2797: Fastest Way to Grow Your Arms

0:00If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump. Mind pump. with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today, we talk about the fastest way to grow your arms. Look, you want your arms to get bigger. You want those biceps. You want those triceps. You want to do it fast. All right, we're going to give it to you. Do what we say. You'll build your arms faster than you ever have before. By the way, we have a guide that we wrote to go along with this episode.

0:34It's totally free. That breaks everything down. gives you some guidelines. You want big arms? Here's what you do. Go to mapsbigarms.com. Get the guide. It's totally free. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Seed. Now, this is the world's best probiotic. Now, here's the deal. Probiotics have been shown in studies. Of course, they improve your digestion. They also reduce inflammation. They also help with mental health. Look up the studies. Anxiety, depression. They help with your skin. Here's what's really crazy. data is coming out showing that probiotics help with fat loss and muscle gain, faster recovery, not making this up.

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1:47That's mapsgreat8.com. Use the code LAUNCH. That'll give you 50 % off. You'll also get a free nutrition guide with it. and if you sign up before the 22nd, you'll get five days of free coaching with Cole, one of our top trainers. Go check it out. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, let's talk about building guns, arms. You want big arms? We're going to talk about the fastest way to grow your arms.

2:27Now, we're going to cover things like diet, sleep, but we're also going to talk about the secrets to exercise program. What's the right amount of sets? What's the right amount of programming? Are all the exercises the same, or is there a combination that has been shown to build the biggest, most awesome-looking arms? And then we're going to throw in a hack at the very end, so stay tuned. Let's get to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to, this was a good show. Well, this is like the first, I don't know, three years of my lifting. It's all it was. What's the day? Arms. Arms. Every day was arms. Arm day.

3:02When's leg day? I don't know. This is, you know, I've trained a lot of people and, you know, of course, trained myself. And, you know, any muscle group, and of course genetics plays a big role. So genetics will determine the size, the length of a muscle, the attachments. But you can build any muscle. And so you just have to approach it the right way. And now the issue is that most people, A, don't approach it the right way. They don't feed themselves properly. Or the volume is just wrong. It's wrong across the board. And so they end up frying their body. They end up trying to target a group of muscles or a body part.

3:39They end up just doing so much more work and then nothing happens. And then they're stuck with this like, I have stubborn arms. They just don't grow. That's not true. If you do what we're going to say right here, it's not uncommon to see an inch of growth in your arms in a 90-day period or 120-day period. It can definitely happen. You just got to apply these things and be consistent with them. And it will happen. You do what we say, it's going to work. Would you argue that arms are one of the easier body parts to develop for most people? That's a good question. I think it's a body part most people don't skip.

4:16So maybe that's why. But I would make the argument that's more because we're just better connected to them than almost anything else. Yeah, pretty straightforward, yeah, for the most part. Right. Part of like when you – a lot of times when you have a lagging body part, aside from just training volume, so with that, it's just like a poor – Connection. A good connection, right? Especially a good full range of motion, connection to the full range of that muscle, where I feel like buys and tries less of that, right? I mean, most people are pretty connected to their biceps and triceps. So I would argue that it's one of the easier body parts to develop.

4:53If you do the right things, I will say this. A lean, so like an impressive, because it typically has to be lean, looking 16-inch arm is not common. A 17-inch arm is very not common. 18 inches, and you're not going to see that almost anywhere. But I will say this. Most guys can get in the 16, 17-inch range with nice definition if they do the right things. That's not out of the realm of what you can accomplish. Now, 18, 19 and plus, well, now you're talking genetics, years of training and all that stuff. Maybe synthol. But most people can get really impressive arms. So if you struggle here or if you're just like, look, I want to, for the next 90 days, I want to make a big difference in my arms.

5:37Follow what we're about to say. So we're going to set the stage first. We're going to talk about setting the stage. Because if you don't set the stage, if you don't set the foundation, everything else we're going to tell you is going to be a waste of time. and we're going to start with diet. If you're not feeding yourself enough calories and protein, I don't care what you do. I don't care what you do. You can have the perfect routine. You will not build your arms. It's just not going to happen. You don't have the building blocks to build your arms. And to put it differently, you need to eat more calories than you burn to build any muscle.

6:10I don't care what muscle you're talking about. If you're going to go on this this path of like, okay, for the next 90 days, my goal is to make my arms bigger. I want more muscle in my arms. You can't do that while simultaneously saying I'm going to get shredded and get abs and go into calorie deficit. It's not going to happen. They're competing goals and you'll end up getting neither of those. You might get lean, but you definitely won't get on. Well, I'm looking at the list and the order that you put. I'd actually make the argument that you've ordered these in the order of operation too. Like this is like step one, got to be in a calorie surplus.

6:43You have to. It doesn't matter what muscle we're trying to build. If you do not give the body the building blocks in order to do that, I don't know how great of a signal. I don't know how great the workout is. I don't care how many steroids you take. That's right. You will not build. You will not build unless you do that. So for sure, that's first and foremost is hitting enough, hit protein and hit calories. And we're talking about a gram of protein per pound of body weight is what you need to hit consistently. So not like sometimes, but every single day, hit it consistently. this is very difficult if you've never done this on a consistent basis it takes work and planning you don't do this by accident if you're trying to hit 150 grams of protein a day that's 50 grams of protein three times a day that's a big amount of meat for most guys it's gonna be more than that most guys are gonna be close to 180 to 200 grams you know you're eating four meals with 50 grams of protein what is that nine ounces of meat yeah in each uh in each serving how many eggs is 50 grams of protein it's like what is that 10 uh you know nine eggs so this has to be consistent uh day in and day out and then eat 500 more calories than you're currently consuming just to cover the buffer like do those two things set the stage because if you don't do those everything else we say is a waste of time yeah yeah next would be like sleep get some sleep yeah i mean just just because every night get good sleep and i and i think that i wish i understood this more when i was younger because uh you know i thought like probably a lot of young uh lifters think is that the the work in the gym is so important the exercise that i'm picking how hard i train and and what i'm lifting but really that's just a signal for you're telling your body that it needs to build muscle it's when you go home eat and sleep when the building process and so obviously the food is first and foremost but so this close second is that rest because if you don't rest and recover, then it won't build also.

8:34So I feel like this is easy one and two. Yeah. Poor sleep or consistent poor sleep. And I'm not talking about terrible sleep. Everybody knows when we get terrible sleep. I mean, if you get the kind of like, it's not great, six, six and a half hours a night. I go to bed really late Friday nights. I sleep in on Saturday, do the same thing on Sunday. Monday comes around, I'm jet lagged because I've thrown off my circadian rhythm. I play video games at night or I'm on social media. Poor sleep is anti-muscle. It's not just hard to build muscle. It's actually anti-muscle. In fact, there's really interesting studies on this.

9:04They've put people in calorie deficits where they're all eating the same calories. One group gets bad sleep. I think it was five and a half hours. The other group gets good sleep. The poor sleep group lost half as much body fat and twice as much muscle with the same calories. When it comes to injury, poor sleep is the greatest, one of the greatest risk factors for injury. It destroys your recovery. it's not it's actually pro-fat anti-muscle so if you get really if you're not getting good like throw the good sleep in try it for 30 days and then come back and tell me it doesn't make a huge difference it's like the biggest difference you'll ever experience i remember the first time i experienced this because like you as a kid you get away with you know poor sleep or whatever and i remember i was reading i don't remember who it was it was a an old-time lifter and they I kept writing these old manuals on the bronze era of strength athletes.

9:58And every single one of them said sleep. And I remember thinking, I thought that was like a modern. I thought everybody said that. But these guys were saying that. Hackenschmidt. Yeah, dude. They were saying it back in the 1800s, early 1900s. And they were all talking about it. Yeah. And so I gave myself 30 days of making this a priority. It was so crazy, the difference in my games. They'd up their calories with like cream and like heavy creams and like all these other things we would never think. Steak. Yeah, get a bunch of sunlight. And, you know, they were doing all those things to enhance naturally.

10:29But, yeah, it was definitely the recovery that put them forward. Totally. All right, next up, now let's talk about the workout programming. So what we're going to do, because we're targeting the arms, biceps and triceps, is we're going to push the upper limit of the amount of volume that we see in the data that contributes to muscle growth. Okay? So we're actually going to have you do a lot of sets for arms, for biceps and triceps, which, by the way, by doing that, which we'll get to in a second, that means you've got to take it away from other places. this by the way is the biggest mistake yeah people make yeah is they add sets on top of their current workout and then they tip over replace too much because otherwise we're just adding everything on top of what already was a lot of volume so then your body just has to fight the extra hard to recover for that you know additional amount that you just introduced but when you can be a lot more effective and prioritize it to you know the arms replace it with like certain exercises now that's the priorities there i think this paired with the bad sleep or not as good a sleep as i probably got in my earlier years is probably one of the biggest things that kept me from from growing was not only because because it also feeds into that right so if you're over trained uh because back then it was just like more is better so if i want to grow this i would just add add more volume more intensity uh and then that also affects sleep and then sleep affects recovery and growing and so I was like in this vicious cycle and you feel like you're doing so much that you should be getting all these results and I think if I understood like how much I should have scaled back on my other body parts and focused on sleep I probably would have grown so much faster and sooner.

12:12Totally, so let's talk about the volume for arms and then we'll get to how you reduce volume in other places and we'll comfort everybody when you do that because that's where everybody freaks out when they cut volume from other body parts so when you look at the data on the kind of upper limit of where you're going to see progress for a body part. It's typically between 18 to like 27 sets, give or take. Some are going to say more, some less, but I'm basing this also off my experience. If I have somebody who's well-rested, well-fed, they're training well, and we're trying to bring up a body part, it typically falls around 18 to 27 total sets per week.

12:49Now you're going to split this up over three days. 18 sets for your arms in one workout, especially 27 sets for arms in one workout, the back half of that workout is going to be a waste of time. You're just in the gym doing exercises because you're totally fatigued. So you're going to divide that up over three workouts. So it looks like six to nine sets for biceps and triceps on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So you're dividing it all up. And that's going to give you that total amount of sets. Now let's talk about reducing volume everywhere else. So what you need to do is you're going to look at all the sets you do for the week, and you're going to cut out the sets that you're going to replace or add to your arms.

13:29So if your normal arm, if your biceps normally get nine sets for the week, which is traditional, that's kind of a standard amount of sets for biceps, for example, nine sets, you're about to double it, cut nine sets out of other areas. So here's where I'm going to give you some comfort. People worry when they cut the volume down for the body parts, you're going to lose muscle from those areas. So I don't want to take stuff away from my chest or my back or my legs, because then they're going to go down. And yeah, my arms are bigger, but now I lost these other body parts. It won't happen. The amount of volume that you need to keep the muscle you built is a lot less.

14:03Like one-seventh. Yeah, that's required to build it. So you won't lose any muscle. You're not going to progress in all those areas, but who cares? The goal right now is to build bigger arms. And by the way, if you're going to develop a body part, your approach is always better to focus on that area rather than focusing on everything all at the same time. Yeah, it's a much better specificity. I mean, if you've heard me talk about my journey competing, this is what it looked like. Of course, I could have, I mean, every time I would get ready for another show, I wanted my entire body to look better, but I always focused on like one muscle group.

14:40It was just one, and that's for this reason right now, is I knew that I was already at a high training volume. I'm going to ramp up a certain body part, which means I got to take back on the other. I don't want to take any huge steps back, but I know that as long as I keep some sort of volume in there, this goes up i can put trying to do three four or five different muscle groups all at once just impossible to scale all that volume in in a training cycle you're far better off on focusing on either one i always like one big muscle group or you could do two small like biceps and triceps are small right yeah when you minimize all of that and you reprioritize it to the specific areas of the body it just responds better it grows better everything works better if you give it just like that minimal task, it'll get a lot further on.

15:23Now, here's the fun part, right? The fun part is, all right, what exercises should I do? Does it matter? Sometimes people think it doesn't matter when it comes to arms because they're basic, biceps, triceps. So biceps, you know, flex the arm, triceps, extend the arm. So I guess I'll just pick, you know, different exercises for all these sets. That's okay. You're going to be good doing that. But if you really want to maximize this, there is a formula. and I don't care what exercises you guys pick for these, but there's a formula that works so well for building biceps and triceps. I've used it many times.

15:54I know Adam's done the same thing when he was competing and used it for clients as well. There's such a great formula and here's what it looks like. You do an exercise that's a heavy compound lift for the body part. So it could look like dips or close grip bench press for triceps. It could look like curl grip chin ups or curl grip pull downs where you're focusing on the biceps. for biceps. Then you pick an exercise that stretches the muscle. So for biceps, like an incline curl is a good example. For triceps, an overhead tricep extension would be an example. And then the next exercise is one that just focuses hard on the squeeze.

16:30Could be a concentration curl. For biceps, it could be a rope press down for tricep. That formula, right? I don't care what exercise you throw in there as long as it fits, compound heavy, stretch, squeeze, such, you have like very good programming with that reps can be eight to 12 i really don't care you can play with the different reps you don't have to get too complicated but if you just did that this was get the loud yes signal and then follow that right up and and superset sometimes i love doing this was one of our first mind pump tv videos that we did oh was it so yeah so if you're looking for exercise examples like you just kind of listed off we did we did a video this is back in the days when doug used to shoot them and we did them all three together um but i i remember this being such a big unlock for me um i was guilty of you know doing i would do things like a tricep push down with a rope and then a triangle like a reverse grip you know what i'm saying all the same elbow position all really the same movement the pronating and supinating in my hand had nothing to do with how my tricep was getting targeted not realizing how important it would be for me to add in like a skull crusher and then like an overhead extension uh and like the stretch position for the tricep and just simply making that the rule of okay every time i train my arms i'm going to make sure that i target the stretched and squeezed position and then a big compound lift and like exploded from that oh yeah that was a big unlock for me so you know what's funny you know where i got this from uh initially as a kid i've done this with clients later and then now there's science to support this everybody like if you look at the uh the the data on loading a muscle in its stretch position, the data loading a muscle in its contracted position.

18:12Of course, we know what compound lifts can do. Like, it's really interesting. They all work a little differently. Like, squeezing in the contracted position really helps you connect to the muscle. It really does. Like, flexing your bicep typically means it's shortened. Nobody flexes their bicep in this lengthened position. And so really connecting and kind of getting those last bit of muscle fibers that might not have been truly targeted. in a stretch position loaded the hypertrophy studies on this are pretty radical they're amazing i mean the stretch position is the hypertrophy position of a rep range and then heavy the compound stuff just allows you to load you can close grip bench press way more than you can press down overhead tricep extension same thing with a curl grip you know bicep style pull down or chin up if you're really strong it's just a crazy load the first time i saw this it was a book that was written it was actually put out by iron man magazine it was a separate book it was called positions of flexion or something like that and they made this whole case on you know heavy they called it mid-range squeeze and stretch i think is what they called it okay and it was the first time i was i was 15 it was the first time i'd been introduced to the science of programming it's a very basic way of understanding programming but i remember the first time i saw it i implemented it crazy yeah crazy crazy i actually think i got this every once in a while I got something good from the muscle and fitness magazines.

19:34But I think that was what that was from. I can't remember where I first read it. And I'm like, oh, that makes total sense. And I don't do that. I just kind of willy-nilly pick whatever favorite arm exercise I want to do. And I never train like that. To your point, it was like the first bit of programming I think I did for my arms. And that was like, oh, this makes a huge difference. Huge. Lastly, we got a little hack. Okay. This is not the core. This is not the foundation. This isn't going to do all the work. But this will add the cherry on top. And it does work. And it's called blood flow restriction training.

20:06And it really does work. But again, it's not the foundation. It's not the core. It's not the meat and potatoes. But here's what you do once a week. Once a week, and we have a guide for this. And we did some videos on this if you want to watch. But it's actually kind of easy for arms. You take a knee wrap and you tie it around the top of your arms. And you make it tight enough so you can feel that the blood is occluded in the arms. In other words, it's harder for the muscle to get rid of blood than it is to get it. And so you'll feel it. You'll feel kind of tight, like in full. And this is at the end of your arm workout.

20:39Then you go and you do a superset, three sets, biceps, triceps, biceps, triceps, biceps, triceps. And you do it with very lightweight. You go high reps. And the goal is get a crazy pump. Now, here's what happens. The occlusion, the restriction, restricts blood flow out. And so you get waste buildup in the muscle. It burns like fire. It literally burns like your arm is on fire. You use 15 pounds, like 15 pounds for me would be a light curl. First set I could do whatever, 20. And by the end it starts to fire up. Second set I'm like eight. It's like my arm suddenly shut off because there's so much waste in there.

21:16And the data on this is really remarkable. This is a muscle builder. The pump you get is crazy. It gets those fast switch muscle fibers to activate. and it's just one little hack that you can do at the end. Endless pump, it feels like. Oh, it's crazy. It definitely burns, though. Like fire. And we did do a video on this also. So there's two great Mind Pump TV videos that we did one on this one and then we also did one on the other point that you made. So check that out. That's right. And Doug, I think we have a guide for this, right? Is that right there? So check this out. We have a guide that breaks this down and more on just building your arms.

21:50You want to get bigger arms? Go to mindpumpmedia.com forward slash. Let me change that. It's going to be maps, big arms.com. Thank you, Doug, for that. So it's maps, big arms.com. You'll get the free guide that goes into detail with more on how to get your arms looking amazing. Also, if you want to find us on Instagram, it's mind pump media. We'll see you. Thank you for listening to mind pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance. Check out our discounted RGB super bundle at mind pump media.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic.

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