Want big arms? Of course you do? Want to know how to build them? How about results in less time?

Is three weeks enough? Here’s your three week plan for big arms.

When people ask for advice about increasing the size of their arms, they’re often told not to worry about it and to focus on strength and functionality. If you have no training experience, that’s fine. But, if you have a little experience in the gym and can perform compound lifts properly, then throw that advice out the door.

To add an inch to your arms in 21 days, you need to focus almost all your efforts towards this muscle area for the next three weeks. This means your training, nutrition and recovery focus are all for your arms to get bigger and stronger.

But, you still want to perform one big lift to start off each training day. This big lift targets your arms and other major muscle groups. The purpose of the first exercise being a big lift is because it not only helps increase your muscle mass, but it also gets your body warmed up for the exercises to come afterwards. Proper technique and form are going to be necessary to complete this specialized type of training.

Maintain A Specialized Training Mindset

What is specialized training? Specialized training focuses on a particular area for a specific timeframe. This lasts between three and eight weeks. Failure is quite common with specialized training. Why? Because people stray from this and focus on maintaining all the gains achieved over the years.

Your gains and current muscular strength will not go away in a matter of weeks. Also, one of the four training days in this program is going to focus on maintaining other areas such as your chest and legs. Stick to the workout program provided and your arms will definitely grow.

Think about it this way. A professional basketball player isn’t going to spend half his training days focusing on kicking a field goal. Set a goal you want to achieve, which in this case is adding an inch or more to your arms. Then, prioritize everything towards achieving this goal.

How Do I Not Overtrain My Arms?

The term overtraining is quite scary to hear sometimes. People talk about its unfortunate effects across the Internet. First, let’s clarify what the term actually means. Overtraining is when you train muscle groups beyond their ability to recover properly.

This is pretty hard to do unless you consume inadequate amounts of nutrients.

When your body is put through overtraining for too long, the end result is muscle loss known as catabolism (breaking down of muscle tissue). This could take months to recover from. The whole belief is that you should train only one muscle group a week for recovery, which isn’t necessarily a bad concept. But, research shows that this isn’t really needed if you have some experience in muscle growth.

What Role Does Frequency Play?

Frequency and volume are two important factors that determine whether muscle hypertrophy (muscle growth) occurs or not. It’s the term used for how often you train, while volume is the amount of sets performed during a training day.

Let’s discuss frequency and volume a little more since they are a major part of the plan to develop bigger arms in 21 days. Frequency is a part of the long told myth that each muscle group should only be trained once or twice a week. The thinking is that any more than this sends you in the catabolic state from overtraining. This isn’t true. There’s plenty of research that proves this is nothing more than a myth.

The most recent example comes from researchers in Norway that decided to monitor strong athletes. These athletes were performing the bench press, deadlifts and squats at a frequency of three days a week. They were told to increase the frequency of their training to six times a week. Of course, this would make the average person fear they were overtraining.

The results, however, showed a very different outcome.

There were drastic increases in muscle hypertrophy. The reason this occurred is because hard training on your muscles increases protein synthesis. But, people who actively train harder have the difficulty of allowing protein synthesis to occur for longer periods. Why? The average length of time this lasts for is 16 to 24 hours.

The end result is just a single day of muscle growth when performing exercises for only one muscle region at a frequency of once weekly. The lesson learned from this is that you should use specialized training more than just two days a week for better muscular growth.

What Role Does Volume Play?

Volume is the number of sets performed during your daily training cycle. There are actually two different beliefs of how volume helps increase muscle growth.

The first belief is that your body only needs to perform one intense set that leads to muscle failure. This is basically a very low frequency. Then you have the second belief that states higher volumes with multiple sets are the best approach for muscle growth.

Research performed in Australia took these two concepts and put them to the test in the Sydney bodybuilding community. Three groups were established and placed into different frequency brackets of 3, 12 and 24 sets of squats to be performed each week.

The end results showed that the group with the highest number of sets had the best muscle gains. The conclusion is that the more sets and training days on targeted muscle groups, the more muscle growth.

Targeted Muscles for Arms Training…

Your arms are made up of three different regions. These regions require specialized training to increase the size of your arms. These three areas are your triceps, biceps and forearms. Other muscle groups are found within this region such as the brachialis.

But, the focus is more on the larger muscles found on your arms. Three different muscle heads form your triceps. Your biceps have two different muscle heads. Without a doubt, fitting names to say the least.

The workout program is designed to incorporate exercises that target each arm muscle group with isolation or together with other upper body muscles. As mentioned, the final training day each week is going to have exercises that target the whole body instead of specialized training for your arms.

The 21-Day Arms Workout Program

You now have the knowledge for why muscle growth is going to increase through frequency and volume. Now you need a workout program that gives you the exercises to complete this hard task. Of course, it’s only through hard work and pure dedication that you’ll accomplish this goal.

The workout has been broken down into A, B, C and D. The exercises listed within the workouts are numerical followed by letters. Follow the format closely and be sure to focus on form.

When To Train and When To Rest

Your training and rest days are very important in diverse ways. Adequate rest cycles are required. Why? So that your arms can recover, repair and develop bigger muscles from your training program. Four days are set in place for active training, which you’re going to notice you fluctuate in sets and reps.

Your training days are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Resting days are Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. The days can change to fit your schedule. But, try to avoid any arms training days without 24 hours rest between them.

Remember, frequency is how many days of the week you perform specialized training.

Unless you’re an elite athlete, you need a gap dividing the target days. Rest assured, your muscles will thank you.

As mentioned, the first exercise labeled A of each workout day below is a big lift. This big lift is usually called a compound lift as well. Multiple muscle groups are targeted, but the focus is still placed on your arms. Weight settings for each exercise can’t be given since each person is at a different level of training. But, each of the WEEK # labels displays intensity amount needed.

This is WEEK #1

Choose a medium weight that you can handle for the reps shown. You should be able to complete all exercise sets. With that said, failure is sure to occur on exercises labeled D.

WORKOUT A

WORKOUT B

WORKOUT C

WORKOUT D

This Is WEEK #2

Your chosen weight setting should be heavier than the week before. You should be able to complete all exercise sets. But, failure will surely occur on exercises labeled D.

WORKOUT A

WORKOUT B

WORKOUT C

WORKOUT D

What Next For My Arms Workout?

This is WEEK #3

Be sure to choose a weight that’s less than the first week. You should be able to complete all exercise sets. But, failure will surely occur on exercises labeled D.

WORKOUT A

WORKOUT B

WORKOUT C

WORKOUT D

Conclusion

If you’ve been honest with your work in the gym, you are going to see real results from this plan. Building bigger arms isn’t something you can do without commitment.

If you failed to get your arms to grow from this plan, you need to get your butt back to the gym and put in the work. Results only happen with effort and a plan.

– Brian Pankau, CPT