Everyone wants big guns. You do, I do, and heck…even my mother occasionally strikes a double biceps pose, and flashes her 65 year old pythons.
In this article, I am going to break down two aspects of the race for bigger arms:
- What to know. I will provide you with vital information on just how big you can expect your arms to get.
- How to Grow. I will provide you with training tips that will assist you in reaching your goal of bigger arms.
What to Know - 20 Inch Arms
It is nearly impossible for a natural bodybuilder to have 20 inch arms. I say nearly impossible, because I don’t want to rule out the possibility that a 6’10”, large-boned bodybuilder with 40% body fat is reading this article.
Some of the biggest natural bodybuilders in the history of the sport barely crept over the 18” mark. Remember, they also had a reasonably low body fat percentage. If you have a body fat percentage over 20%, your arms will be bigger by an inch or two.
I have had arms pushing 19 inches. But this was during times when my body fat was up around 25%. When I lost weight, and fat, my arm size dropped dramatically.
Shoot for 16-17” arms at a relatively lean condition. Your arms will look MASSIVE.
What to Know – Bone Size
Small-boned lifters have a harder time gaining strength. They also generally have smaller arms. Of course, we can’t rule out genetic freaks. But with that said, if you are large-boned, you are on the fast track to having impressive pipes.
It may seem like small-boned lifters are cursed, but there is good news. Because of their tiny wrists, ankles and waists, 16 to 17” inch arms will look bigger, and aesthetically pleasing. On the other hand, big-boned bodybuilders often look blocky, and have less-pleasing lines.
What to Know – Genetics
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Larry Scott have two of the most impressive bicep peaks in the history of the sport. Sergio Oliva had thick, beast-like triceps. Following their training routines won’t help you.
You are a prisoner of your genetics. You can’t carve a bigger peak with hard work, nor can you plaster a Oliva-sized horse shoe on your triceps with endless sets of pushdowns.
They is what they is.
Understand, I am not telling you to give up. By all means, keep working hard! You have no clue where your genetics might lead you. (Well, some experienced lifters might have a clue) But if you have flat, lumpy biceps with a peak like a slow-rolling hill, more muscle mass will only exaggerate their current shape.
You can’t change the genetic shape of your biceps and triceps with hard work.
How to Grow – The First 2 Years
The fastest way to grow huge guns during your first several years of training is by focusing on heavy, compound lifts. These exercises include bench press, squats, deadlifts, and barbell rows.
If you only focus on your arms, you’re in trouble.
The first couple years of training produce the best results. The body is ready and willing to add muscle. And the fastest way to add muscle is by pushing for crazy strength on heavy lifts.
By adding more muscle across your entire body, your arms will grow. You can still do several sets for your biceps and triceps, but your primary arm builders should be compound lifts.
How to Grow – More Effort!
You can’t continue to use the same weight week after week, and expect to add inches onto your arms. It doesn’t work that way.
Big arms are made by big effort. Push yourself on every set of every exercise. Try for one more rep! And when you can perform 8-12 reps, add more weight! Effort!
Don’t waste sets. There’s no point in heading to the gym if you’re not pushing your body to the limit. Make it your goal to improve each week. This is the fastest path to quick arm gains.
How to Grow – Volume
High volume is not the way to go. I’m not telling you to perform only one working set like Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates. What I am telling you is this – you do NOT need to perform 20 sets for biceps and triceps each week.
Most natural bodybuilders grow MORE with lower volume. Each of us is different – obviously – but very few of us need more then 6 to 10 working sets for biceps and triceps.
Hard work is a good thing. Steroid using bodybuilders need higher volume, and a greater number of contractions. Steroids work better under these conditions. But natural bodybuilders are not playing the same game, and should back off the volume.
How to Grow – Triceps
Many young lifters focus too much on the biceps, and neglect serious, and heavy tricep training. Did you know that the tricep muscle makes up 2/3rds of your arm volume? Simply put, if you want bigger arms, you need to focus on the triceps first and foremost.
And don’t just train the triceps with light weight, isolation style movements. The triceps are a big, brawny, beefy muscle group. They need to be stimulated with heavy weights.
When’s the last time you used closegrip bench presses to hammer your triceps? How about seated overhead tricep extensions with a heavy dumbbell? And how about skullcrushers?
It’s Time to Get to Work!
Now you’re armed with arm knowledge. There’s nothing complex about growing big arms. Understand your potential, and make reasonable goals. Lift heavy, hard and smart. Don’t overtrain, and don’t forget the triceps.
A ripped, 17” arm looks darn impressive! It might not sound stunning on paper compared to the 22” inch arms of a steroid-gorged professional, but it is. I guarantee you one thing…If you walk out in public with 17 inch guns, people will stare.
61 Comments
I am 20 year old and having 6.28 ft height I'm doing gym from past 3 years not too much regularly but I have 16 inch arm and I don't know my arm looks round and when I pose it looks good but I don't have cuts on my arm and I don't know what type of genetics I have I also have small wrists and big belly like I have 24 percent body fat percentage and 41 percent muscles to body ratio and my weight is 97 how can I make my body look good and dua to my belly I don't look good without shirt give me some tips to transform
This will help you get leaner and improve the look of those arms.
https://www.muscleandstrength.com/expert-guides/fat-loss
I am 80 year old with 15ninch arms, how to increase to 18 inches, I work out with 25 lbs weights,
Hey Leonard
Choose a weight for curls that you can perform 8-10 reps on. For overall growth, you'll need to focus on your triceps as well. Skullcrushers, tricep push-downs, and tricep kickbacks are all great exercises to help grow each of the muscles that build up your triceps. Stick with the 8-10 rep range for each of these exercises.
I'm definitely a genetic freak. I'm 5'4", 175 lbs with 17" arms. I can put muscle on very quickly with minimal effort
You're not a genetic freak.. You're just very very short.
The shorter you are, the less muscle it takes to fill in any give area.
If you were say six ft tall and that same weight you would have like 13 inch arms.
To explain this better , let's say it takes a 5ft person 5 pounds of muscle on their bicep to make them 20 inches. It would take much more muscle poundage to make a 6ft person have 20 Inch arms.
There's a reason almost all pro bodybuilders are under 6ft. It takes much less muscle to make them look impressive. Literally almost all the pros who have massive arms are short.
Yeah you'll find a few that aren't but the overwhelming majority are short
My arms are pretty small. Even constant lifting throughout this summer and that one before. havnt made them to become even 16 inches! I want them to hit 17. They won't grow. Shitty. They stay around 15.7 inches.
I was a bodybuilder and power lifter through my 20's to mid 50's at age 63 I had a. Medical emergency and surgery and it took me 2 years to fully recover.as a BB I competed at 260 and because of my PL background was very big 58 in cheast,22 in arms. As a PL I was a super heavy wight weighing anywhere from 300 to 340. My question is after finally feeling healthy I've gone back to the gym and am amazed at my muscle memory. I am healthy now ,have a strong heart and am able to quickly lift progressively beaver weights. because I am 64 everybody has been trying to stop me from doing so, family trainers at the gym and even gym members who say I am scaring them because of the weights I lift.they are afraid for my safety as are the gym personnel. I feel strong, don't have any trouble lifting the heavy mounts I do.so shouldn't I be allowed to continue in peace
Hi I'm 17 years old, 6ft 1in tall, weigh 150lb and have 17.5 in arms. I've been training arms only every day for the past 3 years( I don't train legs or back as I'm happy with their size) but now I'm stuck and my arms won't grow any bigger. My aim is to get 19in arms. Can someone help please?
by only training arms you are basicly cheating your potential growth by not training other body parts (legs being the most crucial) your holding ypur self back from all that extra hormone release you could be releasing 3 times more testosterone but by only training arms wich is really a small muscle group in comparison your not really going to reach full potential
No offence but at 150lbs and 6'1 you're legs and back are going to be absolutely tiny. I highly doubt your arms are 17.5" with such a tiny torso but hey strange things do happen. Get an accurate tape measure and eat like a horse and train with heavy compound movements such as squats, deadlifts, chin ups and bench. Once you get up to a lean 200lb+ and with hard training you may well have genuine 17" arms and for 19" arms you're probably looking at a lean 220lb bodyweight. Ofcourse if you're taking steorids (I certainly hope not at your age) it's possible to have larger arms with a more disproportionate body.
I'm a natural pro and my comment doesn't make the forum :(
What a bunch of closed minded, excuse making bullshit
I've done an extensive amount of research on the subject, and have spent time with the top natural pros in the game. This information is accurate.
This measures are in pump or relaxed state? thanks
Hello,I was a bodybuilder at the age of 23yrs,and I've just gotten back into it after not training for years.Wow,was it ever a surprise to feel the pump I got right away,from working out.Truly it was amazing.I am now hooked on it again,at the age of 52yrs.The feel of the burn is fantastic.At 5,5 my bicepts are 14 and all natural.I hope to encourage other indaviduals to get active in it,bodybuilding,again.And have a healthy productive lifestyle.Remember,fitness is for everyone,so go for it.As Arnold says.Thank you.
hi everybody,
am 21 yrs old and 53 is ma wght,can u give suggestions for improve my weight along with fitness and one thing am do workouts in ma home only.........
Sir I joined jim now I want a manager for body growing tips please sir give me some more tips to better.............I waiting for your answer
Hey Guyz,
I am working out for about 6 months and i have seen a great improvement in everything except my Biceps. Tell me how can i pump my Biceps. My age is 17, I am 6" tall and my wt is 150 lbs. During workout with Biceps I do 4 sets of 12, 10, 8 and 6 with a weight starting from 20 kg to 25 kg. Please Help me.
Need to hit that muscle group more than that. Thats like 1/5 of the amount of reps you need a week. usually its about 200 reps minimum a week per muscle group
train arms everyday PERIOD!
largely nonsense. at 2-3 weeks in im almost at 17 inches on my arms starting at 14 1/2. focus on your arms doing bodybuilding, eat and hydrate before, during and after your workout. abstain from sexual activity to save testosterone and increase your endurance. the skeletale stuff is nonsense. your a hard gainer only if your naturaly skinny. dont overdo cardio and gain weight when you bodybuild. if your not growing your not hydrating, eating or doing enough time lifting. big mo with the 31 inch biceps says he does 6 hours a day training. the rock and hugh jackman do 3 hours. thiers also an older cat on youtube that got 21 inch arms naturaly, blanking on the name he has pictures of himself younger with arnold.
Big LOL
I never comment on these posts but this is the biggest load of $hit I've ever read on a forum - 14.5 to 17 inches in the space of 2-3 weeks... Would be surprised if you could do that on juice in 3 months let alone organic growth!
And yes I do lift you half-rep Henrys!
Squat - 193% bodyweight
Deadlift - 200% bodyweight
Bench - 160% bodyweight
lol I am 51 and have been stressing that my arms are only 17 inch and only read this page because I thought I was doing something wrong, so 17 inch is about a good as I can expect, thx
hello,
I just want to say my body is very weak my currently weight is of 56kg and arms size is 8inch(readings are after 2month gym workout)
So i want make my body perfect(arms of 15-19") what will i do & my diet is also perfectly plz suggest me that in 2 months my improvement is ok or not.
(before joining gym i have no idea about my weight ideally it is near about 54_55kg)
i want to know, what can i eat for increase my arm muscle.? suggest me a diet chat for improve my arms n solder also. my height is 188 cm. n my weight is 78 kg. i will wait 4 ur reply. thanks.
One thing I find in this article about building bigger arms that is kind of mentioned is genetics. Some people, like Carrot Top, can have impressive biceps because of the structure of his arm. If you notice, I following boxing, when I see fighter with impressive guns, black, hispanic or white, the common thing is their arm. If you have a high tricep muscle, meaning when you hold your arm at a 90 degree angle, if the detent for the tricep is higher up on your arm that means your biceps are going to be pushed out more than if your tricep muscle is detent is lower on your arm. If anyone would like to know what I am talking about, I can show you picture after picture. Now the higher tricep muscle placement is much more comment among African Americans and Hispanics, than Caucasians. However, some Caucasians have this trait, my son does and he can hold his up and not even flex and his biceps stick out. He has never lifted a weight in his life. I'm stating this as fact and I can prove empirically quite easily. If people remember a boxer by the name of Tommy Morrison, he spent a lot of time in the gym, but in the ring when he was in his boxing stance his arms had no shape or bicep pushing out. He did a lot of weight training because he was in Rocky 5. Now look at current heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, he doesn't life weights. He just has the genetics and when he is in the ring in his boxing stance, without flexing, his biceps are well defined. Again, it is do to the fact that his tricep muscle is structured higher on his arm. Unfortunately, I am one of the unlucky ones, I can work out my arms all I want and I will never have the defined biceps like Roy Jones Jr.
thanks for the tips jason,
and,any workouts good for lowering body fat?
No problem Gary. There are actually some great routines on the site, so feel free to look them over: https://www.muscleandstrength.com/workouts/fat-loss
hello,i have a question here.
I have muscles but my arm dosent have shape.
what should i do in a situation like this?
It sounds like you need to lower your body fat percentage. Definition is a combination of muscularity and low body fat. You'll need to lose some excess body weight to show off your arms.
listen friends i started my exersize be4 12 yers... now am work out at home only with out suppliments.my 16.7 inch biceps........ i need 18 as soon as ... how??
myself 65kgs, 5.7' height and 33 yrs,with a body fat of 18% started working since 2 months, genetically i have a good chest physique. i need to develop ripped abs and arms for that i now a days i jog 4km/20-25 min, after that some weighted workout like bar/dumb bell and some other weight workout including dips/pushups/chinups and crunches,this total schedule keeps me in gym about 1:15 hours daily and 6 days a week. is this much is sufficient to get the desired in a span of 3 months or so ???on the diet front i am careful and taking around 1.5 lit of low fat milk daily and started whey protein with that also ...
Help me! Hi..it,s bin 4 months and 20 days since I startd gym.My height is 5"9 inches,age..20frends always used 2 say dat i've gud biceps evn without gym,13" in shape..evn I also know I had amazing biceps peak since i grew to teenages..I was 61 kg(135pounds)b4 i kickd off workin outs..after 1st 80 days of gym,i became 65 kg(144pounds),but since then i haven't grown even 2pounds..evrybody at gym says i'm the fastest strength gainer they'v seen..Can bench pres 27 kgs on each side(total 54kgs) just in 4 months.. I'v around 13.8" biceps now..I feel so sick to realise I'm not growing my size since 2 and a half months,nt even 1 kg... Y? Wat sud i do now?
23 Yrs. old and hit the gym 6 days a week. Working hard since 2 long years I am a vegan dieter. Just got the perfect shape but not getting lean muscle mass, have only 11" arms.
What to do?
Hi i'm arijit .I have been working on my arms with no good results in four months. Its close to 15 inch. What shall i do in order to make it 17
Plz tell mee food tht i have to eat after coming from gym........i want arms to grow faster so wht should i eat......
hi my name is kanhu i lived in india i am 19 years old my problem is my arm is not growing and i am 75kg i want 6 packs in my body and i have no tricep and i also want big tricep like john cena plese some body help me
Hi Scott, I have platued my arms at 17. I'm 5"10' at 225 lean. I can't get my arms past the 17. What can I do to grow?
I have been bodybuilding for over 30 years. When I started in my early years I also trained in martial arts, and worked out with marines and navy seals (during my military years). You would think that I should be huge by now, but my skinny genetics never allowed me to get huge. I studied proper nutrition guidelines from every article and book I could find with no luck. Today, at 56 years old I look healthy, made some progress with some muscle and minimal fat. I have semi-pointy chest which is embarassing and slim looking lower arms, but I am still working out and not giving up. Is there anything an older guy can do to gain more size without getting a heart attack? (Just joking)
Lot of peeps talk about getting bigger guns 16 inch, 17 inche etc, but what a lot of people fail to realize that if you're gun's are unproportioned to the rest of your body, you're going to look like a tool.
Hi, my name is KH, I stand 5'7 170pounds lean, 16 inch arms pump 15.5 inch non pump. My calves are 16 inches.
im 17, 6-0 220lbs with 16.5 inch bicp. don't beleve the hipe, my arms dont look that big, they look rounded off and i have gained 3 inches in 6 months, what i am saying is don't be worryed about how big they are just worry about how they look, if they look good be happy, look bad get off your ass and just do it. and keep trying untill your satisfied with the, you will thank yourself later.
I am 6'2", 176 lbs, and have 15.5" bis. I usually do bis after back, and tris after chest. It has taken me about 6 months to get from about 13.5". I assume my progress will slow, but I follow a pretty unique strategy that has worked so far. I DO NOT claim to have too much knowledge about the universality of this approach, but it's worth a try: In general, I follow a set scheme of 15 sets for large muscle groups, 12 for small. For bis and tris, I start with several sets of super-heavy weights for 2-3 reps (for me that's about 65 lbs for biceps and 110 lbs for triceps) of seated hammer curls (bis)/ skull crushers or overhead dumbbell triceps extensions (tris). I do drop-sets with each, following with reverse grip barbell curls (bis) / reverse grip triceps extensions using the rope or dumbbell kickbacks (tris) for about 6-7 reps. I try not to worry about swinging the weights as long as I try my hardest to let the weight return to starting position as slow as possible (usually not so dang slowly to be honest) Then I do 2 sets of idiot curls and 2 sets of concentration curls, and with tris I just mix it up. Here's where it gets tricky - I then do a sort of micro-periodization scheme where I do 1 really long set of curls or triceps extensions (kinda need to be at a stacked plate work station or else you basically need the entire dumbbell station to yourself). I do one rep of heavy followed by 5 reps of light over and over again, slowly working my way lighter but all the while mixing it up. If the plates range in weight from 1-10, here is how it might look:
Weight: Reps:
10 1
5 5
9 1
6 5
8 1
4 5
5 1
3 5
7 1
4 5
6 1
2 5
5 1
1 5
7 1
1 5
6 1
1 5
And that's it. It's brutal and I end up sweating like a pig at the end of these last sets. But it's worked well so far. I also eat like an animal. Am very open to critique as well. Perhaps it's not optimal, but I guess I assume, don't fix something that isn't broken.
-Jumpy
hi steve i've been working out for about 4 months and got great results in everuthing exept my arms i increased weight alot but not size how often should i eat and what should i eat
use supplements like universal gain fast it is best supplement for gaining lean mass best part is that it is more effective on arms i have increased 8 inches on arms only in 4.5 kg pack
Hi Steve,
Wonderful explanation I found in your comments.
Hnece, let me tell you the purpose. I had been working out since 6 years. However, I started doing heavy workout for bicep since 3 months. My bicep is weak at the bottom side of the bicep and not getting the pic at all. It is 14.5". I am very confuse and worried for this.I tried doing circuit, drop set, heavy n moderate with more rep but still there is not a great improvement.Even forearms are little weak though I am working on that. Could you please assist me on this matter? This will be greatly appreciated.
Damn! Seems everyone on the internet has 16+ inch guns. 0_o
I know people that lift weights(including me) for over 2 years and cant get past 16inch. Hell, reaching 15.5 was difficult.
Can anyone tell me what is the best way to make triceps as strong as biceps?
DUMBELLS: Incline bicep curl 50lbs x 5 ending set. Skullcrushers I can only handle 35lbs x 5reps ending set.
hi Steve i have started working out after 2 years and within 3 months have gained 1.5 inches to my biceps , but my gym coach says that these gains are initial and at the later stages would be less,is it like that??i have a great metabolism and am following a high protein diet.Will the gains decrease later??
hi Steve i have started working out after 2 years and within 3 months have gained 1.5 inches to my biceps , but my gym coach says that these gains are initial and at the later stages would be less,is it like that??i have a great metabolism and am following a high protein diet.Will the gains decrease later??