Every guy wants bigger arms. It’s all part of our DNA. Countless people come into the gym to get bigger arms but they have no idea what to do and how to do it. The muscles of the arm and hand are specifically designed to meet the body’s diverse needs of strength, speed, and precision while completing many complex daily tasks.
In order to garner gorilla arms, you need to understand the anatomy of the arms and how you can exploit it for growth. The upper arm is composed of two muscles- biceps brachii and triceps brachii.
The biceps brachii is the muscles on the front of your upper arm. The word biceps refers to two intersecting muscle heads: the short head and the long head. The short head of the biceps originates on the coracoid process of the scapula. The long head originates on the supraglenoid tubercle. The long and short heads intersect to insert on the radial tuberosity.
If you want to focus on the long head of your biceps, extend the shoulder or get your elbow slightly behind your body. This is most-easily done using incline curl variants.
In contrast, moving the elbow in front of the body (a la preacher curl variants) is going to put more stress on the short head of the biceps.
The triceps brachii are the muscles on the back of your upper arm. The ‘triceps’ refers to the three individual heads to this muscle group: the medial head, the lateral head and the long head. The medial and lateral heads originate in the posterior side of the humerus and attach on the olecranon process of the ulna.
The long head is unique in that it originates on the scapula, and then converges with the medial and lateral heads to attach at the olecranon process. The triceps brachii work together to promote elbow extension. The long head is also a weak shoulder extensor/adductor, because it attaches to the scapula.
If you want huge friggin’ arms, there is no way around it; you must push the envelope with your training. That means for triceps, the bulk of your workouts should start with a big exercise like close-grip bench presses, dips or possibly board presses.
For biceps, the same thing should happen: start with an exercise where you can move the most weight, such as an EZ-curl bar or straight barbell curl, then move to auxiliary exercises afterward.
Here’s an example workout to help you get huge arms:
Triceps:
- Close grip Bench press- 4 sets of 8-10 reps.
- Dips- Triceps version- 4 sets of 8-10 reps.
- One- arm dumb bell triceps extension- 4 sets of 6-8 reps.
Biceps:
- Barbell curls- 4 sets of 6-8 reps.
- Preacher curls- 4 sets of 6-8 reps.
- Inclined dumb bell curls- 4 sets of 8-10 reps.
Now, get going…