If you want to have great looking arms, you’ve stumbled upon the perfect article.
I say that not only because I help people get in shape and have personally been lifting consistently for 7 years, but also because of a slightly embarrassing story about myself…
My first year of lifting weights consistently, I only worked on my arms and chest. No back or shoulder work. And especially not legs. I wanted the beach/bro muscles (chest & arms) poppppin!
I later discovered how important and ideal it is to have a balanced physique. However, that first year of hammering home my arms (and the following 6 years still being semi focused on them), I learned quite a bit about growing the guns.
This article goes over all of the necessary details and actionable steps to build your arms!
Specifically, we’re going to go over (in this order):
What Specific Muscles Make Up Your Arms (and useful details about them)
Best Tricep Exercises (with videos!)
Best Bicep Exercises (yes, videos for these as well)
The 3 Keys To Building Your Arms (How Often & How To Train Them)
3 Different Arm Workouts You Can Try Out Immediately!
What Specific Muscle Groups Make Up Your Arms (with all the needed details)
You likely already know this: Your triceps & biceps are the two specific muscle groups that make up your arms.
Fun Fact, that you might not know: Your triceps, not your biceps, make up the largest portion of your arms.
And because of that, we’re going to discuss your triceps first.
TRICEPS:
Don’t neglect your triceps. In fact, make them the priority.
Triceps make up about ⅔ of your arm (whereas biceps are only ⅓). However, when most people think about training arms, they about hammering home their biceps instead hitting their triceps hard (or at least being more balanced).
You use your triceps in common pressing exercises like bench press, shoulder press, and push ups. However you can adjust all of those common pressing exercises to hit more triceps as well (if that’s your main goal).
Bench Press & Push Ups: Bring your hands around shoulder width apart, but not much closer, and tuck your elbows. By bringing your hands a bit closer together & tucking your elbows when you’re pressing the barbell (for bench) or pressing your body up
Shoulder Press: Similarly with shoulder presses, if you tuck your elbows close to your body when pressing, you’re going to engage your triceps a lot more.
Even outside of those common compound exercises, if you want big arms, you need to be hitting your triceps directly.
Before we get into some of the best exercises for your triceps, it’s important to know why that muscle are on the back of your arm is called the Triceps.
Reason: There are three different heads/parts of your triceps, including:
Medial Head: The part of your tricep that is right below your armpit and touches your side when your arms are down.
Lateral Head: The part of your tricep on the side of your arm, facing outward when your arms are at their sides. This is what gives your tricep that ‘Horseshoe’ look. This is going to be the most easily noticeable part of your triceps when start working on them.
Long Head: The area directly in the back of your arm. This is the biggest head/part of the tricep. If you can grow this part of the tricep, you’re going to be well on your way to bigger arms.
It’s important to know the anatomy of the triceps to be able to understand why you need many different exercises to fully grow your triceps.
Best Tricep Exercises (In No Particular Order):
Dips: These are fantastic to build up all heads of your tricep, but especially the long head. AKA dips are one of the best exercises to make your arms bigger.
Bench Dips: If body weight dips are a challenge for you right now, bench dips work similar muscle groups and are easier to perform. Again, still works the tricep extremely well. Just not quite as tough. If you keep getting better with these, you’ll be doing regular dips soooon.
Straight Bar Cable Tricep Pressdowns: This is likely the most popular tricep exercise around. And it works the lateral head of your tricep well (with a tiny bit of the other parts of your tricep). But shouldn’t be the only tricep exercise you do.
Dumbbell or EZ Bar Skull Crushers: Trifecta! Want to hit all three heads of your tricep with one exercise? These are the play.
Cable Rope Pressdowns: You know the horseshoe tricep look you see people have? Do these correctly and you’ll be well on your way. Hitting the lateral head to the max!
One Arm Dumbbell Tricep Extensions: All of the exercises listed include using of your arms. However, to make sure there aren’t imbalances between arms, performing some one arm exercises are beneficial. This single arm exercises works the medial & long head of your tricep really well.
One Arm Overhand Cable Pressdowns: Another single arm movement. Except this exercise works mostly the lateral head of your triceps.
BICEPS
While biceps are the part of your arms that everyone normally hits super hard, they do indeed make up less of your arm than your triceps. However, that doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t work them and push yourself with them.
Similar to triceps, biceps are worked in other compound movements as well. Unlike triceps, where chest & shoulder exercises work them, when you perform back exercises (such as pull ups, rows, or pull downs), you’re working your biceps.
However, if you want to have full, complete, great arms, biceps should absolutely be directly worked.
You know how triceps have three different heads/parts, biceps have….You guessed it: Two different heads/parts!
There is a long head & short head which makes up your entire bicep.
The long head of your biceps is faces outward. If someone sees your arm from the side, they are seeing the long head of your biceps.
The short head of your bicep is on the inside part of your arm. This is the part of your arm you see when you lift your arm up and flex (just like the emoji).
Again, being aware of the different parts of the muscle is useful so you know how to balance out the bicep exercises. You don’t want to do exercises that only work the short head of your bicep and leave your long head underdeveloped. That’s not ideal for arm gains.
Best Bicep Exercises (in no particular order):
Barbell Curls: As long as you don’t take up a squat rack to do this exercise (and use one of the straight bars most gyms have), these are a top bicep building. They work both the short and long head of your biceps (with a bit more emphasis on the short head).
DB Curls: Another classic bicep exercise. These work primarily the short head of your biceps.
DB Hammer Curls: Our first long head bicep builder! Most common bicep exercises will work mostly the short head of your bicep. Any ‘hammer’ variation where your hands are facing each other as you curling the weight, will be working the long head.
EZ Bar Reverse Curls: While we’re only discussing biceps and triceps in this article, these hammer home your forearms as well as the long head of your bicep really well.
Preacher Curls (Regular or Hammer): It’s easy for other body parts (and momentum) to get involved when doing bicep exercises. Preacher curls make you focus in on controlling the weight solely with your biceps!
The nitty gritty of your biceps and triceps are covered. Now, we’re starting to get into the fun stuff.
The first fun thing: The Three Keys To Building Your Arms.
Key Number 1 To Building Your Arms: Progressively Get Better/Stronger With Arm Exercises.
The best way to grow a muscle is to aim to become gradually better each workout you work on your arms.
There are many different ways you can do that, including:
Increasing the weight: This is the most common & most popular because why not? Who doesn’t like stroking their ego & getting stronger? However, for arms, it’s not always the most effective. If you go up in weight too quickly where your form sucks & other body parts (other than your arms) start to do most of the work, the additional weight isn’t helping your arms get much bigger. It’s necessary to eventually go up in weight. However, the next two arms are most important.
Form: This holds true with any lifting exercise. If your form sucks and you’re not getting a full range of motion, you are: 1) risking potentially getting injured down the line. We don’t want that. AND/OR 2) Not working the desired muscle group as well & fully as it could be worked. Prioritizing having a full range of motion - fully extending & squeezing your muscle each rep. Don’t sway backwards & forward to perform the exercise. YOu want to keep your body straight & fixed while your arms are working. Form is the number one focus. For any lifting exercise but especially for arms.
Reps: Increasing the number of reps you’re performing on an exercise, with the same amount of weight, is progress and will lead to more results as well. For example, if you do 3 sets of 8 reps with 25lbs last week...Then do 3 sets of 10 reps with 25lbs this week...Progress is being made! You’re killing it!
Rest Time: This an area in the gym that more people should focus on. Instead of getting caught up scrolling through Instagram between sets orrr talking to your gym friend, be aware of your rest times between sets. If you’re doing the same reps/weight but taking 15 less seconds between each set, you’re 1) getting in a hell of a lot better shape and 2) will get more bang out of your time in the gym.
Tempo: The most underrated form of progress in the history of lifting. You’re probably wondering WTF ‘Tempo’ actually means though, right? Think about doing a regular bicep curl at a normal speed - roughly 1ish second to lift the weight and 1ish second to lower the weight back down. Now, try to lift that same weight with the same speed on the way up (1ish second) but resisting on the way down and taking 3 seconds to lower the weight. You’re going to be feeeeeeling it. That, my friend, is changing up the tempo.
Key Number 2 To Building Your Arms: Getting In Enough Volume & Working Them Multiple Days
If you’re all in on getting giant arms, working each muscle group (triceps & biceps), aim to hit your biceps & triceps 3-4 times per week.
However, do that with these tips in mind:
You don’t need to work both (your biceps & triceps) on the same day.
You could work your triceps as a finisher on a chest or shoulder day, since you already used some triceps on that day.
When you do a back day or perform back exercises, you could add in biceps as well since you were working your back
Every time you work on triceps or biceps, you shouldn’t go insanely heavy or do an insane amount of sets.
You could have one day you’re hitting your arms pretty hard, then 1-3 days where you’re doing 1-2 exercises for 3-4 sets each. That would be perfect.
Since your biceps & triceps are smaller muscle groups, they recover faster (than large muscles like back, chest, or legs). This means they’ll be ready for you to hit them pretty quickly again after a workout.
You can still get big arms hitting them a couple times per week as well.
Hitting them more often is beneficial. However, they can still grow without working them 3-4 times per week. 2 times per week can still get the job done.
Key Number 3 To Building Your Arms: Mix In Different Rep Ranges But Aim Mostly For Higher Reps
People end up doing extremely heavy weight, having poor form, and not getting nearly as much out of the exercise for the targeted muscles as they should. On the flip side, when people do higher reps, they normally use wayyyy too light of weight to stimulate the desired muscle group to grow.
So, regardless of doing light weight for high reps or heavier weight for lower reps, you want to:
Make sure you form is on point & you feel your arms working.
Use a weight that is relatively challenging. You don’t want to use a weight you could do 30 reps with.
WIth that said, mixing up the rep ranges for arms is beneficial. You want to mix in both lower (5-8 reps) & higher rep ranges (8-15 reps) to your workouts.
Muscles can grow & get stronger with any amount of reps if you are intense enough and are pushing yourself to do so.
But since arms are a smaller muscle group, it’s normally easier to make progress and use solely your arm muscles with (relatively) lighter weight and higher reps compared to bigger muscle groups like your chest, back, or legs.
If you’re using heavier weights for lower reps (around 5-8 reps), you’re going to be building strength in your arms which will help you do heavier weight for higher reps in the future. AKA progressively getting better over time.
However, again, since arms are a smaller muscle group and the goal is build nice looking arms, doing sets of 8+ reps is normally the best bet.
Aim for about 70 percent of your arm workouts to be 8 or more reps.
The Best (and Most Fun) Part: Arm Workouts For You!
The good stuff. You learned all about triceps, biceps, and the keys to growing arms. Now an actual workout (errr workouts!) for you to get the arm gains going.
For most people, I wouldn’t recommend having an entire workout where you’re only working your biceps and triceps. Rather, I would add in a few arm exercises to an upper body workout a few times per week.
However, you’re here to build some amazing arms. And if arms are one of your sole priorities, and you want to have a full arm day, I’m going to give it to you.
But for the sake of practicality and what is going to be best for your overall progress, I’m also going to include quick arm exercises you should add to the end of certain workouts.
To summarize, the workouts below will include:
Full Arm Workout
Quick Triceps Workout To Pair With A Bigger Muscle Group
Quick Biceps Workout To Pair With A Bigger Muscle Group
Full Arm Workout
Dumbbell Curls: 4 sets of 15, 12, 10, 8 reps
4 Total Sets, doing 15 reps the first set and 8 reps the last set.
Start with a lighter, less challenging weight for the set of 15 reps, then increase the weight used slightly each set as the reps decrease.
Dumbbell Skull Crushers: 4 sets of 15, 12, 10, 8 reps
4 Total Sets, doing 15 reps the first set and 8 reps the last set.
Start with a lighter, less challenging weight for the set of 15 reps, then increase the weight used slightly each set as the reps decrease.
Barbell Curls: 3 sets of 6-8 Reps
Dips (or Bench Dips: 3 sets of 10-15 reps
Push yourself to get 15 reps, do at least 10 reps.
EZ Bar Reverse Curls: 4 sets of 10-12 reps
Straight Bar Cable Pressdowns: 4 sets of 10-12 reps
Superset the following Exercises for 4 rounds:
Dumbbell Preacher Curls: 10 reps, each arm
2 of the rounds, do hammer preacher curls & the other 2 rounds, do regular preacher curls.
Dumbbell One Arm Overhead Tricep Extensions: 10-12 reps, each arm
Quick Triceps Workout
(Normally you’d want to do this at the end of a Chest or Shoulder Day):
EZ Skull Crushers: 5 sets of 8-10 reps (20-30 seconds rest between sets)
Using the quicker rest times as a way to change up the workout.
Rope Cable Pressdowns: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
Focusing on squeezing your triceps at the bottom of every rep.
Use a 1:3 second tempo with these.
1 second pressdown the rope down and resist/take 3 seconds as you are raising the rope again.
One Arm Cable Pressdowns: 3 sets of 15-20 reps
Quick Biceps Workout
(Normally you’d want to do this at the end of a Back Day)
EZ Bar Curls: 4 sets of 8-10 reps
2 sets wider grip (working more short head of your biceps)
2 sets closer grip (working more long head of your biceps)
One Arm Cable Curls: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
Rope Hammer Curls: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
Still have questions about making arm gains?
Send over an email at any time: Patrick@JourneyToGains.com