Harry TheBicepsFlexKilla decided to measure his arms – they were barely 13.5 inches in circumference. The tape was loose, and he only had the courage to evaluate his dominant arm. “A sad, sorrowful day. The other one is probably under 13 inches,” thought Harry.

Tears began accumulating in his eyes; heavy melancholy surrounded and started pressuring his heart. It was the type of feeling that you experience when you lose a wallet full of cash and a bank card with the code written on it.

Harry had read on a training forum known as S-Nation that only losers have arms under 15 inches. This was the opinion of a muscular dude working as a dentist and posting under the nickname Professor Xpermabulk.

The chest of Harry shrank. He felt trapped in a box. What was he going to do? Despite his efforts in the gym, he had minuscule arms incapable of impressing anybody besides little kittens. Was his life a failure? Harry decided to do it again. He took the tape and flexed his biceps as hard as possible. Same result – 13.5 inches.

“Fuck it. I am adding an arm day as Prof. Xpermabulk suggests. He has 20 inchers. He knows what he is talking about,” concluded Harry.

On his way to the gym, Harry arranged an epic arm workout in his head. The plan was to do about 10 sets of barbells curls, 10 sets of concentration dumbbell curls, 10 sets of Scott curls and then some triceps work – pushdowns, kickbacks and skull crushers. It was going to be a 90-minute workout dedicated only to his biceps and triceps.

Once in the gym, Harry headed towards the dumbbell rack while trying to ignore everything and everybody on his way. In front of the dumbbells, there was a big dude with Eurotrash style haircut. He was twice Harry’s size and had enormous arms. In this guy, Harry saw everything he’d ever wanted to have, except for the haircut, but he was willing to compromise if looking like that was required to have big guns.

Harry took a pair of light dumbbells to warm-up and started curling like a mad man. His concentration and focus were intense. It was going to take an explosion to get him out of the trance. After a few sets, Harry grabbed the straight bar, as Prof. Permabulk had ordered in a post, and worked his was way up to about 35kg/77lbs with a little cheating. His biceps felt like they were getting torn apart. “I am growing,” thought Harry, and a hint of a smile appeared on his face. Then, he proceeded with concentration curls which were supposed to give him a more pronounced biceps peak.

With each set, the pump was increasing rapidly. Liters of blood started flooding Harry’s biceps. He was loving it. The veins were popping. The size of his arms was increasing visibly. The feeling was amazing, just as Arnold describes it. One in a million. Amazing. Never better.

After 30 minutes Harry was deep into his biceps workout. Set 155 was about to begin. What was it this time? Scott curls, of course. Harry had read that this movement does wonders for the “lower portion of the biceps” – Harry’s biggest weakness. 10 sets were done before a slight pain at the elbow appeared. “Fuck it,” thought Harry and moved to the next and final biceps exercise – dumbbell curls on an incline bench for the inner fibers of the muscle.

Very quickly 10 sets….no…11…were completed. Harry decided to do one extra for a girl that he believed was watching him train.

The whole biceps torture took about 1 hour, but the workout was far from over. It was time for the horseshoe – the triceps. “It’s going to be brutal,” thought Harry while looking at his triceps. He went to the cable machine and started pressing it like there is no tomorrow. From the side, it looked like Harry was fighting demons that had taken over his triceps, and the only cure were pushdowns. 15 sets of 10 reps were in order.

There was so much blood in Harry’s arms that he felt a little lightheaded. The oxygen going into his brain was scarce. He sat on a bench for a few minutes to get his head straight before the next obstacle – skull crushers.

3 minutes later he was pumping rep after rep with a special technique that he’d learned from a retired powerlifter. Instead of keeping his arms at 90 degrees to his body, the angle was bigger – around 120 degrees. This method was designed to hit the long head of the triceps while protecting the connective tissues of the elbow. After 15 sets of 10 reps, Harry’s triceps felt like independent meat disconnected from the rest of his body. They were miserable, but Harry was happy.

On to the next exercise – single arm reverse grip triceps pushdowns.

Harry started the first set but felt weak. He was getting hungrier. His mental focus was going away. It was time for a stimulant. He pulled out his 7-inch smartphone and loaded YouTube. He needed a video of a hardcore lifter to get motivated. Who? Branch Warren, The Mad Hobgoblin From Texas. Harry loved the intensity of Branch Warren and how he appeared to be on cocaine during each of his filmed workouts. Harry was really digging this style. He watched about 5 minutes of Warren’s arm workout and said in his head “I came to destroy.”

He restarted the reverse triceps pushdowns and put so much anger into them that the cable machine started shaking. The guy doing pull-overs behind him felt threatened. Who was this mad monkey trying to take down the gym during his triceps workout?

15 sets of 10 reps were done.

The pain was unbearable. Harry’s elbows were begging him to stop the punishment. His wrists were hurting too, but he said “No mercy!!!” and restarted the arm crucifixion. There were three exercises left. Harry was going to do them no matter what. Even a SWAT team wasn’t going to stop him.

Boom. A heavy dumbbell was on the floor. Harry got into position and started doing heavy overhead triceps extensions. He was aiming to hit the long head really hard. It was his weakest triceps district. Harry wanted to make it bigger and worthy of 1 000 Facebook or Instagram likes. “They will be ‘miring”, though Harry while checking his arm in the mirror. It was a good time for arm evaluation because the gym had gotten half empty. The morning rush hour was over. People were going to work now. Harry was alone, almost. There were two men and a woman doing cardio. Obviously, she was a target.

Close grip push-ups were the final assault.  They are a good finisher according to the “pinning-each-other-with-steroids-twins” from YouTube. Harry got on the floor and started doing rep after rep. To his surprise, the exercise was difficult. The fact that his arms were almost numb was not helping. He did 5 reps and collapsed. The sound of his body dropping on the floor attracted the attention of the cardio bunny. Harry knew that the only way for him to do 9 more sets of this tribulation was to get down on his knees and do the push-ups women style like they do in Tae Bo videos. He didn’t want this girl to see him in a weak position and went to the other section of the room to do this shameful but needed exercise. The whole time Harry was screaming like it was a record lift. After every set, he was lifting a stack of weights nearby and letting it drop. He wanted the girl to think that he was doing something really difficult. Ironically, she just turned up the volume of the TV and continued watching a re-run of X-factor. She was curious how her idols were doing.

After close to 90 minutes of arm destruction, it was finally over. 1000 reps of biceps and 1210 reps of triceps. Harry couldn’t stay on his feet but decided to do a front double biceps pose. He looked massive. The arms were his most prominent body part. “It’s happening. Dad, you were wrong. I am going to make it,” thought Harry.

Then he quickly went to the locker room and took out the tape. He really wanted to measure his arms after getting such an epic pump. He was told that if you can pump your arms to a certain size, you can probably get them this big in a cold condition one day. He needed to believe.

Unfortunately, Harry had trouble untying the tape. He was in a hurry because he wanted to measure his arms while they were still hot, but he had lost dexterity from the fatigue. Finally, after about a minute, the tape was free. Full of hope, he wrapped it around his dominant arm. “An inch bigger,” said Harry out loud. He was going to scream, but some guy entered the locker room. Harry used the moment to flex his arms. He felt like they were humongous.

The arm increase gave Harry wings. He went to work and “killed it”. His colleagues were wondering – “Why is he so happy? His job sucks.” They simply didn’t know about the 1-inch increase. The boss was curious too. Last month he had cut 10% of Harry’s salary, but despite the drama today the drone was working at full capacity. “Damn. He probably thinks that I am going to recover his salary and maybe even increase it. People are really stupid. I will just fire him after he burns out. Stupid slave,” though Harry’s boss.

In the evening, Harry launched YouTube and started looking for more arm training secrets. He found a video of a guy with many tattoos who was calling himself Rich Piano. Since the piano is Harry’s favorite instrument, he decided to watch the video.

The Piano guy was telling people how they need to get an epic arm pump before going to bed. Piano’s logic was simple – your last activity for the day earns a higher priority on a subconscious level. Therefore, getting an arm pump before falling asleep is a good way to ensure incredible growth.

10×10 biceps curls and 10×10 reps overhead triceps extensions were done. Harry had to use a heavy bottle of water because he didn’t have weights at home. To calm his mind and make sure that he is doing things right, he left a comment underneath the video – “It is ok if I do the exercises with bottles of water, prison style?” It was ok according to some random Internet guy.

At about 11 o’clock, right after taking his slow releasing protein, Harry went to bed and fell asleep with a smile on his face. “It’s happening,” said Harry to himself once again. “All I need to do right now is sleep for 8 hours and grow.”

The next morning Harry woke up with intense pain in his arms. His biceps and triceps were hurting units. The elbows were killing him too. When he tried to stretch out his arms, excruciating soreness ran down his biceps. “Damn. I really did kill my arms yesterday.” Thereupon he stood in front of the mirror.

He was visually leaner due to the water weight loss during the night, but to his surprise, the arms were not that impressive. If anything they were flat as a pancake. In a few short moves, he measured his dominant arm – 13.4 inches.

Harry was small again. He sat on the corner of his bed and looked down at the floor. The pump was gone. His size had disappeared into the shadows.