How to get bigger arms

23/11/20221 min read

Everything you need to know about how to get bigger arms. Including best arm workouts and general muscle-building tips. Get the arms of your dreams!

Many people associate strong, muscular arms and shoulders with masculinity.¹ Having said that, humans come in all shapes and sizes, and before you enter into any decision to try to change your body shape, it is important to really believe that you are wonderful as you are. Then, when you are at the point where you are feeling good, but you would love to have stronger or bigger arms, you can consider your options.

General arm muscle-building tips

Building up stronger, bigger arms, or any kind of muscle for that matter, is very much about perseverance, consistency, and reasonableness.

A high protein diet

You can complement your exercising with a good high-protein diet – an essential nutrient for building muscle mass.

Regular exercise

Exercising daily or at least every two days, will get you where you want to be, but it is important not to overdo it either and spend all your time at the gym. In addition, though there may be parts of your body that you want to work more on, it is important to look at your body as a whole and to spend quality time on all of your muscle groups. This is both for the sake of your health, and to avoid ending up looking disproportionate, with giant arms and skinny little legs, for example.²

Tricep and bicep exercises

For building bigger arms, the key is a set of muscles called your triceps. These are the three muscles or “heads” of muscles in your arms that make up the mass of your arm and will show the most change. So you want to spend as much time, or even more on your triceps, than on your biceps.³ When lifting weights, you will want to vary your grip. If you use only the one grip, you will hit a plateau and struggle to progress. By mixing up your grip – for example, trying palms down rather than palms facing the body – you can change the stimulus on your muscles and shift the emphasis to different parts of them.⁴ Finally, to avoid injury, take it slow. It could be tempting to go to the heaviest weight first, but that can be rough on your lower back. Instead, go for a weight that is challenging, but where you can keep up a good posture and avoid rounded shoulders.⁵

Arm workouts for bigger arm muscles

A great gym-based arm workout involves working each muscle two to three times a week. This is because protein synthesis reboots every 48 to 72 hours.⁶ Use tempo training. This is where you take a certain amount of time to lift, hold, and lower the weights, then pause before lifting again. The workout is not in lifting weights up and down quickly, but in using your muscles to slowly move and then hold the weights.⁷ One way to structure a work out is to have four sessions a week, with each session targeting different areas. The first could target your chest and triceps, the second your back and biceps, the third your legs and shoulders, and the fourth, your biceps and triceps. The first session, for example, would involve exercises such as incline bench presses, triceps dip, hammer-grip dumbbell bench press, and dumbbell triceps extension. Then, each week, aim to lift slightly heavier weights.⁸