IFBB pro bodybuilder and fitness inspiration Simeon Panda shares his tips for massive arms. Share your arm building secrets too!

[iloverachel]

1. Give arms their own training day
"As much as they get a good workout from compound exercises like presses and rows, I feel that if you truly want your arms to grow, they need direct attention without being fatigued first," he explains. "I rotate between biceps and triceps exercises, one after the other, during an arm session. I prefer to let one muscle group rest after an exercise [by switching back and forth] in order to get the best from it on the next."

2. Treat your arms like everything else you train
"Including at least one failure set with each arm exercise will be beneficial to increasing your hypertrophy," says Panda. "Aside from failure sets, each set should be challenging, allowing you to perform only the number of reps you intend to complete."

3. Intensify your efforts
While Panda doesn't believe in overdoing intensity-boosting techniques, he does recommend dropsets for intermediate- to advanced-level trainees on arm day. In a dropset, you choose a weight you can do for 10-12 reps. Once you hit positive failure—in which you can no longer lift the weight without compromising your form—quickly drop the weight about 25 percent and resume the set until you reach muscle failure once again. From there, you can continue with further drops as you please.

4. Remember the basics
"Barbell curls are a fundamental arm exercise everyone should be doing, from amateur to seasoned pro," he says. "If you're a beginner, I highly recommend bodyweight exercises for triceps, which can be extremely effective in increasing your arm strength and growth. I fully exhausted my triceps with multijoint exercises like dips and close-grip push-ups during my first few years of training, and that laid a foundation for further development."

5. Don't get caught up in the numbers

Say you've been focused on adding 1-2 inches to your arms for the last six months, with little luck. What should you do next?

Don't panic, says Panda. "I personally do not confine myself to time constraints—in all honesty I just don't like them. Everyone is in a rush and too concerned with stats and figures, which can cause you to lose sight of what's really important."

 

[genetic freak]

I will bite.

My arms used to suck, well not really, but they needed to improve is what Tyler Manion told me. They were 18 inches on stage as a 5'8" LHW (avatar pic was this summer). I was just training arms with back or chest/shoulders on my PPL split or I would do an Upper/Lower split and train arms on my Lower day. I changed my split to an Upper, Arms, Upper, Lower, Arms, Upper, Arms, so I train upper and arms 3x a week. Everything needs to catch up to my legs and of course it doesn't matter, legs are still growing faster than everything else, but I digress.

I only do one exercise for triceps and one for biceps each session. If you need multiple exercises, you need to learn how to train, because you train like a pussy. Everything after the first exercise is junk volume. Here are the exercises I rotate through.

Triceps - Smith Machine Close Grip Bench, Swiss Bar Close Grip Bench, SSB JM Press, Incline Reverse Grip Bench, Weighted Bar Dips, Weighted Bench Dips and Cable Extension Single or Double using the Prime Grips (Don't use a fucking V-grip, it only gives you 3/4 ROM. A rope or flat bar is better than the V-grip. Th V-grip is only good for overhead extensions and inflating egos.)

Biceps - Spider Curls, Drag Curls, Single Arm Cable Curl, Cable Concentration Curl, Dumbbell Preacher Curl and Overhead Cable Curl Single or Double. (Everything isolates the bicep and takes the front delts and back out of the equation. My elbow is only a pivot point and does not travel towards my shoulders. The only time they move is during a drag curl. My preacher curl is done on an adjustable incline bench and I place it nearly vertical, burying my armpit in the top of the pad using full ROM. The dumbbell touches the pad with each rep at full extension. I would consider myself an unnaturally strong dude even for enhanced standards and a 30 lbs dumbbell will tear your ass up. I laugh when I see 45+ lbs dumbbells on 30-45 degree inclines doing 3/4 ROM.)

Since August arms have gone from 18 to 19.5 inches and although I am not stage lean, I am pretty fucking lean right now. I was thinking 10-11% until my physique update yesterday when I looked grainy AF. Maybe 9-10% right now.

 

[SAD]

As a strength athlete, and a unique one at that because of my sport, partials are a big part of how I train biceps now. Full extension is a thing of the past for me, especially when you can easily see when the bicep stops elongating and the rest of the “lockout” is just joint movement and tendon/ligament stretching.

That said, my arms have never been bigger or better looking. They’re over 20” cold and closer to 22” pumped.

Just anecdotes. Not to be taken as a recommendation.

 

[Bigtex]

I honestly thought you would have go away by now.

 

[prime]

This Simeon guy is natural right...or so he claims.

 

[KyleB]

Super simple. Beautiful arms aren't build from massive biceps, or at least good looking arms aren't. Tricep is 2/3 of the size and the sweep on the flex makes your arms just look better. Don't be a pussy, there is no secret, just copy everything in pumping iron lol.

I notice with arms, it's interesting, you look like a tool wearing tight shirts or really short sleeve shirts. The only time I've actually gotten like real attention(that led to sex) that people say it's distracting is when I've had my arms extended out to the side where you can see my tricep sweep and bicep separation in a relaxed state.

Big arms only get dudes.

 

[BD Cool]

Biceps - Spider Curls, Drag Curls, Single Arm Cable Curl, Cable Concentration Curl, Dumbbell Preacher Curl and Overhead Cable Curl Single or Double. (Everything isolates the bicep and takes the front delts and back out of the equation. My elbow is only a pivot point and does not travel towards my shoulders. The only time they move is during a drag curl. My preacher curl is done on an adjustable incline bench and I place it nearly vertical, burying my armpit in the top of the pad using full ROM. The dumbbell touches the pad with each rep at full extension. I would consider myself an unnaturally strong dude even for enhanced standards and a 30 lbs dumbbell will tear your ass up. I laugh when I see 45+ lbs dumbbells on 30-45 degree inclines doing 3/4 ROM.)

Good advice here. I've always did the traditional barbell and alternating dumbbell curls, but never had much luck growing good biceps. As soon as I did more isolation exercises like those mentioned above, my arms grew significantly.