5 Reasons Your Arms Are NOT Growing

If your arms are not growing and you don’t know what else to do or change in your arm workouts, you are definitely going to want to watch this video. Here I’m going to show you the 5 biggest arm workout mistakes that are holding back the size of your biceps and triceps. Many times, the issues that prevent muscle growth are ones that people are not even aware they are making. They are doing bicep exercises and triceps exercises but nothing seems to happen and their shirt sleeves just won’t fill up.

That does not have to be the case.

1. The first thing you have to do to get to the bottom of your issues if you can’t get bigger arms is look at how you are training your arms right now. What I mean by that is, when and how often are you doing arm workouts during a training week. If your answer was, I never do direct arm training, then I’m telling you that is your first big problem.

Many people think that the minimalist approach to lifting, focusing on the heavy compound lifts like bench press, OHP and dips is going to do everything they need to build their best looking triceps. Likewise, they think that doing heavy rows and chinups is all they need to do to grow the most aesthetically pleasing biceps. While you can certainly add appreciable amounts of muscle to your arms with this type of training it will never give you maximal arm development.

Instead, you are going to need to have dedicated arm training. This can occur either as something you incorporate into your existing workout split or on a separate training day outside of your current workout schedule. Keep in mind, as you’ll see in the linked videos at the end of this one, these arm workouts do not have to be long to be effective.

2. The next big problem I see often is people not applying science to their selection of arm exercises. If you were, for instance, to pick preacher curls, barbell curls and concentration curls as your bicep exercises of choice you would be making an anatomical training mistake. All of these movements are better at engaging the short head of the biceps than the long head. The long head is more responsive to those arm exercises that place a stretch on the biceps with the arm behind the body. Things like incline curls and drag curls would have been a better compliment to a couple of the short head exercises selected.

The same can be said about the triceps as well. But here too, the science goes further than just the individual heads of the muscle in question. The strength curves of the exercises should compliment each other as well. Picking something like a tricep kickback and pairing it up with a lying triceps extension would be smart since the resistance curves overlap and fill in all important gaps that would be otherwise missed.

3. The next big arm workout mistake is viewing progressive overload too one dimensionally. When it comes to arm workouts, thinking that you are going to simply keep adding weight to the exercises you are doing is a fallacy. The incremental jumps are just too much of a percentage of your max total to make that possible. Instead, you need to look to techniques that increase the intensity like run the rack, mechanical drop sets and band/dumbbell combos.

4. How you move the weight you are lifting in your arm exercises matters too. I often see people move the weight through space rather than contract it through space. There is a big difference. When the intention is there, the tension is high. When tension is high in a muscle, growth is much more possible. Make sure that you are acting as if someone told you to flex the muscle that you are training when you perform your repetitions. This means, if there was no weight in your hands and you were going to flex your biceps or triceps as hard as you could, what would that feel like? Now do the same thing when you move the weight on the exercise.

5. Finally, while light weights are not only advisable but best utilized to complete the previous tip, it would be a big mistake to not use heavy weights as well. Remember to perform some sets of barbell curls or triceps pushdowns in the 3-6 rep range to round out your arm workouts.

As you can see, if your arms are not growing there are things you can do to start to build bigger arms.

Start by fixing these 5 arm training mistakes and when you are ready for a complete step by step workout plan that will help you build a ripped athletic body from head to toe, be sure to head to athleanx.com via the link below to get the AX program that matches your current goals.

Also, if you are looking for the best tricep exercises ranked as well as an arm workout you can do with just dumbbells, be sure to remember to subscribe to our channel here on youtube and turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.

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