arm exercises

Strong arms will benefit you both in the gym and in your everyday life, so it’s worth considering exercises that target your arms specifically. In this database “Arm Exercises” is an umbrella term for any exercise that primarily targets any of the muscles that make up your arms, from your biceps and triceps down to your forearms and hands. Strengthening these muscle groups is essential for building overall strength, stability and functional movement.

The purpose of the exercises on this page is not to be an exhaustive list of all Arm Exercises, it is simply here to offer you some suggestions that you may not have considered in your workout plans already.

Use these exercises as an “add on” to your existing plan, or combine them with some exercises from our other muscle group categories to make yourself a full plan.

Arm Exercises Benefits

There are both physical and aesthetic benefits to performing Arm Exercises. By building more overall strength in your arms, you will first contribute to your overall upper body strength, this will help you perform a wide range of key compound exercises with more overall weight.

From the aesthetic perspective, which usually reveals itself after you see the strength benefit, you will notice more muscle definition in this area alongside the boost in metabolism that you get from having the extra lean muscle in your body. This boost in your metabolism will help you to burn fat faster.

Outside the gym, strong arms will help you perform everyday tasks more easily, such as lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling. All of these everyday activities, that we often don’t even notice we are doing, will become much easier for you when you consistently work on your arm strength.

What Muscles Make Up Your Arms?

Your arms consist of several major muscle groups, all of which should be trained since they all contribute towards your overall strength and aesthetic. These muscles include:

Biceps
Triceps
Forearms; which are made up of multiple smaller muscles responsible for wrist and finger movements.
Hands; again, multiple smaller muscle groups responsible for hand movement and grip function.

The smaller muscle groups that make up the forearms and hands may not be on your list of aesthetic goals, but that does not mean they should be neglected. Keep reading to find out why all Arm Exercises, including the ones targeting smaller muscle groups, are essential.

Why Do Arm Exercises?

Most people know why they train biceps and triceps, they want more muscle and definition in those areas and the added strength that comes with that helps performance on other lifts.

But as mentioned above, the smaller muscle groups in the forearms and hands are often overlooked as an aesthetic benefit, but they are crucial for your overall weightlifting performance and development. Your forearms and hand muscles play a key role in your grip strength. And if you don’t know, grip strength is necessary for all pull exercises. This includes some of the most powerful exercises such as Deadlifts, Rack Pulls, Barbell Rows, Pull Ups, and many more.

How Often Should I Do Arm Exercises?

This really depends on your personal goals, but generally speaking you should be training your arms at least 2-3 times per week. You don’t need to do an “Arm Day”, typically a weekly muscle group rotation might look something like this:

Chest & Biceps - or as we call it “Boobs & Biceps” - Covers a bicep workout

Back, Shoulders & Triceps - Covers triceps

Legs - not applicable for arms specifically, but you may choose to add exercises like Farmers Walks to your Leg Workout and these will work your forearms and grip.

Also keep in mind that your forearms and grip will be worked from a secondary perspective with many of the exercises that you perform on your Chest & Biceps and Back, Shoulders & Triceps workouts. For example if your plan includes a Hammer Curl, this curl variation will put additional emphasis on your forearms.

Another thing to consider is avoiding the use of straps when you deadlift. While straps will help you deadlift more, they will compromise your forearm and grip strength. By all means, use them when you’re maxing out, but when you’re working with lighter loads than your max, avoid using straps for support.

What Equipment Is Best For Arm Exercises?

As with most exercises, you can get a great arm workout with barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, cables and machines, you don’t need anything special that isn’t already a part of a well equipped gym.

Furthermore, you can do a lot of Arm Exercises with dumbbells alone.

What Are The Most Effective Arm Exercises?

Think of all Arm Exercises as part of a bigger picture, because the fact is, there is no one, two or three exercises that act as a magic ingredient. Of course there are many staples that you should include, such as some of the many curl variations for biceps and a range of different triceps exercises that use both free weights, cables and bodyweight.

How Can I Use These Arm Exercises To My Advantage?

An Added Boost to Your Existing Plan

As with all exercises in our database, you are encouraged to use them to enhance your existing workout, by picking out exercises for the muscle groups you want to grow and adding them to your current routine.

Build Complete Workouts

You may also make yourself a full weekly workout rotation with these exercises, but that will require some critical thinking on your part. We can give you the exercises, there is a lot of information on each individual exercise page for you to work with. But it’s up to you to take that information and use it to build the best workout plans for you. With experience this will get easier.

Building a Workout Basics

When you create a workout plan for yourself, you should start with a general plan of which muscle groups you will train on each day. If you are a beginner, keep it simple with an upper/lower body split. Intermediate and advanced lifters will move to rotate muscle groups or other methods such as push, pull, legs.

Once you know how you will train on each day, choose a key compound exercise to start with. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say you’re planning a lower body or leg workout plan. The most obvious exercise to start with is a Squat, if you don’t want to squat, you can start with a Deadlift or a Lunge. A good weightlifting workout plan always starts with a compound barbell exercise, you should work your way down through freeweight, cable and machine exercises, finishing up on bodyweight exercises all focused on the target muscle group.

Progress

Always make sure that you push yourself out of your comfort zone, as soon as you feel like you are breezing through your workout with ease, it’s time to switch things up. There are 3 things you can do in this instance:

Lift more
Change your rep/set method
Change your plan

Essentially, you should do all 3, but one thing at a time. The most sustainable results come from incremental changes over time.

Consistency

The results we want from weightlifting don’t happen overnight and they don’t happen with one single exercise, workout or strategy. You need to keep showing up and evolving. When you train consistently you get results. There are no shortcuts.

Looking for a full Arm Workout?

We have a Simply Biceps & Triceps Workout category in our Members Zone Portal, it’s part of our single muscle group series. These workouts are designed to be used as an add on to any full workout plan, or combined with other single muscle group workouts to make a complete plan. We also have a wide selection of other plans available in the portal, each plan accompanied by a muscle highlighted image so you know exactly which muscles you’re working with each plan. You can sample some of these plans when you sign up for a Free Members Zone account. All you need to provide is a valid email address so that we can create your secure account. Then just head to “My Zone” and you will find a selection of free plans.

More arm exercises coming soon...

Just so you know, this list of arm exercises is a work in progress and is by no means extensive. We will continue to grow this entire database for you over time, so be sure to check back for updates. Alternatively, you can join our mailing list below and you'll be the first to know about all new content we produce.