These great exercises to force arm growth will help you to build bigger and stronger biceps, triceps and forearms.
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Exercises to Force Arm Growth
When looking closer at the arm we see that your tricep actually makes up 60 percent of your upper arms size.
Your brachialis, along with your bicep, makes up the other 40 percent. These three muscles are very important to train and develop to get bigger arms.
Source: John Fornander on UnsplashAnd while we can come up with many different and creative ways to target these muscles, there’s no doubt that certain exercises will help you get the job done faster and more efficiently than others.
Exercises to Force Arm Growth
Many of these are staple exercises that have been around for a very long time, and the reason they’ve been able to survive the test of time is that they’re so incredibly effective at helping your arms grow.
So, we want to go over the 10 best arm exercises that you absolutely should be doing if you want to add inches to your arms. We’ll also go over workout programming strategies like supersets and drop sets at the end so you can create a killer arm workout of your own.
1. Exercises to Force Arm Growth – Incline Skull Crusher
First, we’ll start with an extremely overlooked triceps exercise, the incline skull crusher.
Even though regular skull crushers are very effective, doing them on an incline creates an angle that leads to a very intense stretch and contraction on each and every rep.
To begin you’ll take a seat on an inclined bench with an easy bar in your hands. You should have an overhand grip with your knuckles facing towards you. Start with the bar resting on your knees.
Lay back and bring the bar up until your hands are slightly behind your shoulders.
Make sure you lift your head off the bench to give enough room for the bar to travel behind your head, and then slowly lower the bar down by bending your elbows while keeping them as close together as possible.
Once the bar is behind your head, extend your elbows until the bar is back to the starting position, which should have you holding the bar behind the line of your shoulders rather than in line with your shoulders.
This helps to keep constant tension on your triceps. So, from there, you’re just going to lower back down behind your head and repeat for reps.
2. Exercises to Force Arm Growth – Barbell Bicep Curl
Next is the simplest, yet most powerful bicep exercise there is for adding mass to your arms, the barbell bicep curl.
It’s such an effective exercise because it allows you to use both arms at the same time so you can load up a really heavyweight to overload your biceps.
You’ll begin by loading a straight barbell, and then grab it with an underhand grip so that your palms are facing forward.
Your grip can be wide or narrow. By taking a closer grip you’ll be targeting the outside of your biceps more, meanwhile taking a wider grip will target the inside of your biceps more.
It’s good to incorporate both close and wider grips throughout your bicep workouts.
In either case, once you grip the bar stand up straight, curl the weight up until your hands are almost at your shoulders, but don’t rest at the top. Instead, slowly lower back down and repeat for reps.
Remember 3 things as you perform your curls. First make sure you’re not swinging your elbows forward.
Second, make sure you’re not flaring your elbows outward.
Lastly, make sure you’re not cheating by throwing your hips forward, using momentum, or bending backwards.
Also, remember that this exercise is supposed to be a mass builder, so it’s very important that you use a challenging weight that you’ll struggle to hardly complete 10 reps.
Preferably I want you to fail before you hit the 10 reps with this exercise. Doing of few sets of barbell bicep curls to failure is by itself a powerful stimulus for your arms to grow.
3. Exercises to Force Arm Growth – Barbell Close Grip Floor Press
Next is the barbell close grip floor press. Now the big benefit of the floor press, as opposed to the regular bench press, is that it limits your range of motion and it makes you come to a dead stop.
This relaxes your muscles, eliminates the stretch reflex, and makes the path upward a little more challenging.
Also, since your elbows can’t go past the floor, you wind up overloading your triceps because that limited range of motion puts more focus on the tricep portion of the exercise, and less on the bottom chest portion.
Start by loading a barbell on a rack set up about arms distance off the floor.
Lay down and position yourself so that your eyes are under the barbell and grab a close overhand grip, so your hands should be about shoulder-width apart.
Then unrack the bar and hold it over your nipple line.
From there you’re going to lower down slowly in a slight arch-like fashion so that the bar ends up under your nipple line around your sternum.
Watch the video below to continue with the exercises.
Video – Exercises to Force Arm Growth
Video Timestamps – Exercises to Force Arm Growth
0:50 BARBELL BICEP CURLS
2:10 DUMBBELL SPIDER CURL
3:15 BARBELL CLOSE GRIP FLOOR PRESS
4:19 INCLINE SKULL CRUSHER
5:17 DIP
6:15 DUMBBELL BICEP CONCENTRATED CURLS
7:20 DUMBBELL KICKBACK
8:25 CHIN UP
9:18 TRICEP PUSHDOWNS
10:00 EZ BAR PREACHER CURL
10:38 IMPORTANT NOTE
Learn More
How to Increase Chest Size and Strength
Best Way to Train the Chest for Hypertrophy (Muscle Mass)
Upper Chest Exercises Ranked (Best to Worst)
9 Best Dumbbell Chest Exercises
Image Sources
- Dips (2): John Fornander on Unsplash