This article is not about ways how to get big arms or mightier biceps. I’ll not tell you methods to perform a movement or a great exercise for your biceps. This is about the most important aspect which people simply don’t get, until years into their training. Even after that, most people simply ignore the fact than to get to the depth of the truth.

Guns, pythons, cannonballs… whatever fancy name you give it for marketing, you are often referring to the most desirable part in your body i.e. your arms. The most common question of people these days, especially by the new gym-goers, is how to get big arms. There are literally countless programs that promise you overnight growth in your arms, some claiming to grow your arms by an inch in a day.

Advice like slow eccentrics, no momentum, lifting heavy, eating more, sleeping well generally form the base of the common instructions you get, when it comes to growth of your arms. All of these are relevant to their own extent, but none of them will work without one simple underlying bitter fact. Had it been so easy, you would see road full of guys walking with 20inch arms.

The reason is that ‘YOU SIMPLY CAN NOT OUTGROW YOUR ARMS/BICEPS’.

This means that if your entire body is more like Charlie Chaplin, you won’t build biceps like Arnold. The body cannot handle a large amount of disproportionality. 

Now, there are certain figures out there for a long time, when you think of growing your arms. According to coach Poliquin, “you want to add an inch to your arm size add 15-20lbs of muscle in the whole body”. For some the figure is 10lbs, but the question is not the number, as none of these figures are based on some researched study. But it’s about the fact that to gain size in your arms, you need to gain overall lean muscle mass in the entire body.

According to coach Poliquin, “The human body is a finely-tuned machine that will only allow for a certain amount of asymmetry. Therefore, if you devote your training energies solely to building big arms, you’d eventually reach a point of total stagnation because you weren’t training your legs. In other words, no wheels, no wings! Furthermore, if arms grew without some sort of concurrent development in the legs, most bodybuilders would have to walk on their hands.”

For a beginner, every workout will work. They would even gain some decent size in their arms, enough to prevent their loose t-shirt sleeves from fluttering in the air, without much increase in body weight. This is because localized hypertrophy or muscle growth will happen if ample volume is present. But that’s it for them if they don’t grow overall in size.

There is no way to predict the shape of any of your body parts, that’s your genes. How long will it take to grow your arms? A lot of time. That’s the truth always. If your genes favor you, you may have faster and slightly better growth in your arms or any other body part, but it will still stagnate if the other parts lack the growth stimulus.

So, if you want to possess bigger arms, start initiating growth in all parts of the body. Humans don’t grow in parts.