Building muscle: where to start

How do you get stronger arms?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20267 sources

Press and pull twice a week, push-ups or a bench press and rows or pull-ups, and add weight or reps whenever every set hits its target. Then add one curl and one overhead triceps extension. Your triceps are most of your upper arm, so the presses do more for it than curls do, and carries and hangs take care of your grip.

When people want stronger arms they usually start with curls, since the biceps is the muscle you flex in the mirror. But the biceps is the smaller half of your upper arm. The big lifts that move your whole arm, presses and rows, already work your biceps, triceps, shoulders and forearms together, and they let you use far more weight than a curl.

Your arm, muscle by muscle

The triceps is most of your upper arm

In 2007, researchers at Stanford measured all 32 muscles of the arm and shoulder by MRI in 10 young adults. The triceps averaged 372 cubic centimeters, against 144 for the biceps and 144 for the brachialis, the muscle under the biceps. So for a stronger, bigger upper arm, the presses that straighten your elbow carry more of the load than curls.

One triceps move is worth adding on top. In a 2023 trial in Japan, 21 adults trained one arm with cable extensions overhead and the other with the arm at their side, twice a week for 12 weeks. The overhead arm’s triceps grew about 1.4 times more. An overhead dumbbell extension does the same job at home.

Do you need curls?

Fewer than you’d think. In a 2015 study, 29 young men who’d never lifted trained twice a week for 10 weeks, half with only lat pulldowns and half with only curls. Their elbow-bending muscles grew 6.1% and 5.8%, and the difference between the groups was too small to count. In a 2020 study of 20 untrained women, adding curls on top of the big lifts gave a little more arm size and no extra strength. Beginners get most of their arm work from rows and presses, and arms in trained lifters may need more direct work.

A picture from daily life

Think of a rowing crew. You could give the person at the front a better oar, but the boat moves when everyone pulls together. Presses and rows work your whole arm and shoulder as one crew, and a curl or an extension coaches one rower.

Push-ups count

You don’t need a gym. In a 2017 study, 18 young men did either push-ups or bench presses at a matched load, twice a week for 8 weeks, and their triceps and chest grew in both groups. Push-ups with your hands on a counter, then a bench, then the floor, plus rows with a dumbbell or a backpack, will build stronger arms at home. The 2026 American College of Sports Medicine review found muscle grew across a wide range of loads, light or heavy, as long as each set was hard.

Grip is part of it

Your grip holds everything your arms lift, and in 139,691 adults across 17 countries, it predicted death better than systolic blood pressure did. Nobody has shown that training your grip adds years, but a strong grip makes every lift and every bag easier, and it grows with heavy carries, hangs and rows. How to build a strong grip.

Test your arms

Three tests tell you where you stand: push-ups in one set, with a table for your age and sex, strict pull-ups, and a dead hang for your grip. Score them in How strong am I?, see the strength standards, and test again in eight weeks.