I take the "European" but, unfortunately, not "American" view that the smaller the muscle group, the more sets are necessary, and not vice-versa.  Smaller muscle groups recover quicker, and can, therefore, more easily handle a load of 20 to 25 sets.  But don't start out with that many.  At first, if you find this kind of training works really well for your body type, start off with around 10 sets of 5 reps for both biceps and triceps.  After a few weeks, bump that up to 15 sets for each, and then, finally, after another few weeks, you can bump it up to 20 or even 25! (And don't even think about doing it, however, until you reach an "advanced" stage.)

The other thing that you can clearly notice is that Pearl trained his biceps and his triceps together in the same session.  This, of course, was common for most "old-time" bodybuilders, both "Golden Era" and "Silver Era" athletes.  It wasn't, really, until the '80s when workout splits such as "push/pull" became popular where you train all your push muscles in one session, chest, triceps, and shoulders, and your pull muscles in another, back and biceps.  And, as you may know, this is also the time when bodybuilders started doing their leg workouts on completely different days than their upper body push and pull days.

I still prefer training antagonistic muscle groups together, the way Pearl did.  I think overall this is better.  At the very least, the pump you acquire from working bis and tris together simply can't be beaten by any other method.

The other thing that Pearl did that I rarely see bodybuilders in the gym do—at least when I trained at the gym and not my dungeoness garage gym—is train his triceps before his biceps.  But this method is superior since your triceps make up about 2/3 of your overall upper-arm mass (or should).  So train the bigger muscle first (triceps) before moving on to the smaller muscle (biceps).  Also, in order to keep his pump in his triceps, notice how he did a set of reverse grip pressdowns for high reps in between each bicep exercise.  This kept his triceps pumped until he finished his biceps, which, also happens to give you a bigger biceps pump, as well.

Although Pearl never recommended it, you could also do "alternates" using his program where you perform a set for your tris, then a set for you bis, and move back and forth in this manner until you have finished all of your sets.

Pearl only recently left this world for the great Gold's Gym in the sky (2022), but the memory of his bodybuilding feats and the secrets of his massive arms need to stay with us for a long time to come.  May it be so!