The Complete Guide to Growing your Arms

Links mentioned in the video: 
The Path to your Goal Physique
The Greek God Program

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Arm training is probably the most misunderstood part of working out. Actually no, ab training is the most misunderstood part of working out but arms are definitely close in second place.

In every gym you find the same thing: All guys religiously train biceps and triceps and yet only a handful of them have impressive arms. I always found that puzzling.

Nobody skips arm day so why doesn’t everyone have big guns?

The answer is very simple: Arm development very rarely goes ahead of chest and back development. For your arms to get bigger, your whole upper body needs to get bigger, especially your chest and back.

The Role of Compound Movements for Arm Size

The guys with great arms almost always have great back and chest development as well. You never see skinny guys with huge arms:

I photoshoped a big arm on this skinny model and it clearly looks unnatural. 

This means that before you worry about arm size, you need to make sure your back and chest and growing.

If you add 60 lbs to your incline bench press, your triceps will be bigger. If you build up to 80lbs weighted chin-ups for reps your biceps can’t be small. But if your big lifts stay the same, curls and triceps extensions will only increase arm size a little bit.

Some people may not even need direct arm training to stimulate their growth. Getting very strong on weighted chin-ups, deadlift, bench press and shoulder press inevitably develops your arms as well.

An example that comes to mind is Martin Berkhan of Leangains. He hasn’t curled since 2001 and yet his biceps grew very well from weighted chins, heavy rows, and deadlifts:

Now, while progressing on your compound lifts is the most important factor, most guys definitely need direct arm work to maximize their development.

I actually tried not training arms at all in the past, following Martin’s example. I made some arm gains because of weighted chin-ups and presses but as soon as I added direct training in my routine, I noticed an immediate improvement. My biceps and triceps filled out in just a few weeks.

How to Train your Arms for Growth

Biceps and triceps are like any other muscle group. The hierarchy of importance for their development is this:

Most guys focus on exercise selection, rest periods and tempo – the things that are actually least important for progress.

In order for arms to grow, they need to get stronger – progressive overload is by far the biggest cause of muscle growth. Adding 5lbs to the bar will increase muscle size much more than feeling the burn or getting a pump.

The way you drive progressive overload is by intelligently setting your volume, intensity and frequency of training.

A Simple Formula for Muscle Growth

A muscle group needs around 40-100 heavy reps per week in order to grow and get stronger. But your biceps and triceps are heavily involved in any type of pressing or pushing movement. This means they get more than half of the required volume from your compound lifts.

Therefore, the right volume and intensity for arms would be this:

Volume: 30-60 reps per week
Intensity: 6-12 reps per set 

When volume and intensity are set correctly, strength progression happens almost automatically. And those strength gains will translate into muscle growth.

When applying this formula remember that the heavier your train, the lower the volume you can handle each week. If you train with weights you can do 6-10 reps per set do 30-40 reps per week. If you train in the 8-12 rep range, do 50-60 reps per week.

It’s really that simple.

Success is the natural consequence of applying basic fundamentals. Don’t fall in the super-drop-giant-set mentality when training arms. Don’t fall for the idea that slow negatives will drastically improve results. Don’t follow the guys that make all sorts of weird noises when doing biceps curls…

When in doubt about training, consult the pyramid graph above. The right Volume, Intensity and Frequency is what will enable Progression and you will be on your way to a jacked physique.

Routine Examples

A Novice Routine might look like this:

Workout A

• Incline Bench Press – 5 x 5
• Barbell Row/Lat Pulldowns – 5 x 5 (You do these until you can do bodyweight chin-ups)
• Dips – 3 x 8
• Biceps Curls – 3 x 10-12

Workout B

• Squat / Sumo Deadlift – 5 x 5
• Reverse Dumbbell Lunges: 3 x 6-8 reps per leg
• Standing One Leg DB Calf Raises: 3 x 10-15 reps
• Abs Wheel Roll Outs: 3 sets x 10 reps

An Intermediate Routine might look like this:

Workout A

• Incline Bench Press – 4-6, 6-8, 8-10 Reverse Pyramid Training
• Seated DB Shoulder Press – 4-6, 6-8, 8-10 (RPT)
• Cable Pushdown – 3 x 10 Straight Sets
• Lateral Raises – 3 x 12 Straight Sets

Workout B

• Weighted Pull-ups – 4-6, 6-8, 8-10 (RPT)
• Sumo Deadlift – 4-6, 6-8 (RPT)
• Reverse Dumbbell Lunges: 3 x 6-8 reps per leg
• Barbell Curls: 3 x 10 Straight Sets
• Bent Over Flyes: 3  x 12 Straight Sets

Notes on the Workout:

With an A/B split you do each workout every other day, like this:
Week 1: Monday – Workout A, Wednesday – Workout B, Friday – Workout A
Week 2: Monday – Workout B, Wednesday – Workout A, Friday – Workout B

With reverse pyramid training you’re going to perform your heaviest set first when you’re completely fresh and then pyramid down to a lighter weight usually with more reps, for the latter sets. Click here to learn how to implement it.

For Straight Sets when you hit the required reps for all sets, increase the weight on all sets the following workout. This will probably cause you to lose 1 or 2 reps in the last 2 sets. That’s normal and the goal for the following workout is to add back the reps in those last sets so you can increase the weight again.

Rest a full three minutes in between sets for the compound movements. Rest 60-90 seconds for the assistance exercises.

Stop one rep before failure. Failure in this context is when you cannot lift the weight for one more rep without help and without severely compromising form.

The Best Exercises for Arms

The only acceptable cheat in life: Curls. New video on the channel! How to maintain low body fat while gaining weight. Link in bio. Huge thanks to @ovidiugramesc for the steadycam footage! #thinkeatlift #kinobody #fitness #workout #muscle #fit #instafit #instagood #fitfam #bulk #lean #model #fitnessmodel #shreds #lean #abs #bulk #leanbulk #shoulderworkout #progress #dissapointed #curls #biceps #grow #gym

A photo posted by Radu Antoniu (@raduantoniu) on Jan 26, 2016 at 2:17am PST

As long as you do the right amount of heavy reps per week, you’ll see progress doing almost any exercises. But the most effective would be these:

Biceps Exercises

• Primary : Barbell Curls, Dumbbell Curls, E-Z Bar Curls, Hammer Curls 

Usually, the exercises that allow you to lift the most amount of weight are the most effective for growth. For this reason, barbell and dumbbell curls are probably the best all around biceps builders you can do.

• For Higher Rep work : Incline Dumbbell Curls, Machine Curls, Preacher Curls, Cable Curls & Others

For higher rep training do exercises that isolate the biceps and allow a long range of motion. Incline dumbbell curls are very effective because your arms are locked to the sides and your back is flat against the bench. It is in this position that you are unable to use any back swing, the biceps are forced to work in isolation.

Triceps Exercises

• Primary : Lying Triceps Extensions, Skull Crushers, Dips*, Close Grip Bench Press*

Again, the more weight you can lift through a range of motion, the more effective the exercise probably is.

Skull crushers hit the triceps very hard and allow for regular loading in weight. For this reason skull crushers are the main triceps movement in the Greek God Program. As with barbell curls, you can build up to 135+ lbs for reps. This is a killer exercise and will translate to better pushing strength, most specifically in the lock out.

*Dips and Close Grip Bench Press are great exercises for building your triceps but they also hit the chest and shoulders very hard. For this reason you must intelligently fit them in your program. For example if you already do a lot of work for chest it’s probably better to do Skull Crushers for triceps instead of Dips or Close Grip Bench.

• For Higher Rep work : Dumbbell Overhead Triceps Press, Rope Pushdowns & Other Extensions 

When doing higher rep work it’s best to use less technical exercises so you can train your muscle to exhaustion safely. Also, you need exercises that are easy to overload.

Remember, it’s not just doing the exercises, it’s progressing on them. Strength is what leads to size.

A Full Podcast on Arm Training

If you want more information, check out this interview I did with Greg on the topic of arm training:

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The Program that built my physique

The training program I used for the last two years, and still use right now, is the Greek God Program. The routines you saw in this article come from this program.

At first glance you would think it includes far to little volume to trigger muscle growth but that’s not true. Greg designed this program to develop your upper body proportionately.

The main focus is gaining strength on a few key exercises. Because when you reach certain standards of strength, your muscle mass will be developed as well.

I highly recommend you check out this program. You can also see my one year transformation with it here.