# Arms won't grow. What was your experience?



## Cantona77 (Mar 25, 2016)

Anyone out there who suffers from girly arms can share there experience?

In a nutshell, as the months in the gym are rolling by my paltry 14inch arms aren't making progress like the rest of my body is. I'm beginning to fill out a t-shirt on my chest and back, yet those baggy sleeves are puny arms annoy the hell out of me.

Yes, I'm eating big and lifting progressively heavier weights; my routine is based around the big four compound lifts, four days a week, with biceps and triceps added on.

If you identify, please share YOUR experience. Was there a moment you thought "hey, my arms are getting bigger" or perhaps someone said "your arms are looking good, they're not skinny as f*ck anymore".

Amd, on the other side of the coin, is there anyone in the same boat whose arms just WONT grow, no matter what they do? Evidently, I'm beginning to feel disheartened and thinking its 100% genetics having slim, long bones and a gym is no place for us types. Should we throw in towel? Stop wasting time and become long distance runners like our bodies were built for?


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## rd88 (Nov 25, 2011)

Even with subpar arm genetics, you can always make them grow to look reasonable. Whether they're proportional to the rest of your body is another matter but you can definitely develop muscular arms if you do the right things.

It could be that you're just not giving them enough stimuli to respond and grow or it could be that they're genetically just not a good muscle group for you (less muscles cells, poor instertions/limb length giving them a thinner appearance) but either way, a few things IME work really well. One of them is perfect form combined with intensity, making sure to use correct form where you're really working the target muscle is key to make sure you're not transferring the tension onto to secondary muscles and thereby giving arms enough tension and work. Don't shy away from isolation exercises and go all out on the heavy compounds like most preach, single arm dumbbell preacher curls in good form is a great exercise to really hit the bicep wholly (single arm allows you to spot yourself with your other arm when reaching failure) intensity is key. Train them to failure and with enough volume but not too much. Compounds definitely should have their place but again you need to hit the target muscle effectively and not cheat to a point where other muscles take over.

Personally, frequency worked well for me. Arms and smaller muscle groups actually recover quicker IME and can be hit more frequently, I don't like to overdo volume because again they're small muscles and doesn't take too much to stimulate them. Too much volume becomes wasted effort for me, just like to train them properly, very intensely and frequently.

Try training arms twice a week, sticking to 3 work sets per exercise (excluding warm ups) and 3-4 exercises per muscle. Drop sets to finish them off for a couple of exercises works really well. Mix of rep ranges (all in perfect form) 6-8, 8-12 (all until failure)

Make sure to get enough rest and sleep, have your diet on point, and the rest will take care of itself.


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## Fluke82 (Sep 10, 2015)

Eat in a surplus and lift heavier weights.

Your arms WILL grow, you're just being impatient IMO.

Maybe 1-2 sets with higher reps for metabolic fatigue at the end of a session but that's not even needed really.


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## RedStar (Aug 8, 2014)

For my arms to grow I prefer higher volume training. I find my arms respond better to this.

eating in a surplus is essential, as @Drogon has already said.


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## Ares (Dec 3, 2015)

How tall are you/how much do you weigh/how long have you been training?


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## andyboro (Oct 1, 2006)

Simon 88 said:


> For my arms to grow I prefer higher volume training. I find my arms respond better to this.
> 
> eating in a surplus is essential, as @Drogon has already said.


 this for me too, they seem to respond best to higher volume than anything else.


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## RexEverthing (Apr 4, 2014)

Eat more.

Train harder.


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## DLTBB (Jan 26, 2015)

Eat like f**k, play around with different levels of volume and frequency and find out what works best for you and inject yourself with increasingly higher doses of steroids over time, that's pretty much all you can do. If you have high inserting biceps and triceps then you're pretty much f**ked and they'll never look big but you've just got to work with what you've got boyo.


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## Endomorph84 (Jan 21, 2016)

My arms weren't in proportion as I never used to train them directly. My friends started giving me sh!t and calling me a T-Rex :lol:

I now train arms & have even gone out and bought an E-Z bar and weights for at home, they are coming along nicely now. Like others have said my arms respond better to higher rep ranges i.e. 4 x 12-15 reps. I also like to super set bis & tris

I don't need to worry about them in regards to strength as they get blasted through the week when doing my strongman training, heavy back days especially.


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## Cantona77 (Mar 25, 2016)

rd88 said:


> Personally, frequency worked well for me. Arms and smaller muscle groups actually recover quicker IME and can be hit more frequently, I don't like to overdo volume because again they're small muscles and doesn't take too much to stimulate them. Too much volume becomes wasted effort for me, just like to train them properly, very intensely and frequently.
> 
> Try training arms twice a week, sticking to 3 work sets per exercise (excluding warm ups) and 3-4 exercises per muscle. Drop sets to finish them off for a couple of exercises works really well. Mix of rep ranges (all in perfect form) 6-8, 8-12 (all until failure)


 I'll try that, thanks


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## Cantona77 (Mar 25, 2016)

Ares said:


> How tall are you/how much do you weigh/how long have you been training?


 I'm 6ft 2, 14st 10lbs. Training a year. 38yrs. A bit of a pot belly n'all.


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## Colin (Sep 28, 2015)

Cantona77 said:


> I'm 6ft 2, 14st 10lbs. Training a year. 38yrs. A bit of a pot belly n'all.


 You need to just focus on continuing to grow and adding lean mass, then your body and arms will grow as a result.

More often than not your arms grow in proportion with the rest of yourself.


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## Cantona77 (Mar 25, 2016)

Endomorph84 said:


> My arms weren't in proportion as I never used to train them directly. My friends started giving me sh!t and calling me a T-Rex :lol:
> 
> I now train arms & have even gone out and bought an E-Z bar and weights for at home, they are coming along nicely now. Like others have said my arms respond better to higher rep ranges i.e. 4 x 12-15 reps. I also like to super set bis & tris
> 
> I don't need to worry about them in regards to strength as they get blasted through the week when doing my strongman training, heavy back days especially.


 T-Rex... 

So in your experience your arms grew when you trained them more directly.

However, I hear a lot about "No need train arms, the compounds will do that".

Seems to be different views, perhaps there isn't a "best way" and we all respond differently.

But f*ckin hell, I'd love big arms. Having 14inch arms feels a bit s**t.


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## JohhnyC (Mar 16, 2015)

Exact same position as you OP, got naturally girly arms and girly wrists. Way of life. To be perfectly honest you won't get those massive arms. Well at least I never could in >20 years. The forearms always seem to look thin. However you can make them "look" bigger as they look more tapered towards the elbow and wrist.

Fully agree that volume training is better and trying to introduce hyper trophy, so end of a chest or shoulder day I include tri's and add in supersets, drop sets every now and then. I like doing very close grip bench press too. You have to be careful about organising your routines as as blasting the arms a day or two before your chest / shoulder days can leave them weaken and your chest will suffer.

I have the same issue with calfs, never seem to grow. Traps however grow much easier for some odd reason.

I did piss about for a while with home weights specifically for forearm curls just on my "off days". They did help, ;looked more veiny I guess, but really got tedious so gave up. Adding them to a gym session really makes in start to drag.


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## Jordan08 (Feb 17, 2014)

Lifting weights is not only about moving the weights from position a to b. It's more than that. As Arnold says, your mind should be inside the muscle


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## 2004mark (Oct 26, 2013)

Cantona77 said:


> T-Rex...
> 
> So in your experience your arms grew when you trained them more directly.
> 
> ...


 I've never heard anyone say that.

I've plenty of people say there is no need for dedicated arm sessions... they are two very different things.


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## andyboro (Oct 1, 2006)

Cantona77 said:


> T-Rex...
> 
> So in your experience your arms grew when you trained them more directly.
> 
> ...


 I was told that too.. in the early days it may be true, but overall.. its boll*cks!


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## Gavinmcl (Jul 1, 2010)

lower volume increase frequency worked for me , switch exercises each routine (a / b ) and switch rep range up


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## BLUE(UK) (Jan 9, 2008)

Pot belly, 14" arms...you're probably just skinny fat with less muscle than you think.

I'm just under 18st and usually carry just under 18" on the upper arms. I'm 6' 2 also so by my reckoning, your arms ARE in proportion to your build. AAS will obviously change this.


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## 31205 (Jan 16, 2013)

I'm same but with my chest. I never used to be able to feel my chest when training chest but have started to figure it out and pretty sure it's starting to grow now


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## ironman1985bcn (Mar 3, 2010)

High reps and a nice time under tension, supersets and drop sets....

Burns like hell, but works nice.


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## AbuDina (Apr 16, 2016)

25+ chin-ups every other day + eat right and you arms will grow. I've yet to see one person who can bang out 15-20 solid chin-ups with small arms.

I haven't trained arms directly in months and in 2 weeks I've had several people comment about the growth in my biceps.


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## Theorist (Jun 18, 2013)

What do you do for them at the moment?

Mine were somewhat of a weak point but that was mainly due to not training them enough. I changed my split to chest and tris, back and bis, shoulders and tris, legs and bis, rest and repeat. Sometimes I'll chuck in arms and delts after my rest day, rest the next day and then repeat if I feel like training something. In the last 9 weeks I've stuck an inch on them, granted that's on gear, but I've been struggling to gain much weight on tren so I know it's not mostly water/fat.

So really just more volume. Maybe not too much if you don't use gear.


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## STEVE3108 (Jun 28, 2015)

I had this issue - turns out my arms actually have pretty decent genetics but from my experience this is what I started doing and continue to do to this day:

Biceps - 5 sets total.

Preacher curls - 3 sets 6-12 - dropset on final set. The dropset is entirely up to you. You can either do a heavy dropset where you'll maybe get 2 - 3 reps then drop the weight twice more to get a total of 12-15 reps on that final set or you can get the 6 - 12 reps on all dropsets. Your choice just be strict as hell on these and really work on the contraction and negative part of each rep.

Dumbbell curls - 2 sets 8-12 - As always be strict with these too. I sit on a bench with a incline and just squeeze the hell out of each rep. When I hit failure I'll do alternating curls just to finish them off.

Triceps - 7-8 sets total.

Pushdowns - 3 sets 8-15 reps. Just like the Preacher curls I'll also do a dropset here same protocol aiming for a squeeze and controlling the weight. Up to you what attachment to use. A straight bar will allow you to use more weight so if you choose to do these I found that pushing the bar down and away from your body actually gave me a totally different feel in my tris. You can use the rope but this will be less weight and you may notice that here that one tricep is stronger than the other. See what attachment works for you.

Dips/Skullcrushers 2/3 sets - 8-12 reps. Depending on how my routine is for chest I'll either be doing dips or skullcrushers for my tris I personally train chest/bis/tris in one workout so of course depending on your split you can do whatever you like, even both exercises if you feel the need to. If you choose both exercises do the dips first then skulls. Dips I found to be superior for tricep mass they're something about them that just slaps the meat on. If you choose dips just focus on the mind muscle connection here. The chest will be involved to some degree but concentrating on push with your tris (imagine just doing a pushdown) and you'll blow them up.

Skulls are a different matter - they need to be practiced too many people go so heavy on these and it literally just becomes a front delt movement. Push the bar outwards from your head and squeeze. Much better contraction than just lifting straight above your head at least in my experience. You can finish with a close grip press to fully burn them out.

Overhead cable extension/Overhead DB extension 2 sets 8-12 reps (maybe 15)- Either way this is an overhead movement so pick the one that you feel best. I use the seated cable overhead extension mainly to keep my form strict. Pausing at the end of each rep and stretching the tris is a must here. Don't blast these reps out We're trying to really focus on the inner tricep sweep here so keep everything tight. If you choose the free weighted version apply the same rule of thumb and let the triceps stretch for 2 seconds after each rep.

I alternate between bis/tris just as I see the arms as more as an entire unit rather than two seperate muscle groups. Either way this is what I do and what I've found to be the best routine for my arms. No secrets here just trial and error. I know this works for me and may not work for you but hey give it a shot what have you got to lose?


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## GymRatGresham (Apr 27, 2016)

I always had spaghetti arms.

Until I read and tried John Meadows Mountain dog routine. My arms grew to the point I get compliments on my arms more than anything.

Would 100% recommend bro.


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