The Truth To Bigger Arms

It is just about every guys goal.  How do I get bigger arms?  I am no exception to this.  Every guy wants big arms to show off.  When I was younger I was very athletic, but basically skin and bones.  The most I ever weighed in high school was around 150lbs and I was around 6′ 2″.  When I got to college I was introduced to more olympic and power lifts to help with performance in the high jump.  Over the next 4 years I gained 20-25lbs.  I would like to think it was mainly muscle and not from all the beer in college.

When my high jumping career was over I started taking more of an interest in strength training.  I started reading muscle magazines and watching what other people did at the gym.  Since performance was no longer my goal I wanted to workout more to look bigger and be stronger.  I trained incredibly hard to reach this goal.  I would dedicate whole workouts to bi’s and tri’s to get huge arms.  After 2 years of training my new weight…..the same as when I started.  Believe me I know how frustrating it can be to workout hard and not hit your goals.

Hindsight my problem was actually an easy fix.  How can I gain 25lbs in college when my goal was performance and then gain nothing when my goal is weight gain?  In fact I probably would have gained more weight in college if I wanted to.  Because I was an athlete I need to watch my weight, so I would have to control my eating to prevent even more weight gain.   When I examine how I was training in college vs post grad the answer becomes clear.  I was focusing on the wrong things.  I wanted bigger arms so I would only train my arms one day per week with nothing else.

World famous fitness expert Charles Poliquin is known for saying, “to gain 1 inch in your arms, you need to gain about 10lbs of muscle mass.”  If this is the case how long will it take to gain 10lbs doing bicep curls?  I tried to 2 years and didn’t come close.  Instead when I look at my college program I see exactly why I gained so much muscle.  I was performing compound upper and lower body exercises.  In fact I rarely did any arm exercises.  We would even get yelled at by our strength coaches if they saw anyone doing a bicep curl.

Here is a study that helps demonstrate this point:

Rogers et al

The Effect of Supplemental Isolated Weight-Training Exercises on Upper-Arm Size and Upper-Body Strength

Human Performance Laboratory, Ball State University, Muncie, IN.
NSCA Conference Abstract (2000)

To quickly sum this study up, researchers had two groups perform exercise.  One group did a workout consisting of 4 compound upper body exercise while the other group did the same workout but added in bicep curls and tricep extension.  The results…both groups got bigger arms and strong upper body, but there was no difference between the groups.  Adding isolated arm work did nothing.

Another feature of my college program was I was perform total body, compound exercises, multiply times per week.  The common body building program you see is splitting the body up into parts and working each one out per day.  Something like Chest on Monday, Back on Tuesday, Shoulders/Arms Wednesday, Legs Thursday….With this type of program you will only hit these muscle once per week, maybe twice.  By performing total body workouts or at least not splitting up workouts as much you will be able to hit each muscle group more often.

One last study that prove this point:

Comparison of 1 Day and 3 Days Per Week of Equal-Volume Resistance Training in Experienced Subjects

For this study researchers had one group perform strength exercise once a week and another 3 days a week.  They both kept total volume the same so both groups actually did the same amount of work.  The results were that the three day a week group saw more significant muscle growth and strength increases even though they did the same over all work.  More exposure is superior.

So the bottom line is, if you want to build more muscle concentrate on big lifts.  The method muscle grow is through muscle damage and hormonal release.  Isolated exercise will not work very well to release anabolic hormones like testosterone and growth hormone compared to pull ups, deadlifts, or other compound exercises.  It is ok to throw arm exercises in your program but they should not be the foundation of your training. I can personally see this happen over the past few years.  I currently weigh 20lbs more than I did in college with right around the same body fat percentage.  My secret was simple.  I started lifting like I did in college with a few new twists that I have learned along the way.

Have a great workout!

Mike Deibler MS, CSCS
My Workout Creator