Owning a pair of massive, muscular and powerful arms is a dream for most beginning body builders. With a pair of well-chiselled biceps, triceps and impressive forearms, it becomes easier to engage in physical activities or jobs where your arm muscles are needed. Lifting heavy things will not be a too big problem when you have arm strength. So you should not underestimate the importance of having strong arms. A body builder is very strong usually because of the demanding physical effort in his workouts. By forcing your muscles to adapt to increasing weight resistance training, they become more developed and powerful.

But how do you build massive, muscular and powerful arms? Here are 3 tips:

(1) High intensity arm training

Without any doubt, if you want to have well-developed guns, you need to train you arms plain and simple. If you don't strain them in physical effort, they won't grow. But how you exercise your arms is very important. Doing endless sets and repeats is not the solution. Before going to the gym or training at home with weights, you have to prepare an action plan like how you're going to train your arm muscles and how many days per week will you be training them for instance. This is very important to avoid making your time counterproductive. Your arm muscles like the biceps, triceps and forearms are small muscle groups and don't need to be trained excessively. You might be surprised when I tell you that you can train your biceps in 15 minutes and that's it. Same for triceps and forearms. The longer you spend in the gym doesn't mean anything. In fact you should spend less time about 45 minutes-60 minutes per day. This is possible because it's recommended to train different body parts on different days because your body will be depleted of energy if your workouts are too long and strenuous and you won't be able to give the maximum of yourself for the remaining exercises.

A good range of sets for these muscles are 6-9 and the number of repetitions per set is 6-10. This means you'll be lifting heavy to blast your arms in optimum growth. You need to be able to lift weights which will allow you to do between this range that is 6-10. If you can do just 4, this means the weights are too heavy and if you can do say 15 or more, this means they are too light. Everyone's body is different and some might go up to 12 repeats as well. Well that's still good. You can do 2-3 sets for biceps per exercise and the same for triceps and forearms. Biceps exercises include barbell curls, alternate dumbell curls, concentration curls, preacher curls. Triceps exercises include triceps extension, skull crushes, close grip bench press, cable pull down, triceps kickback, weighted dips. For your forearms, you can do these two main exercises like the wrist curls palms up and palms down. By having several exercises, you can vary your workout to make it less monotonous. Train your arms real hard once per week or twice maximum. Overtraining your muscles will hinder growth. Also there are other exercises that target larger muscle groups like the chest and back which also work the biceps, triceps and forearms. These are called compound exercises.

(2) High-protein nutrition

Arm training is only part of the equation for impressive growth. If you want to get big arms, it's simple. You need to eat big and quality food not junk food. You need a high-protein diet to enhance your arms development. A high-protein diet ensures your muscles get the essential amino acids responsible for repairing depleted muscle tissues and rebuild them for larger and bigger growth. Some good sources of protein are skinless chicken breast or turkey breast, lean red meat, white fish, salmon fillet, tuna, egg whites and red lentils. You can also use meal replacement such as whey protein supplement powder for ease of use. But don't use it to replace most of your meals. It's an additional plus which you can use with your meals or as a meal replacement. Of course, you'll also need to eat good carbohydrates like oatmeal, potato, sweet potato, yam, brown rice, wholemeal bread, pasta plus fibrous carbs like broccoli and green beans, fruits like banana and healthy fats like virgin olive oil as well. Drink also lots of water per day like 1.5-2.0 litres at least. Your nutrition must be complete. You should preferably eat 4-6 times per day at regular intervals like every 2-3 hours to keep your metabolism high.

(3) Adequate rest and recovery

Muscles are not developed when you're training in the gym but when you're resting at home in your bed. So it's of fundamental importance that you get sufficient amount of sleep everday, even taking small naps can help. If you don't rest well, your body itself won't be in peak form for optimum performance when you're training and you won't make maximum muscle gains like you should.

By following the 3 tips above, you can be sure you'll get powerful, massive and muscular arms. Just be persistent, disciplined and focus on your goals. You'll succeed with time and give it at least 12 weeks before seeing promising results.

About the author

Jean Lam is the webmaster of Body Building Resource which provides articles on weight training, nutrition and fitness, body building book and DVDs.