Getting Big Arms With Compound Lifts

I’m gonna go on a limb here and make a bold statement. Every guy wants to have bigger arms. Let’s call this an undisputed gym bro fact. When you start lifting rarely do you say to yourself “oh man I can’t wait to have giant calves!”, no. You say “I’m gonna be doing 8-hour arms every three days, get a few face tattoos and the 5% crew will sign me with a sponsorship deal! Hell yeah, whatever it takes-right babe?!” and start curling the biggest dumbbell you can lift.

However, curling 30 lbs dumbbells for 8 hours can be tiresome. So what I suggest is that you give compound exercises( as an arm growing tool) a shot.

Pull Ups

Pull-ups are a must have exercises when creating your arm workout. They are the bare necessity. They build your entire upper body and once you master doing double-digit reps, you’ll get rad internet cred by the wannabe insta personal coaches.  Instead of showing you how to do a pull-up(which you should know how to do by know) here’s how NOT to do a pull-up.

Chin Ups

Same thing as the pull-ups. You want biceps, give chin-ups a go. They will destroy your peaks but will also rebuild them anew. Once you start banging out 20 reps, go hard mode and start doing them suuupeeer slooow. Do a ten count when you pull yourself up then do a ten count when you start lowering yourself down. This will burn like hell and put a huge stress on your biceps and upper triceps.

Barbell Rows

This a great finisher for arms. Use a smaller weight which you can comfortably perform for about 10 to 15 reps with. To get a maximal masochistic self-hating pain effect, try super-setting an overhand grip with an underhand grip.

Bench Press (Close Grip)

When you properly do bench press; you activate your chest, lats, and arms. It’s a great upper body push-based exercise. However, when you do the close grip variation you put the focus on the triceps in

Dips

Dips are a certified triceps killers, performing them requires serious strength. If you can do 20 rep without many problems, try doing them as a warm-up exercise for when you start doing serious triceps work. You can also add a weight belt and add some plates to increase the difficulty. This also has an added bonus of making you look badass with a 45lbs plate hanging from your nuts while you casually rep out a set of dips.

Deadlift

Ah yiisss the mother of all lifts, the deadlift. It’s one of the best whole body exercises that can put mass on your body and make you stronger. Even though it primarily works your traps and back, deadlift hits your arms pretty hard as well. Especially when you go up in weight, your arms need to carry that weight so yeah the triceps and the biceps can’t have an off day when you deadlift. They have to be at their top performance, so don’t sleep on deadlifts when doing arms.