5 Killer Ways to get Bigger Arms!

5 Easy Recipes – How to get Bigger Arms

Big arms are very much the show muscles much like abdominals and loads of guys want to have them. Overtraining the arms is quite common, from my experience training too frequently doesn’t result in brilliant growth. Likewise isolating the muscle in a concentration curl/seated bicep curl is not as effective as incorporating heavy barbell curls in your workout.

1) Vary Your Grip on Bicep Curls

In relation to Barbells: When you grip a straight bar you can either grip it so your hands are outside shoulder width apart, at shoulder width or inside should width. Gripping the bar at different positions is going to work a slightly different part of the bicep if you are doing curls. As a rule of thumb you should be doing equal amounts of each grip, this will hit all parts of the biceps giving you maximum growth factor!

You can also use an EZ-bar these are the ones with a bend in it. The same thing applies you can have a narrow and a wide grip.

In relation to dumbbells: When you raise the dumbbell the degree of ‘twist’ in your wrist is going to determine which part of the bicep is activated and will ultimately affect whether you get bigger arms. Hammer curls are the variation in which you have the grip of the dumbbell come to perpendicular to the floor at the top of the curl, this works the outer head of the bicep and forearm. Standard bicep curls are when the dumbbell grip comes to parallel to the floor at the top of the curl. You again should be doing equal amounts of each grip.

2) Don’t Neglect Triceps and Vice Versa

When you want to get bigger arms you shouldn’t simply work one muscle group and not the other. The tricep contributes far more size to your arms than people appreciate and is a bigger muscle group than the bicep. Just like the biceps triceps can be activated at different points by changing the grips and varying the exercise. The key to building good triceps is good variation. You will only need to do 2 working sets on each exercise, examples include; Close grip bench press, underhand one hand tricep pull down, roped tricep push down, standing skull crusher etc.

3) Lift Heavy

If you don’t lift heavy you will not work the deeper muscle fibers. Everyone is always very intent on keeping form strict, yes you should do this as much as possible but don’t let that get in the way of lifting heavy. At the end of each set the last rep or so the form can be questionable this will give you bigger arms! Obviously be sensible you don’t want to cause an injury. A problem I often find with arm exercises is damage to the elbow, specifically tendonitis. If you feel any sort of pain around the elbow joint stop immediately.

4) You Don’t need to Isolate to get bigger arms

Obviously a bicep curl sort of intended to work the biceps however if you do it seated you will lift less which conflicts with point 3 because you use less delts. Not to say you shouldn’t do seated bicep curls you certainly should but just not all the time.

When it comes to shaping the arms the isolation exercises become more important. A peaked bicep will be stimulated by concentration curls more so than by doing barbell curls.

5) Keep Variation in your Arm Workout

As I recommend with all workouts you should ensure you mix it up each and every time. There are so many exercises you can do for both the triceps and the biceps. It would take hours to do all of them each session and remember you don’t need to do silly amounts of sets in these exercises. 5-8 sets per muscle group is plenty. As long as you are following the rest of the tips in this post you are going to get amazing growth.

You can also vary the way you work your arms for instance rest times, drop sets, super sets. A great way to finish a tricep/bicep workout is to do a super drop set. This is when you work both the tricep and bicep one after each other. E.g. Bicep curls to failure, then dips to failure, then back to reduced weight bicep curl to failure, then back to dips to failure etc. It’s a great way to get an intense burn and will give you plenty of enjoyment admiring yourself in the mirror. Lets be honest you definitely do it! Who doesn’t!?

Hope this helps when it comes to your arm development and please leave a comment I love to hear from you and what your thoughts are on how to get bigger arms.

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