Women love them and men want them. Arms that fill your t-shirt don’t only look stylish, but it’s the difference between wimps and superheroes.
But who says you need to spend money on a gym membership to get bigger arms. Not only are they expensive, but you’ll also make better arm gains at home with nothing other than your body weight.
So what are the 4 best calisthenic exercises for massive arms? Let’s find out!
Contents
But First, You Must Follow The Basic Rules Of Muscle Building
Before we talk about the 4 exercises for massive arms, you must first ensure that you’re following the 3 rules for building mass in general. Without these rules, you can do all the arm exercises in the world and your arms will still look like twigs.
Eat More Calories Than Your Body Burns
You can’t expect to build t-shirt popping arms if you don’t even give your body the calories it needs to build them. But this doesn’t mean you should start eating a bunch of junk food. It’ll just go straight to your belly and you’ll have to lose that fat when you’re cutting.
Instead, eat high-quality foods like;
- Eggs
- Brown rice
- Chicken
- Veggies
- And lean meats.
These foods contain a ton of nutrients that helps your body build muscle more effectively.
Eat Enough Protein
Protein is the macronutrient that’ll allow your body to repair your muscles. This makes them grow back stronger than before.
Eat between 0.8 grams to 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight.. A common mistake many beginners and intermediates make is thinking that more protein equals more gains, but this isn’t true. Eating more than 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight won’t encourage more muscle growth. Instead, your body will just burn it for energy.
Train With 6 To 15 Reps Per Set
Stick to training with 6 to 15 reps per set until failure. Your exercise shouldn’t be so easy that you can do more than 15 reps, but not too hard that you can’t complete 6 clean reps.
Training with under 6 reps will build muscle, but it’ll mainly build strength. On the other end of the spectrum, training with over 15 reps will mainly build muscle endurance and not size.
Now that we’ve covered the 3 rules you must follow if you want to build big arms, let’s cover the only 4 exercises you need to build massive arms.
Exercises For Massive Triceps
A mistake most people make when training arms is they simply ignore their triceps. Your tricep is a massive muscle and it makes up most of your arm size. So you want to train him first since it’ll fill out your t-shirt quickly. And your primary tricep builder will be dips.
Dips
Dips is an awesome bodyweight exercise that not only builds all three heads of your triceps but your entire chest and shoulders.
You can also easily add weight to it since all you need is a dip belt and a few plates.
Diamond Push-Ups
Once you’ve completed a few sets of dips, it’s time to exhaust your triceps without putting much strain on your chest and shoulders. This is where diamond push-ups come in handy.
Diamond push-ups take most of the stress off your chest and shoulders and put it on your triceps.
If you want to progress in the diamond push up without adding weight, bring your fingers closer together as it’ll put more emphasis on your triceps. If you struggle to do 6 diamond push-ups, consider putting your hands further apart. It’ll make the exercise easier allowing you to do more reps.
Now that we know how to build massive triceps, it’s time to balance it out with bicep growth.
Exercises For Massive Biceps
Biceps are everyone’s favorite muscle group. But the mistake most people make is trying to do more and more. For example, they’ll do barbell curls, concentration curls, preacher curls, and incline curls all in one workout thinking they’re doing themselves a favor.
Instead, focus on one compound and one isolation movement that you can easily overload. And the perfect candidates for those criteria are;
- Chin-ups
- And bodyweight bicep curls.
Chin Ups
Many strength coaches consider chin-ups to be the squat of the upper body, and for good reason. They work every muscle in the upper body, but most importantly, it works your biceps. It’s the second-best exercise for bicep activation, only falling short to concentration curls. But they outperform barbell curls, preacher curls, and EZ curls.
The chin-up is also easy to overload. Just like with dips, simply get a weight belt, attach a few plates, and you’re good to go.
But not everyone can do chin-ups. If this is you, start doing negative chin-ups. Hold onto a chin-up bar, jump up to the top position, and lower yourself down slowly. Negative chin-ups will do for now until you can do your first chin up.
Bodyweight Bicep Curls
Now that you’ve done a few sets of chin-ups, it’s time to isolate your biceps. And the best bodyweight exercise for isolating your biceps is bodyweight bicep curls.
Set your chin up at around hip level. Next, get into a position similar to an underhand inverted row but instead of pulling your elbows into your body, keep them still and pull your body up like you’re doing a curl.
Doing a few sets of this after your chin-ups will give you a nice calisthenics pump. And sicne everyone loves training biceps here is an extra bicep exercise to incorporate into your training.
Bonus Exercise: One Arm Chin Ups
If you can bang out 20 chin-ups with good form, it’s time for you to start doing one arm chin-ups. Just like regular chin-ups are considered the squat of the upper body, I like to think of the one arm chin-ups as the deadlift of the upper body. Why? It shocked your muscles, grip strength, and central nervous system like only the deadlift can.
But if you can do a handful of one arm chin-ups, your biceps will be massive.
When starting out, just try and hang from a bar with one hand for a few seconds. Next, pull yourself up with both arms and lower yourself with one. Don’t feel bad if you drop like a bag of potatoes, because you will.
After doing negative one arm chin-ups for a while, you’ll be able to do your first one arm chin up.
But just like deadlifts, don’t overdo them because you will burnout. I suggest doing one arm chin-up three times a week, max!
Conclusion
Everyone over complicates arm training. They’re doing 10 different exercises for arms and expect to make progress. Stick to these 4 exercises and if it gets boring, feel free to experiment with other exercises but don’t go overboard.
When it comes to building massive arms, less is more.
