Everybody wants big arms. Well, almost everybody. In his preparation for the 2008 Mr. Olympia, the owner of the most impressive arms in current professional bodybuilding Phil Heath reportedly trained his arms with less than five sets per week. Since we aren’t all blessed with Mr. Heath’s genetic gifts, we will have to train ours with a variety of techniques and intensity just to reach a small percentage of what he has achieved. Now that you feel better about yourself, let’s get started!

End the diet

If you’re currently running a caloric deficit to lose body fat, stop it. You cannot grow your arms – or any muscle group – while dieting. You can make them “look” bigger by removing the fat on them and thus bringing out more detail. However, if you are looking to move the tape measure and add real, noticeable, measurable muscle mass, you will need more calories. Adding something crazy like 1200 calories per day will add a lot of fat to your frame. The human body can only add .5 to 1 pounds of muscle mass per week. The rest will be fat and water. However, by adding 500 calories per day, you can average 3500 calories – or one pound body weight – per week. That’s just an extra potato, chicken breast, and glass of milk each day. You can handle that, if you want to grow those arms.

Rebuild the weekly split

If you really want to shock the arms into growth, try giving them the attention they have never had before. Combine back, chest, and shoulders into a single training day, and then give legs (calves, hamstrings, and quadriceps) their own day. Suddenly you have the option of giving triceps their own day, and biceps their very own day. For the short term, this sort of workout can prove effective. You can soak the muscle group with 5 to 7 exercises of 3 to 5 sets each. You can train biceps for an hour straight, have a protein shake, and call it a day without worry you are neglecting any other body parts. Then you can do the same for triceps. Use this method for 4 to 6 weeks, and see if you can’t stimulate some new muscle growth.

Heavy, high-volume

It is, of course, impossible to train using extremely heavy weight and high volume (12 or more repetitions) on every set. However, what you can do is fit both into the same workout. Every exercise can have four sets. The first two sets can be low volume (6 to 8 reps with heavy weight). Then, your last two sets can be high volume (12 to 20 repetitions with light weight). You can also place high volume before low volume in this system.

With more calories, more training, and more weight and volume, your arms won’t have a choice but to grow. After six weeks, you should measure your upper arms. If it worked, return to your normal routine for 12 weeks. Then, return to this plan for another six weeks.

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