Arms would have to be one of the favourite muscle groups to train for most bodybuilders and gym goers. As a high school student I remember doing countless sets and exercises in the quest to increase my arm size. When I was nineteen a group of us even tried a technique where we trained our biceps and triceps for several sets every hour for eight hours with the promise of half an inch to an inch gain! Needless to say, apart from wasting a whole day no one made any progress and I actually think my arms shrunk. So my goal here is to offer you a few ideas and techniques that will hopefully fast track the long learning curve it took me to find effective arm building strategies.
One of the best ways to increase arm size for the average natural trainer (or any one for that matter) is to focus most of your energy on the main lifts like squats, deadlifts; different forms of benching, pressing, rows and chins. If you get stronger on these lifts your back, chest, shoulders, legs and arms will definitely get bigger.
You need to make sure you are not overtraining your arms! Arms are involved in all upper body and lower body workouts either directly or indirectly (I used to get mean bicep soreness the next day after front squats for example).
Choose exercises that suit your unique leverages and muscles. You want to perform exercises that you can overload the muscles and have a good mind muscle connection without any joint pain.
Progressive overload requires that you increase the overload on the muscle on a regular basis. If your weights, rep count, intensity through shorter rest periods are not improving then there is a good chance your arms will not get bigger.
Volume is another variable that can be increased to a point as well and is dependent on your experience, how hard you train and your unique ability to recover.
Nutritional choices like eating enough protein, carbs and fats to ensure you have the nutrients to train hard recover and grow.
Sleeping enough and taking in supplements to make sure you are covering all micronutrient requirements for optimal hormone production to enhance your progress.
Set realistic goals at what you can achieve naturally- (See www.weightrainer.net) As already covered in a previous article I found this gem of a website and based on my height, ankle size (8.5 in) and wrist size (6.5 in) it suggested an arm measurement of 15.9 inches (measured cold and flexed) at 8-10% body fat. This is definitely a more realistic goal to shoot for than the 20 inch guns you see in the magazines.
At the moment I am focussing on the main lifts to increase muscle mass while training arms once per week. My current arm workout involves 3 sets for biceps and 3 for triceps with different exercises used for each set. These have been selected because I am able to progressively overload with them, have a good mind muscle connection and there is minimal to no chance of injury. I also put them in order from weakest to strongest so that I can use the same weight on all sets and shoot for a similar rep range. Here is my current workout:
Triceps (1 set each)
1.Overhead triceps extension. 2. Triceps pushdowns. 3. Triceps push-out*
* (pushdown with elbows facing weight stack instead of straight down)
Biceps (1 set each)
1.DB Hammer curl. 2. DB Curl. 3. DB concentration curl.
As you can see the workout is minimal, but this is what I have found works best for me. If you’ve tried all the fancy ideas in the magazines and online with little success give these simple but effective strategies a go and I guarantee you will arm those guns a whole lot faster!