How to get Huge and Powerful Arms.

[Vaines]

I havn't done ANY direct armwork for over 6 months now. Arms are still the same, but I want to start.

The thing for me is, I want my arms to get huge, but also have Awesome strength and power. Nice big hard, powerful arms.

Got any advice? Bi's/Tri's

[miked512]

Good question.

I wish I had the answer but I'll say try Max-OT. Should give you some more arms as well as some more overall growth. If you don't like that, then you can always try that crazy arm routine where you stay in the gym all day with only breaks to eat and kill your arms and make them grow 3/4s an inch.

I'm not really one thats qualified to answer your question because mine are only 17s. :-(

[Sychokid]

here is a arm split (asssuming u have biceps and triceps on one day):

close-grip bench press 3 sets
skull crushers 2 sets
tricep dips 2 sets
barbell curls 3 sets
incline hammer curls 2 sets
preacher curls 2 sets

[DawgPound]

Originally posted by Vaines
I havn't done ANY direct armwork for over 6 months now. Arms are still the same, but I want to start.

The thing for me is, I want my arms to get huge, but also have Awesome strength and power. Nice big hard, powerful arms.

Got any advice? Bi's/Tri's

What has your routine been? Have you mostly been emphasizing basic compound movements?

[Bob45]

My arms always seem to gain more size when my bench press goes up. I can work like crazy on my arms and not notice a big difference. My arm never have decent size until I can bench at least 275. Lot of triceps involved in benching. I think the arm workouts are good for shaping. Only my opinion.

[J.S.B.]

Originally posted by Vaines
I havn't done ANY direct armwork for over 6 months now. Arms are still the same, but I want to start.

The thing for me is, I want my arms to get huge, but also have Awesome strength and power. Nice big hard, powerful arms.

Got any advice? Bi's/Tri's

How's the rest of your body growing???

Imo- heavy pressing, pulling movements are what stimulate the most growth. For me anyway, I only do a couple sets for bis/tris, 1 movement for each. As my legs, chest, and back grow, (moving more weight on compound movements), my arms are right there with them.

[Poppa Pump]

My favorite tricep routine:
Close Grip Bench 3x6-10
Pushdowns 3x6-10
Dumbell Overhead Extensions 3x6-10

My favorite bicep routine is:
Barbell Curls 3x6-10
Incline Curls 3x6-10
Hammer Curls 3x6-10


This routine has given me a lot of mass. If your main concern is power, mabye replace the incline curls with half curls, since that's only half the motion, it helps with power a lot....i personally don't like them though. Peace

[Vaines]

Ya, I've been olympic lifting and emphasizing the big lifts for a while now. Body is growing well.

When I feel my arms they are kind of soft, but hard when I flex them. I want them to be HARD and Big fast. I need power too.

Sycho, will that routine give me power, hardness, and mass?

[Bignbuff]

The two other ones by Sycho and Poppa pump were good. Here's another to consider assuming you train them together.

Dips(body upright) 3x6-10
Skullcrushers 3x6-10
Close Grip BP 2x6-10

Barbell Curls 3x6-10
Preacher Curls 3x6-10
Alternating DB Curls 2x12-20(6-10 each arm)

[lesters]

if you are gonna get massive guns you must work tris hard once a week than bis . tricep pushdowns, close grip bench, weighted dips,pullovers, nose breakers, 1 heavy set 4 reps. standing bicep curl, hammer curl with a twist, alternating dumbell curl , preacher curl , concentration cable curl 1 heavy set each exercise and 4 reps blast them arms this only for naturals roid guys could blow tendions and ligaments.

[Vaines]

If I were to limit my exercise's to 2 each(bi's/Tri's)

Which would I choose?

Preacher
Incline Curls?


Close grip bpress
Pressdowns?

Do you guys understand when I mean big, Hard, and powerful?

Im starting tomorrow, thanks I appreciate it friends!

[Bob45]

If I were to pick two for each I would go with Close grip bench, skulls. Then barbell curls and seated DB curls. Whatever 2 I can lift more weight with. (free weights)

[Bignbuff]

If you limit it to two try something like this.

Dips(body upright) 3x6-10
Skullcrushers 3x6-10

Barbell Curls 3x6-10
Preacher Curls 3x6-10

[nhmike]

Originally posted by Vaines
Ya, I've been olympic lifting and emphasizing the big lifts for a while now. Body is growing well.

When I feel my arms they are kind of soft, but hard when I flex them. I want them to be HARD and Big fast. I need power too.

Sycho, will that routine give me power, hardness, and mass?

Smaller muscles recuperate quicker than bigger muscles, which is why having a separate arm day can be nice. If you do your chest and back early in the week, your arms will recover from those workouts much quicker than your chest and back, so you can hit your arms again mid-week.

Weighted dips are good for triceps, but it's hard to find a good belt/chain. I used to do these as my first tricep exercise, and was up to almost 150 lbs additional weight (in addition to my bodyweight), but it gets really cumbersome to have three 45 lb plates hanging between your legs. The chain on the belt I was using was just barely long enough for them, making it a huge PITA to get everything hooked up. The gym then put a longer chain on the belt for me, but it was several feet longer, making it way too long (the weights would hang down around my feet.

So, I stopped doing them, and discovered that close-grip underhand bench presses are just as good. These are much better than regular close-grip bench presses IMO. With regular ones, it puts your wrists in a very awkward position, which always killed my wrists. Also, you still use your chest a fair amount. By doing them with an underhand grip, with your hands at shoulder width, it keeps your triceps as the main mover, but without putting any awkward stress on your wrists. Just make sure you ALWAYS have a spotter when doing these with anything other than a warmup weight. With this grip, if your triceps give out, they'll give out quick.

My favorite arm workout (a few days after my chest and back workouts) is basically:

underhand press
standing barbell curls (for one or two sets)
then supersetting straight bar nose breakers with more standing barbell curls (including some reverse curls)

and finishing up with either some dumbbell curls or preacher curls, and perhaps a set of pushdowns.

What's fun to do about once a month or so is a set or two of forced negatives on the preacher bench with a partner. You can do them with essentially no weight on the bar - the partner provides the resistance. The partner lets you raise the bar up without providing any resistance (you want to focus on the negative portion of the motion, so he just lets you do the positive portion without any resistance), then pushes down on the bar to try to get it to go down. You try as hard as you can to keep it from going down. The partner is in a better position from a leverage point of view, so unless you are a lot stronger than him, he should be able to force the bar down. The partner should provide as much force as necessary so that the bar slowly goes down while you're trying as hard as you can to keep it from doing so. Once the bar gets most of the way down, he then lets you pull it back up (while not providing any force), and you repeat it. After just a couple reps, you're arms will feel completely dead. Only do these at the end of a workout, and only every now and then.

It might be nice to do forced negatives at the end of an arm workout one week, then two weeks later do forced positives (same thing except the partner applies the force only on the positive portion of the motion. Since you don't want to ingrain "failure" into your muscles too much, it's good to apply the same approach but in a method in which you are "winning"), then back to forced negatives two weeks later, etc.. They totally nuke your biceps.

Some forearm work at the end of an arm workout is a good idea as well. Forearms should get a nice workout from your back workout, but being smaller muscles, they recuperate pretty quick (which also means atrophy will set in quicker). So, it's good to hit them again.

[fops310]

Originally posted by Vaines
If I were to limit my exercise's to 2 each(bi's/Tri's)

!

Bi- Deadlift, Pullups
Tri- Deadlift, Bench Press

[Kane Fan]

fops I hope that's your way of saying to just do one (direct) lift for tri's and bis
tho even that I would disagree with

[MikeKid]

powerlifting, powerlifting, powerlifting...

Compound movements --> high test release --> huge arms

[nhmike]

Originally posted by MikeKid
powerlifting, powerlifting, powerlifting...

Compound movements --> high test release --> huge arms

Sorry, while powerlifters do have large arms, compound movements alone are not the best way to build large arms. As I said - smaller muscles, like arms, recuperate more quickly than larger muscles (back, chest, legs, etc.). Since they recuperate quicker, atrophy also sets in quicker. So, using the same workout frequency for the smaller muscles as the larger muscles is not ideal.

Yes, compound movements should make up the bulk of any serious lifters routine. But, working the smaller muscles separately can also be very beneficial, since they can be worked more frequently (and should be for the most growth).

[Bob45]

NHMike,

What does your split and rest days look like?

[nhmike]

Originally posted by Bob45
NHMike,

What does your split and rest days look like?

Right now I'm just on a 4 day split (but done over 6 days instead of a week) - since I just started getting back into the gym about three weeks after taking 9 months off from a catastrophic ankle failure (and the whole "ulcerative colitis" thing). I've been spending these last couple weeks just getting my body reaccustomed to working out. In another week or two I'll being a more rigorous regimen, consisting of alternating phases (the first phase lasting about three weeks, and being high volume, fairly high reps, low rest periods, and the second phase being lower volume, lower reps (heavier weight), and longer rest periods).

In Phase I, I'll be on a 3-day split, but with each workout being done twice a week (so working out 6 days a week). I can make decent progress on such a workout, but only for a few weeks, after which I start getting into overtraining territory. Thus the reason for then switching to a lower volume phase. The three workouts for this phase are:
A - Back, traps, rear & side delts, biceps
B - Chest, front delts, triceps
C - Legs
(abs done on my offday)
In phase I, a week involves doing each workout twice (A,B,C,A,B,C,off)
For the legs workouts, the first one of the week emphasizes quads, while the second emphasizes hamstrings
The muscle groups have a light and heavy workout each week - essentially just meaning that one of the workouts is higher reps (lower weight) than the other one. But, because of the short rest periods, neither of them is truly a "heavy" workout.

Phase I lasts three weeks, with the volume of the workouts increasing each week, and the rest periods between sets decreasing. After three weeks of that, I'm really sick of it, but it essentially "sets up" the second phase, where most of the strength gains come. The goal of this phase is to build endurance, increase the size of the slow twitch fibers, and to set my body up for the second phase - the goal for this phase is not to build strength - that comes next.

In Phase II, I go on a 5-day split:
A - Back, traps, rear & side delts (and one set of biceps)
B - Chest, front delts, triceps
C - Hamstrings, calves
D - off
E - Arms
F - Quads, abs
G - off

Much longer rest periods here, heavier weights, and lower reps. Most of the sets are in the 4-8 rep range, but with one or two drop sets at the end of the workout. This phase lasts essentially as long as I feel I'm making gains on it - which usually works out to around 5 weeks. For me, my body adapts pretty quickly to a particular regimen, so it's necessary to change things around. I suspect most people are that way, but when they switch to a new routine, the first few weeks while they make progress manages to convince them that their new routine is the best one out there, so they'll stick with it for months and months (or years), even though the gains drop off quite a bit after their body adapts to it.

Over the past 15 years or so, I've tried all sorts of different routines, and found that this works best for me.

Incidentally - thank God for muscle memory!!! After taking 9 months off, I don't think I'd be able to get the motivation to stick with it again if it weren't for the fact that you can rebuild muscle a lot quicker than it took to build it for the first time.

[Bob45]

Thanks, I am finding out that even working out for 5 years 20 years ago I knew very little. I am learning a lot on this site. I would just go by what everyone was doing in the gym. To get anywhere it takes some serious dedication to your routine and nutrition.