IT WASN’T UNTIL my first child arrived in October 2024 that I realized time really is a commodity we fail to appreciate. Every day leading up to the big day, I navigated a schedule of writing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, cooking, reading, vegetating, and walking with my very pregnant wife. I was able to commit to a rigorous 28-day workout program, by the end of which I got as lean as I’ve ever been (which you can read about here).
Then, overnight, I found myself couch-bound by a blobular being who sleep-drooled and farted on my chest as I binged the X-Men movies. Every. Single. Day. I ate whatever visitors stuffed into our fridge, slept in two-hour intervals, and lifted sporadically. Any attempt at me-time felt selfish and logistically impossible, but the lack of it took a toll on my physical and mental health.
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It wasn’t until months later, after my son was sleeping for more than two-hour stretches at night, that my head was above water. The time felt right to recommit to a new workout program. I chose Men’s Health’s Dad Bod Arm Shred plan because it looked time-efficient, and let’s be real: bigger arms are always a fun and easy target to chase in the gym.
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The workout showed me that I could get a lot of effective work done in a short amount of time. The programming was also fun, which made sticking to it easy. You can easily follow this plan for eight, 12, or even 16 weeks, and I’d advocate for anyone (not just dads), looking for a new challenge to give this one a go.
What Following Dad Bod Arm Shred Was Like
THIS FOUR-WEEK plan was written by Men’s Health contributor, certified strength coach, and fellow dad Andrew Heffernan, CSCS. Knowing a parent developed this plan eased my mind. I didn’t want to commit to a regimen that would force me to overreach, fall short, and retreat back into myself, and I felt confident that wouldn’t happen since Heffernan has been where I am. Here’s a quick breakdown of the four-week plan:
- Four workouts per week lasting between 30 and 45 minutes each.
- You’ll need an adjustable weight bench, a few pairs of dumbbells (or an adjustable pair of dumbbells), a resistance band, an air bike, a pull-up bar, and a kettlebell.
- Two arm days, consisting of exercises for your biceps, triceps, and shoulders. One arm day focuses on strength; the other is all about muscle growth.
- The two other workouts target your other major muscles.
- The PDF includes a chart for tracking reps and weights. Heffernan programmed progressive overload, a method of adding either more reps or load to your workout each week, into each workout.
- The PDF includes illustrations for every exercise. They’re a great reference point if you’ve never heard of a specific exercise or are unsure exactly how to dial in your form. For example, it wasn’t until I referenced the illustrations that I realized I could perform the bodyweight skullcrushers on a bench and not just with a barbell set in a power rack.
To access the full workout PDF, you just need to sign up for a Men’s Health MVP Premium membership, which includes tons of other dad-friendly workout programs, like Shred Your Dad Bod and Dad Bod Shred.
GET THE WORKOUT PLAN PDF
Each Workout Took About 30 Minutes
Twice a week, I’d strap my son into his bouncer, hand him his dumbbell-shaped rattles, and he’d watch me train. For the other workouts, I’d hand him off to my wife as I headed to my local big box gym.
My favorite aspects of this program were its accessibility and expeditiousness. If I hustled, I could get through each workout in about 30 minutes. Plus, I only needed a pair of adjustable dumbbells and an adjustable weight bench for three of the four workouts, so it was simple for me to do at home. (On day four, you’ll need an air bike, a kettlebell, and a pull-up bar.)
The gym has always been a social and emotional outlet, a place to interact with people and release some steam. Babies fill you with love, but the early newborn months were, for me, a constant spring of anxiety. I worried about every odd breath my son took (babies make many weird sounds). I worried about my wife, who woke every couple of hours in the night to feed the baby. I worried about neither of us having time to ourselves. And yet, leaving to do anything, even for an hour, felt like a betrayal of the people who needed me. The gym made me feel good, but now I was speeding through reps of curls and squats, worrying, worrying, worrying about how long I’d been away from home. Thankfully, this program accounted for my lack of time.
I Trained My Arms Harder Than Ever
This program challenged my perception of arm training and forced me to face an uncomfortable truth: I’ve never trained arms hard. Now, as a dad with only a few hours a week to spare for the gym, I was stimulating my arms more than I ever have while spending less time in the gym. Realizing that less sometimes is more (assuming you work hard) was worth the four-week commitment.
The trio of relatively small muscles that make up your arms—the biceps, triceps, and deltoids—are onerous to grow. That’s been my experience, at least. But after the first workout, my biceps felt exceptionally sore, which rarely happens, and then sore after each subsequent workout. I’m not a personal trainer or strength coach, but I imagine this newfound soreness is due to two factors: volume and intensity.
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It’s not a concrete rule, but more volume typically means more growth (assuming you’re not accumulating a ton of “junk” sets). Throughout the program, I accumulated 50 direct sets for my biceps and 52 for my triceps, not including the ancillary volume that comes from chin-ups, rows, pushups, and presses. I was able to squeeze in this much volume thanks to supersets—a common intensity technique where you perform two exercises back to back with no rest between sets. If you’re a dad who can’t afford to spend over an hour in the gym, supersets are a terrific way to pack more volume into a shorter workout, and you can apply them to any muscle.
I’ve trained long enough to know when I’m pushing my sets hard or not. Typically, I leave three or four reps in the tank for my arms, focusing on establishing a mind-muscle connection. This time, I adopted a new training style: heavy weights for every set. If a set of incline curls called for 15 reps, I’d use a pair of dumbbells that I can curl for 10 reps. Once I hit failure, I’d rest for about 10 seconds and finish the set. I was tackling my arm sets with the same ferocity that I’d apply to heavy rows or deadlifts, and I plan on bringing this intensity into all of my future arm workouts.
I Still Kept My Strength
If I was skeptical of anything, it’s that I’d keep my strength (or what was left of it) on only four, half-hour-long workouts, two of which target the arms. I was happy to be wrong.
For the Full-Body Big Lifts day, you perform two supersets—one consisting of the rear-foot-elevated split squat and dumbbell row and the other of the dumbbell bench press and dumbbell Romanian deadlift. The price to pay for such efficiency was grueling sets, lifting as much weight as my body could handle for every set of each movement. I rowed a 100-pound dumbbell, performed RDLs with 105-pounders, pressed 65 pounds on the incline bench, and held a 60-pound dumbbell in each hand for split squats. Because the program is arm-focused, you’re not expected to hit your chest, back, and legs with appreciable volume. You do, however, have to train these muscles hard. I rarely looked forward to this DOMs-inducing amalgamation, but it reminded me that effective workouts don’t have to be long and complicated.
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If there was a workout I wanted to skip—and seriously considered skipping in week four—it was the Full-Body Muscle Circuit. After a full day of daddy daycare and a week of workouts, I begrudgingly plowed through an enervating circuit of compound exercises such as chinups, walking lunges, and hand-elevated pushups. Like during the other full-body day, I kept my reps and weight as high and heavy as possible, holding 50-pound dumbbells for walking lunges and cranking through 15 dead hang chinups on my first set.
What I Gained
YOU CAN LOSE a substantial amount of weight in four weeks. Gaining muscle mass, however, is a long-haul effort that takes at least eight to 12 weeks before you notice significant results. Still, I ended up with what looked like fuller shoulders while maintaining my weight and waistline (177 lbs and 31.5”). I also feel more energized now that I’m back into a consistent exercise routine. But I don’t measure the success of this routine in inches or pounds.
The newborn stage was tough. When people find out you’re expecting, they say you’ll feel an indescribable love for your child when he arrives. It’s hard to connect with when you hear it, but that feeling is real and, at times, all-consuming. When my son first smiled at me, my body pulsed with raw emotion that is, at least in my experience, rarer to come by as we age. As you get older, you become desensitized to your surroundings. You don’t experience many “firsts”. With my son, each day is full of them—his first roll; his first laugh, his first head bump (sorry, buddy). If there’s a magic quality about kids, it’s that, through them, you get to experience the mundane anew through fresh eyes.
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However, what these parents don’t mention are the trade-offs of caring for a newborn. You are stripped of your autonomy, and your wants no longer come first. The baby sleeps on you for hours at a time. They eat every two hours. They vomit on every shirt you dare to wear around them. If you want to sit down with a pizza and watch your favorite show at the end of your week, expect to check in on them every 10 minutes while your food goes cold and your patience runs thin. Then prepare to feel like a terrible parent for getting frustrated that your food got cold and your patience ran thin. You and your partner will be around each other 24 hours a day, but will hardly interact as one sleeps and the other watches the baby. You are two ships passing in the night.
So, yeah, forget my arms. Completing 16 workouts in a month was my success, and this program helped me achieve this consistency with manageable and fun workouts. What did I gain, if not pounds of new muscle tissue? The confidence to return to the gym and a new set of tools to help me balance fitness and fatherhood.
Andrew Gutman, NASM-CPT is a journalist with a decade of experience covering fitness and nutrition. His work has been published in Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Muscle & Fitness, and Gear Patrol. Outside of writing, Andrew trains in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, helps coach his gym’s kickboxing team, and enjoys reading and cooking.
