As a personal trainer of over 15 years, I do get a lot of questions from time to time. One common question I get especially from my younger clients is how to increase size in the upper arm. Well, let's take a look.


Anatomically speaking, the upper arm consists of the biceps and the triceps. The biceps like the name would infer contains too muscular heads whereas the triceps contain three muscular heads. A popular misconception when building arm size is too mainly focus on the biceps whereas the triceps really make up the majority of the arm. Another tip I should mention is to try to give arms their own day and emphasize whichever part of the arm is lacking first in priority order. So for instance, if your biceps are more developed than triceps train your triceps before your biceps and vice versa.

Next, when performing your exercises for the biceps and triceps really try to make that mind muscle connection whereas you are squeezing and contracting the muscle on the concentric and stretching the muscle on the eccentric. The mind muscle connection is typically easy to establish on arm body parts, but make sure that you are mentally visualizing and thinking about the muscle through the whole range of motion.


Also, the most common mistake made in tricep training is not locking in the elbows. Many times, especially on press downs, clients like to allow their elbows to swing out from their side and bring the bar too high and which case you're bringing in the shoulders to press the weight down. Make sure you lock your elbows into your side that you're only coming up 90°. When training biceps the same theory applies whereas you want to make sure that you are tucking your elbows and not moving them up or down to the range of motion.


Finally, not unlike any other muscle group, the training is only the first part of the equation. Make sure after training day you're giving the muscles proper rest and recuperation and that you are feeding your body adequately with the proper amount of protein and carbohydrates necessary for recovery. In doing so, and if all other factors mentioned in this entry above are also on point, you should notice an increase in arm size.