Our four-week workout plan explains how to get bigger arms by building bigger, stronger biceps, and thicker, more defined triceps.
1. Don’t let your wrists move. “Something I notice in a lot of novice trainees is they tend to ‘break’ at the wrists when things start to get hard,” says trainer Joel Dowey (opens in new tab). “Don’t let this happen. For extension movements, push the cable attachment away from your body with the edge of your hand. For curling movements, keep them locked in place and don’t let them move. As the wrist breaks, you’re taking tension away from the desired muscle group.”
“2. Flex and stretch. Instead of sitting down between sets to check Instagram, you should stretch your working muscles to stimulate growth. “As soon as your set is over, set down the weights and start flexing the muscle you’ve just been working to increase blood flow into the muscle and improve your mind-to-muscle connection, which are crucial for maximizing growth,” says Nick Mitchell, founder of Ultimate Performance. “If you’ve just finished a set of biceps curls, squeeze the muscle for a second or two, then relax it by straightening your arm and flexing your triceps.” Repeat this for your rest period, then go again.”
3. Contract the antagonist. The antagonist is the muscle that’s working against the movement you’re doing. “If you flex your triceps at the bottom of a curl, the biceps will fully lengthen, and vice versa during any triceps extension work – meaning that you’re hitting full ROM [range of movement],” says Dowey. “It also stops you from cheating and cutting the movement short, and ensures a pause at the end of the eccentric [lowering] phase.”
Design with Ease
“When you search the internet for how to get bigger arms you’ll tend to find a list of arms exercises. Useful, sure, and someone who’s never trained before will happily build a little muscle in their biceps and triceps – the two biggest muscles in your upper arm – haphazardly picking and choosing whichever moves appeal.”
That’s what we’ve done for you here, with a series of four workouts that experienced gym-goers can repeat every week for four weeks to focus on building mass in their arms. Each workout follows the principles of hypertrophy training and trains your arms twice a week.
Get bigger arms faster
But if you want to get bigger arms faster, you need to string those exercises together into arm workouts that stimulate hypertrophy (the fancy term for building muscle mass) and you need to do those sessions regularly, progressively increasing the challenge..