Build Bigger Arms! Secrets of the Pros Tips, Workouts and Exercises for Big Guns
Build Bigger Arms! Secrets of the Pros
Tips, Workouts and Exercises for Big Guns
By Ron Harris
No body part captures the collective attention of bodybuilders quite like the arms. We love to build them, we love to show them off, and we admire and covet exceptional arm development in others. We’ve compiled a gamut of valuable advice on building the biceps and triceps from eight top names in bodybuilding. Listen to what they have to say, and maybe your guns can someday swell to jaw-dropping dimensions!
Roelly Winklaar
Barbell Curls: Vary Your Style for Bigger Bi’s
“I do barbell curls with either a straight bar or an EZ curl bar,” Roelly told me. “I think it’s actually pretty important that you don’t use the same one all the time, because your biceps will get used to it. My biceps don’t grow anywhere near as easily as my triceps, so I’ve had to work them with a lot more variety and different intensity techniques to see good results. A lot of time I do barbell curls first in the routine and I do them as ‘21s.’ You don’t need very heavy weight for 21s, so they are a really good warm-up.”
Being warmed up is always important for anything, but especially biceps. It’s a small muscle group and if you have fairly small joints and tendons like Roelly does, you have a greater risk of injury if you’re not careful. “With a lot of curl movements, I used to do a lot of “eight and eight” sets,” Winklaar says. “That means I did eight regular reps, then eight reps where I let my elbows come up and I focused on a maximum contraction of the biceps. Anyone who thinks it’s best to always keep your elbows down by your hips is really missing out. Once I started doing these, my biceps grew quite a bit more than they had in a long time.”
Kickbacks Can Build Big Tri’s!
“A lot of people think kickbacks are no good for building triceps size,” Roelly says. “Where do they get this idea? I think someone made it up a long time ago and it just kept getting passed on.”
I have to agree with The Dutch Beast. It’s a free-weight extension movement that has always worked well for him. Why do so many others feel it’s nearly worthless? Poor form! One key is making sure your elbows remain up high. I have seen a lot of people do kickbacks with their elbows pointing down at the ground, which means the triceps have almost no stress being put on them at all. Keep the elbows high and don’t let them swing, and squeeze the weight up with pure triceps contractions
Take the Delts Out of Curls and Grow Those Biceps
“My shoulders are very strong, so I have to be careful or else they take over on a lot of things, like chest work and also biceps,” Roelly explains. Once his biceps start getting fatigued after a couple of exercises, he usually either goes over to a preacher bench and does one-arm dumbbell curls, or sits down on a bench where he can brace one arm on his inner thigh for concentration curls. “Either way, my arm is locked into position and takes my shoulder out of the motion so my biceps can do all the work.”
3 Sample Arm Workouts for Roelly
2010
Biceps
Alternate Dumbbell Curls
3 sets - 8 reps standard form, 8 reps with elbows high
Hammer Dumbbell Curls
3 x 12
Barbell Curls (straight or EZ)
3 sets - 8 reps standard, 8 elbows high
Triceps
Dips (parallel bars or bench dips)
3 x 12-15
French Press/Skull-Crushers
3 x 12-15
Dumbbell Kickbacks
3 x 12-15
(Above may be done as all straight sets, or as three tri-sets, doing all three exercises in a row with no rest between)
2011
Triceps
Pushdowns
1 x 20 (warm-up)
4 x 12, 10, 8, 6 (increasing weight)
Decline EZ-Bar Extensions
4 x 6-8
Dumbbell Kickbacks
4 x 12
Seated Machine Dips
4 x 8-10
Biceps
Barbell Curls (straight bar)
1 x 20 (warm-up)
4 x 12, 10, 8, 6 (increasing weight)
Incline Alternate Dumbbell Curls
4 x 8
EZ-Bar Curls
4 x 6
Preacher Curls
4 x 8
2014
EZ-Bar Curls
4 x 10-12
Alternate Dumbbell Curls
4 x 10-12
Dumbbell Preacher Curls
3 x 10-12 each arm
Hammer Dumbbell Curls
3 x 10-12
Triceps
Rope Pushdowns
4 x 10-12
Lying Triceps Extensions
4 x 10-12
Machine Dips
4 x 10-12
Single-Arm Reverse-Grip Pushdowns
3 x 10-12
Lee Haney, Eight-Time Mr. Olympia
If Your Biceps Are a Challenge, I Can Relate!
“Biceps were something I had to focus on for several years. It wasn’t so much that they were small; it’s just that my shoulders grew so fast that they pretty much swallowed them up! I had to give a lot of thought into how I could get my biceps to match. One key was to prioritize them by training them first on the day that I worked chest and biceps. By hitting them when I was fresh, I was able to give them all my energy. Since my chest was always a strong body part, it didn’t suffer at all by being worked after biceps.”
2 Very Common Biceps Training Mistakes I Don’t Want You to Make
“People email me to help them improve their training and nutrition programs all the time. One error I see that has to be corrected right away is to train the biceps with back. On the surface, it might make sense, since the biceps are used indirectly in all types of chins, pulldowns, rows and the deadlift. That’s precisely why you shouldn’t train biceps after back. It’s already been put through a great deal of stress from those heavy back exercises. Subjecting the tendons to even more stress with direct biceps training immediately after could prove to be too much for them. I also want to caution you against doing barbell rows with an underhand or curl grip. The argument for reverse-grip rows is that they put the biceps in a stronger pulling position. That’s true, but the fact of the matter is that the biceps are a relatively small muscle. They aren’t meant to be pulling hundreds and hundreds of pounds.”
Safety First for Triceps: 3 Common Mistakes That Can Hurt You
“Staying safe and injury free is important no matter which muscle group we’re focusing on, but it bears special emphasis with regard to the triceps. I talk to far too many bodybuilders with chronic elbow pain and inflammation, and even more than you would think who have literally torn their triceps off the bone. The most common culprit is overtraining the triceps in an effort to stimulate maximum growth.
“Because the triceps inevitably work very hard as a secondary muscle group in any type of pressing movement for the chest and shoulders, special care needs to be taken so they aren’t worked too often or with too much work at once. I’ve seen some people who work all the pushing muscles of the upper body – chest, shoulders and triceps – all in one workout. That’s just too much. You’re much better off working chest and shoulders on different days, and choosing just one of those to pair up triceps with. If your schedule permits, you might even consider working the larger body part in the morning and triceps in the evening, on a double-split routine. This is especially valuable during the contest-prep phase when training volume is increased and energy levels and carbohydrate intake is decreased.
“Another reason we see inflamed or torn tendons as well as burst bursa sacs inside the elbow joint is a ballistic snapping of the arm at the peak of extension or pressing motions. Not only is snapping the elbows dangerous, it also takes tension off the muscle and makes the movement much less productive at stimulating growth.
“Finally, many bodybuilders do far too much for the triceps in their workouts. Considering the tri’s assist in all presses and they are also a smaller muscle group than something like the chest or back, there is no need to do more than eight or nine work sets for them. Many times I see bodybuilders doing two or three times that amount of volume, which is sheer overkill and is doing a number on their poor elbows to boot. With all that being said, let’s get into a safe and highly effective triceps workout.”
Compound Movements for Triceps?
“Two very common exercises for the triceps are dips and close-grip bench presses. I simply don’t believe they are worth including in a triceps routine, due to the fact that they involve too much chest. That being said, you can do a variation of cable pushdowns that simulates the close-grip press. When you hit failure after eight to 10 reps of cable pushdowns, step right up close to the cable, bring your hands a little bit closer together, and push the bar down with your elbows flared out for five or six extra reps.”
Cedric McMillan
For Longer Arms, Less ROM Could Be the Solution
At 6’1” and having long arms and low biceps attachments, using a full range of motion on curling movements had been causing increasing pain to the area around where his biceps inserted into the inner elbow. Suspecting that using a full range of motion might be to blame, he tells us, “I decided to try a three-quarters range of motion, not lowering the weight all the way down.” When he found he got a great pump without any of the usual pain, Cedric knew he was on to something. He had always gone very heavy on barbell curls but began focusing more on pumping and squeezing with a bit lighter weight. “That protects the joints and ligaments,” he says. “It’s not worth it to tear a biceps, because if that happens I’m done.”
So if you happen to be a taller man with long arms like Cedric, his revelation about never fully extending the arms when curling could definitely help you pack on some more biceps meat as well as stay safe from injury.
Cedric’s Arm Routine
Triceps
“I choose any of the exercises listed earlier for six total sets at the end of my workout, every other day,” Cedric tells us. Here is an example of a 2x3:
Decline Lying Cambered-Bar Triceps Extensions
3 sets of 12-20 reps. Last set is rest-paused for 20 reps.
Overhead Cable Extensions (leaning away from stack) With Straight Bar or Ropes
3 sets of 12-20. Last set is rest-paused for 20 reps.
Biceps
“I choose any of the exercises listed earlier for six total sets at the end of my workout, every other day,” Cedric continues. Example of a 3x2:
Standing Barbell Curls
2 sets of 20 reps, both sets are rest-paused to get to 20.
Low Pulley Cable Curls
2 sets of 20 reps, done using the intensity techniques listed earlier.
Concentration Curls
2 sets of 12-20 reps
Dexter Jackson
I talked to Dexter about the principles he’s followed to turn his arms from the 16 inches they were in his early competitions to the monster guns that have taped out at 22.5 inches in the off-season.
1. Train the Arms – Don’t Overtrain Them
“The arms are a smaller muscle group than something like back or legs,” Dexter begins, “but you still see so many guys doing as much if not more for them.” We’ve all witnessed this practice, and if you’re totally honest with yourself, many of you will even cop to the fact that you’ve done it. You’ll do two or three exercises for them, then move on to just one more, and one more, and so on. Arms are fun to train, and since few of us are satisfied with the biceps and triceps we see when we flex them in the mirror, it’s natural to want to do more. More is better! But in this case, it’s not.
“Not counting warm-ups, you shouldn’t need any more than eight to 10 sets total for the biceps, and the same for triceps,” Dexter comments. Hit them hard and be done with it, because all you do in the gym is stimulate growth. The actual growth of a muscle takes place sometime later, and then only if it is given time to recuperate and repair as well as sufficient nutritional support to allow for the synthesis of new lean muscle tissue.
Another common tactic that is meant to deliver results but often stymies growth is to train the arms twice a week. “That’s something that might work when you’re a young guy starting out in bodybuilding, as long as you’re allowing 72 hours between the workouts,” Jackson acknowledges. “But after a certain point and especially once you get past the age of 30 or so, very few people would be able to make progress training anything twice a week with the exception maybe of calves.”
2. Use Weights You Can Control and Feel
It’s probably been drilled into your head that a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle. To an extent, that principle holds true. The guy with 30-inch quads can usually squat a lot more weight than another man whose wheels aren’t a lot larger in circumference than his arms. But there are also cases where using very heavy weights can impede muscle growth, simply because the target muscle isn’t doing the brunt of the work. “You always need to be able to control the weight at all times with arm exercises,” Dexter advises. “I squeeze the muscle into a contraction, then control the negative and feel the muscle stretching,” he tells us.
When you think in terms of being able to feel your biceps or triceps contract and stretch, the weight you use becomes almost entirely irrelevant. Those of you who have spent any time on YouTube have probably seen video clips of stooges heaving up 90, 100 or even 150-pound dumbbells in what are labeled “curls” in the title, yet bear about as much resemblance to a true biceps curl as a kangaroo trying to tap dance does to a waltz. “I don’t care how much weight I’m using on anything in the gym as long as it’s stimulating the muscle like I want it to,” Dexter explains. “If I can’t get that feeling, I use a little less weight.”
Sadly, Dexter’s advice of using less weight is something too many guys refuse to do, either out of ignorance or ego. Put it this way, though. Would you rather be the guy who uses the most weight in the gym on curls and have arms that are nothing special, or would you be willing to use less weight and build the best arms your genetics are capable of? Depending on how you answer that question, you’re either a weightlifter or a bodybuilder. Weightlifters might be able to impress the other guys and girls at the gym when they train. Bodybuilders build physiques that impress others everywhere, all the time.
One last cue to take from Dexter when it comes to his recommendation to select weights you can handle – the man has won 29 pro shows including the Mr. Olympia, and he’s yet to tear a muscle. Clearly, he’s not just training hard – he’s training smart.
3. Use a Variety of Exercises and Techniques
“You have to switch up the exercises you do for arms on a pretty regular basis to keep seeing results,” Dexter informs us. “And you can’t avoid exercises just because you don’t like them. There are definitely exercises I don’t care for, like straight bar curls, that I still throw in there once in a while because I know they deliver good results.”
Staleness in training is one of the silent killers of muscle gains. People often forget just what a remarkably adaptive organism the human body is. The human race has been able to adapt to factors such as extremely hot or cold climates, limited diets and high altitudes. Do you really think it can’t adapt to the same exact exercises and workouts within the span of a few months? Yet if you pay attention in any gym, you will indeed see many members performing identical routines for each body part week after week, often for years. Have you been using mostly barbells? Do some dumbbell work!
“A lot of bodybuilders think machines are useless, but I get a great feeling with things like dip machines and the one-arm curl with your biceps up high,” Dexter notes. “Free weights, cables and machines can all contribute to growth.”
The point is, don’t get stuck in a rut. Change up the order you do your exercises in, try new exercises, or incorporate techniques that extend the muscle’s time under tension. Dexter does that on a regular basis, performing 21s for biceps curls and doing tri-sets for his triceps, three exercises in a row with no rest between. You can also try drop sets, rest-pause, forced reps and static holds. There are so many variables to play with that there is no excuse for doing the same old routine over and over.
4. No Cheating!
Often, bad form is a direct result of going too heavy (see number 2 above), but not always. Many bodybuilders use sloppy form simply as the result of “monkey see, monkey do.” They imitate what they see other guys in the gym doing, or what they see in training DVDs and online videos. “There are a few guys who can get away with terrible form and still manage to grow,” Jackson concedes. “But they are the exceptions, not the rule— most guys will just look like crap training that way.”
Granted, there is a time and a place for cheating reps, but it’s not from rep one. “When I’ve done most of my reps in really nice form, I will loosen up the form a little to get a couple more,” Dexter says. “Cheat reps should help you work the muscle harder by continuing the set, not make it easier because you’re jumping and swinging around and using every other muscle group except the one you’re supposed to be training.”
Dexter’s Typical Arm Workout
Biceps
Preacher Curls
4 x 8-10
EZ-Bar 21s
4 x 21
Dumbbell Concentration Curls
4 x 8-10
OR
One-Arm Machine Curls
4 x 10
(Elbow above shoulder joint)
Triceps*
Cable Pushdowns, V or Straight Bar
4-5 x 10
Skull-Crushers or Dip Machine
4-5 x 10
Rope Pushdowns
4-5 x 10
*Dexter performs tri-sets, or three exercises back to back without resting, for four to five rounds.
Evan Centopani
Train Arms Twice a Week?
Should arms be trained twice a week if a person needs more arm size?
“Before I went that route, I would be inclined to either up the intensity, check my form, or both. I’d also look to see if maybe I’m doing too much or not enough in terms of volume. If all of that seems to be in place, then I would try hitting them twice a week. Now if that didn’t produce results after a couple of months, I would try something almost nobody ever does, and stop training them completely for a couple of months. Some guys have seen results from that, and I would have to guess it’s because their arms were in a constant state of being overtrained. If nothing else, you’ll definitely have some really productive arm workouts once you start working them again.”
How Many Sets for Arms?
How much volume for arms is about right, or do you think it varies a lot from person to person?
“I don’t know how accurate it is to state some general guideline like a total number of sets to do. To me, it makes more sense to put a time limit on it. It shouldn’t take you more than 30 minutes for biceps and another 30 for tri’s. So depending on whether you go heavy and rest more between sets or not so heavy and keep your rest periods shorter, you will have fairly different amounts of volume.”
Free Weights or Machines?
Would you say you use mostly free weights for arms, or do you mix in a good amount of machines and cables too?
“I would say I do about two out of three movements for arms with free weights.”
Ideal Rep Range
What do you think is the best rep range for arm training?
“I don’t think going any lower than six reps is going to be beneficial on a regular basis. Going really heavy and doing low reps will beat the crap out of your joints and tendons, and you usually don’t see very good form with lower reps either. I don’t see the point in very high reps either. For me, the ideal rep range is eight to 12.”
Evan’s Arm Routine
Cable Preacher Curls
3 x 8-12
Alternate Dumbbell Curls
3 x 8-10
Barbell Curls
3 x 8-12
Rope Pushdowns
3 x 15-30
Standing One-Arm Overhead Dumbbell Extensions
3 x 6-10
Barbell Skull-Crushers
3 x 10-15
Nathan De asha
How This Brit Got His Gargantuan Guns
De asha started weight training at age 18, at just 5’9” and 125 pounds. “I had arms like a child, and they did not respond well at all for the first couple of years,” he says. “The only thing that seemed to grow fast was my shoulders and maybe my legs, but I was also an elite soccer player for years.”
Then Nathan started training with an older former pro hockey player named Steven Joel, who had the biggest arms De asha had ever seen. “Steven told me I had to take arm training more seriously, and work them on their own day,” he recalls. He commenced on that regimen, and at last his guns began to expand. Eventually it became clear that his biceps responded better than his triceps did, and in recent years he often trains them less often to give the tri’s priority: working them once a week while triceps are hit twice.
De asha also learned that his biceps grew best from higher reps, as in 12-20, while his triceps needed heavier weights and a rep range of eight to 12 to have a fighting chance to keep up with his bi’s.
Typical Arm Workout
Machine Preacher Curls
4 x 12-20
Seated One-Arm Dumbbell Curls
4 x 12-20
EZ-Bar Curls
3 drop sets
Cable Curls
3 x 21
Rope Cable Pushdowns
4 x 8-12
Close-Grip Bench Press
4 x 8-12
Cable Pushdowns
4 x 8 wide, 8 narrow
One-Arm Overhead Dumbbell Extensions
4 x 8-12
Dennis Wolf
Better Gains From Less Arm Work?
Do you think more guys would see better gains in their arms from focusing less on tons of arm work and putting greater emphasis on heavy back, chest and shoulder training?
“Not really. You might get some stimulation in the arms from those other workouts, but I doubt it’s going to be anywhere near enough to make them grow. I just believe the arms should get the same attention and intensity as all the other muscle groups. I don’t really buy into the whole thing about arms being a small muscle group so you shouldn’t do much for them. You need to work them hard and directly if you want them to be the best they can be.”
Perfect Form Not Always Best
We typically preach perfect form in training articles, but in pro training videos we often see guys using form that’s far from ideal. These are the best-built men on the planet. What do you deduce from that? Would you say that this development happens in spite of the imperfect form, or is it possible that slightly looser form is actually better for stimulating muscle growth?
“Perfect form is not always the best thing. It can really limit how much weight you use, and I do believe you have to train heavy to grow. But your form shouldn’t be ridiculous either. You have to find that happy medium where the weights are pretty heavy and you are still working the right muscles, and not a bunch of other muscles. Even with saying all that, I have learned a lot from training with my friend Dennis James about how important it is to get good contractions in the target muscle on all your reps. There is a way to do that and still go pretty heavy; it just takes time to adjust to it.”
Go for Max Pump, Then Stop
Some guys do as many as 30 sets for arms. Would you say that’s about right, or too much? Or is there even an average amount of sets that would be best for most men?
“I don’t think you can put a number on it. Once you get a maximum pump in the arms, then you should stop, whether that’s after 10 sets or 25. If you find yourself losing the pump or feeling weak, you did too much. For me, it never takes more than three or four exercises each for the biceps or triceps before I reach that point.”
Dennis Wolf Arm Workout
Biceps
One-Arm Dumbbell Preacher Curls
3 x 12
OR
EZ-Bar Preacher Curls
3 x 12
Standing EZ-Bar Curls
3 x 12
EZ-Bar Reverse Curls
3 x 15
Triceps
Rope Cable Pushdowns
2 warm-ups x 15, 2 work sets x 10-12
Reverse Cable Pushdowns
4 x 10-12
Machine Dips
4 x 10-12
Victor Martinez
More Is Not Better!
“In my earlier years, my arms were actually kind of weak. My arms were so bad, to me at least, that I was training them twice a week for a long time. That didn’t help, so I went back to hitting them once a week. I was still doing too much for them. I got so frustrated at that point because they still weren’t growing that I said screw it, and only trained them every other week. Believe it or not, they grew once I cut back to working them every two weeks for a while. What I didn’t realize until later was that my arms were overtrained. I think a lot of guys overtrain their arms thinking that’s the key, but most of the time they probably need more rest and recovery than you’re giving them. They already have to work on chest, back, and shoulder days to assist whether you like it or not, so you have to be really careful with how much isolation work you do for them on top of that.”
Biceps Are a Simple Muscle
“Guys train them too often, and they do way too much. Biceps in particular are a pretty simple muscle. There is no reason to ever do any more than three different exercises for them in any one workout. Your form needs to be good, too. You have to squeeze the muscle at the end of each rep, and control the negative so you also get that good stretch. You can’t do that when you’re going too heavy. So I’d say the ego gets in the way of progress with arms quite a bit.”
Victor’s Arm Workout
Biceps
Barbell Curls
3 x 10
Concentration Curls
3 x 10
Hammer Curls
3 x 10
Triceps
Close-Grip Bench Presses
3 x 10
Bench Dips
3 x 10
Rope Pushdowns
3 x 10
Dumbbell Kickbacks
3 x 10
Ron Harris got his start in the bodybuilding industry during the eight years he worked in Los Angeles as Associate Producer for ESPN’s “American Muscle Magazine” show in the 1990s. Since 1992 he has published nearly 5,000 articles in bodybuilding and fitness magazines, making him the most prolific bodybuilding writer ever. Ron has been training since the age of 14 and competing as a bodybuilder since 1989. He lives with his wife and two children in the Boston area. Facebook Instagram
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