How to build bigger arms – 5 tips + a training plan

From my physical culture days, I remember Associate Professor Jaan Loko often saying that “the abdomen is the bodybuilder’s mirror.” There’s nothing wrong with that insight. Still, many views in life are subjective and relative.

A well-trained, eye-catching, toned and sharp midsection is undoubtedly impressive. But I’ve always found thick arms more desirable – big, muscular, massive arms. Maybe that’s because I’ve been so “spoiled” by Arnold’s career, his look and his convictions. But that’s how it is: in my view, thick arms look extremely powerful and awe-inspiring. With time, experience and competing in bodybuilding (especially in recent years), I haven’t trained arms as devotedly and eagerly as I might always have liked, because getting the proportions of the whole body right is important. Still, “arm day” in training is always fun and enjoyable. A well-pumped triceps and biceps always produce a powerful, good feeling.

How do you grow arms that catch the eye and look impressive? Or the other way around: if your arms need some help, how do you approach arm training effectively?

Here are a few thoughts of my own that may help you:

1. Your split should definitely include a separate, dedicated arm training day

In my opinion, this is the very first and most important thing for effective arm training. Arms are typically trained after the bigger muscle groups (back, chest, shoulders), and after training those body parts your energy level is often far from its highest. A separate arm day lets you automatically use heavier weights in the basic exercises, and that matters a great deal for progress. It’s hard to progress in basic biceps or triceps exercises if back, chest or shoulder training has already come before.

2. Deliberately pursue progression

I’d say the lack of well-thought-out progression is the second-biggest obstacle to building powerful arms. Planned, deliberate progress in the basic exercises is missing precisely because there’s no separate arm day: arms are almost always trained after the big muscles, by feel and depending on how much energy is left. But feel isn’t always the best indicator, and the amount of energy left over from a previous big-muscle workout varies – and usually there isn’t much left. Naturally, you can’t follow any systematic progress that way.

Let’s also look at it this way: how do we approach things when we want to raise our squat record, build bigger chest muscles or a more massive back? We automatically choose a separate day for those goals, or we start the workout fresh, with the chosen key exercises, in which we always try to progress. If the goal is to push up your squat weights, nobody puts the squat as the 3rd – 4th exercise of leg training, after leg extensions, leg press and hack squats. Of course you can progress that way too, but in absolute terms the development and progress wouldn’t be even half of what you’d get squatting at the start of a leg workout, as the first exercise and while fresh.

3. Exercise selection

When it comes to choosing exercises, the rules are broadly the same as for other muscles. There are basic exercises that allow you to use heavier weights, and isolation exercises. For the biceps, I definitely consider the standing biceps curl with a regular barbell a basic exercise; alternating standing dumbbell biceps curls with supinated arms are also a good choice. The cornerstones of my own triceps growth have been the medium/close-grip bench press and lying overhead triceps extensions (behind the head) with a neutral grip (palms facing each other). I do that last exercise lying on the floor.

Using a stretch emphasis definitely works when training arms, especially the biceps. Arms also respond well to supersets and other shock methods.

4. Cover as wide a rep range as possible

I’ve always believed that whichever muscle or body part we’re talking about, especially when the goal is muscle mass, the optimal approach is to use as wide a rep range as possible in training. Although a wide rep range is important for maximum development, you should first find out which rep range you respond to best. Naturally, you’ll spend 2/3 of the time in the zone that’s optimal for you. But if your biceps contain only 13% fast-twitch fibers, it would also be backward to spend 50% or more of your workload in the 1 – 6 rep range. Still, overall I recommend covering a relatively wide rep range; how you split the training load volume proportionally between the different rep ranges is a separate question.

I recommend these approaches to arm days:
a. A given arm day can be built in the classic way, meaning different set lengths are covered in the workout.
For example:
1. Standing barbell biceps curl: 8 x 3 – 5 (8 x 3/8 x 4/8 x 5, then you increase the weight and start again from 8 x 3)
2. Standing alternating dumbbell hammer curls: 3 x 6 – 10
3. Barbell preacher curl: 3 x 12 – 15

b. Arm days emphasizing the volume of the training load.
For example:
1. Standing barbell biceps curl: 8 x 8 or 10 x 10
2. Lying triceps extensions with a neutral grip: 8 x 8 or 10 x 10

c. Arm days with supersets.

There are many different options here too, which I won’t list one by one. But you can combine the triceps and biceps with each other, or do separate supersets for the triceps and separate ones for the biceps.

5. Sample split for prioritizing arm development

Monday – lats, traps/rear delts, abs
Tuesday – triceps, biceps
Wednesday – rest
Thursday – thighs, calves, abs
Friday – chest, shoulders, triceps
Saturday – rest
Sunday – rest

In this split the arms have a day of their own, and the triceps are trained twice a week.

Author: Janar Rückenberg

Source: Turg.Fitness.ee

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