How to Build Bigger Arms
We get asked how to grow arms plenty of times. I have had to develop my arms over a long period. This is a process. You have to understand the arms are hard to build when doing some compound lifts because other muscles of the body want to take over. It’s all about keeping it simple and understanding how the arms work.
The first thing you may be doing wrong is letting larger muscle groups take over your lifts. This is very common. The best example is the cheat curl. Most people allow the shoulder to take over the movement or do a hip thrust. Therefore, there is no tension on the biceps. It is important to use the biceps if you want to grow the biceps. When it comes to biceps, I recommend people to start in a staggered stance, keep strong tension in the body and focus on tempo. The tempo is important on the way down because you truly need to learn how to control the eccentric motion when it comes to the curl.
Step one with the biceps is learning to control it through a full range of motion, in a concentric, squeeze, and eccentric lowering phase. We cannot emphasize this enough but take your time with the arms and learn the movement properly. This alone can be a game changer for you.
When it came to the triceps, what I did wrong was thinking that changing grips would change the stimulus for the triceps. But I was dead wrong once I understood anatomy. What is important when we talk about triceps is to affect the elbow angle, because of the way the triceps is set up in your body. For example, we can do a tricep pushdown with different grips, but the triceps do not do anything different with each grip. It remains a press down. So, when training the triceps, it is important to change the elbow angles. The 3 angles I would use are elbows next to you like a triceps pushdown. I would also put the elbows in front of me like a skull crusher and the elbows overhead like overhead triceps extensions. Now when it comes to the biceps, changing grip does matter because there is a muscle called the brachialis that goes from the forearm to the humerus bone. When building the biceps, if your brachialis is developed, it will help push the biceps muscles up for that full look. This is why changing the grip is important to the biceps but not so much for the triceps.
The next important thing is to train frequently. Think about the best arms you have seen out there. They come from people who have to use them often because of the type of job they do. Now, this doesn’t mean killing them every day but learning how to control your intensity and frequency. I have seen a lot of people only hit their arms once a week, but it is much more effective if you hit your arms 2 to 4 times a week. We must send a building signal consistently if we want the arms to grow. Last but not least, don’t forget your big lifts. A lot of times we get so focused on fancy moves when it comes to biceps or even BFR training. This means you can use chin-ups/pull-ups differently to target the biceps better and also close grip bench for the triceps.
At the end of the day, if you do these 5 things and execute them, you will grow the arms:
- Use the full range of motion on any lift and emphasize squeeze
- Workout Arms 2 – 4 times a week
- Frequency is king with controlled intensity
- Get pump sessions on your off days
- Start with main lifts and use BFR and pump session technique to help at the end, not as the main focus
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