Over the past few decades there has been a curious trend that has slowly but surely seeped its way into the hearts and minds of an alarming number of iron rats, both professional and recreational alike.

That trend?

The belief that you don’t need to directly train your arms.

The claim goes a little something like this:

Your arms get enough work from compound exercises like pullups, military presses, bench presses, and so on, so why waste valuable training time doing extra exercises for them? Oh, and also direct arm training belongs solely to the vain, bourgeois world of bodybuilding and has no place in the noble tradition of strength training.

Pardon my French, but to that I say au contraire, mon frere (“on the contrary, my brother”).

For starters, we largely ignore similar rationales for avoiding direct ab training by those who claim that your abs get enough work being squeezed hard in squats and deadlifts, so why give this anti-arm training screed even so much as a second thought?

If you care about your strength, you shouldn’t.

Direct arm training has a long and illustrious history among the world’s hardest, most fearsome names in strength—men and women with a hearty respect for the jolly old game of taming iron and a seething, unquenchable hatred for gravity.