Here, we’ll go over the nine possible causes of skinny arms in more detail and explain how to correct any mistakes you may be making.
After months or years of intense training, you may ask yourself, “why are my arms so skinny?”It’s a common issue that you can resolve with the right guidance. There are a few common mistakes that are frequently to blame when you find it difficult to add weight to your arms.
Training the muscles directly 3–4 times per week will help you lose your skinny arms. To increase strength, size, and vascularity, it’s important to train both the triceps and the biceps using heavy, moderate, and light weights throughout the week. Additionally, it’s critical to train the arms with proper form and a full range of motion.
Why Are My Arms So Skinny?
You have skinny arms for the nine reasons listed below. Most people will have several reasons, many of which are connected to one another in some way, rather than just one. The vast majority of them are a result of your training, exercise technique, and workout planning.
You’re Not Exercising Your Arms Enough
Although it may seem obvious, the fact that you may not be working your arm muscles enough could be the reason they are underdeveloped. Now, this does not imply that you should exercise your arms every day to bulk them up, as this can result in burnout and injury.
A muscle group should be worked out 2–5 times per week in order to see muscle gain, according to experts. Finding the right frequency of training for your body can sometimes take some trial and error.
Your prior resistance training knowledge and current levels of fitness will determine how much you train your arms each week. Additionally, you should consider your training frequency when planning your workouts.
Each workout should only include a few sets of arm exercises if you train your arms most days of the week. These exercises will require more sets if you exercise your arms less frequently.
You Are Training Arms Too Heavy
You may be training too heavy if your weight doesn’t allow you to complete five slow, controlled reps before failing.
The key to muscle growth is not to lift as much weight as you can (or as little weight as you can), but rather to lift heavier weights for a moderate number of reps on some days and moderate weights for a large number of reps on others.
When trying to develop bigger arms, you very rarely lift extremely heavy or extremely light weights. As a general rule of thumb, your “heavy” arm workouts should have you train within the 5-10 rep range, with each set taken close to failure.
You Are Training Arms Too Light
If you don’t have a problem with lifting too much weight, you’re probably exercising too little. Too many people mistakenly believe that using extremely light weights will allow them to build massive arms. And while it’s not impossible to do that, it’s not the best way to go about it.
If you are using a weight and can get more than 25 reps if you were to train to full failure, then the weight is too light, even on “light” arm days. The more repetitions and total muscle failure you must complete with a given weight, the lighter the weight.
Because the external load is simply too light, even bodyweight training, which is preferred by more experienced lifters, can start to lose its appeal for developing larger muscles.
If your workout calls for higher reps, pick a weight that is the heaviest you can lift while still training within the recommended rep range. If you are able to perform more repetitions than the recommended rep range, the weight is too light.
You’re Not Allowing Time for Recovery
After a workout, your body needs to recover in order for the muscle tissue to repair itself and grow larger. You can obstruct the normal process of muscle development if you don’t allow yourself enough time for recovery. You’ll set a growth ceiling.
If your muscles are still sore from your previous workout, avoid exercising. Muscle aches peak between 24 and 72 hours after the workout, according to research.
According to this study, the majority of experts advise taking a 24-hour break after challenging workouts. This gives you three to four days per week to perform strength training exercises.
To keep your muscles active and reduce the time it takes to recover on your off days, try incorporating active recovery. Similar to stretching, active recovery works your muscles without exhausting them.
You Aren’t Training in the Full Range of Motion
When you perform bicep curls with your elbows fully extended and tricep pushdowns and extensions with your elbows locked out during each rep, you are achieving a full range of motion.
To lift more weight or sometimes just because they were misinformed, a lot of lifters perform ¾, half, or just bad reps in general.
At the elbow, only the biceps and triceps are active. The elbow is flexed by the biceps and extended by the triceps. When performing an exercise, make sure the elbow is fully extended and flexed, under controllable load, for the maximum amount of muscle tension.
You’re Focusing on the Wrong Exercises
When attempting to develop specific muscles, such as your arms, performing an isolation exercise is a common mistake, especially for beginners. Biceps curls and tricep extensions are excellent for targeting particular muscles, but it’s best to combine them with compound exercises.
Exercises that are part of a compound strength training program work for several muscle groups simultaneously and, in general, increase your ability to lift heavier loads. One of the main advantages of compound exercises is their effectiveness; you’ll probably see results much more quickly if you include exercises like bent-over rows and bench presses in your workouts.
But if you discover that one muscle hasn’t grown as much as the others around it, an isolation exercise can be especially helpful. Exercises for the biceps, for instance, let you focus solely on that muscle if necessary.
You Aren’t Controlling the Eccentric Phase
In a repetition, there is frequently a phase during which you are exerting effort to move the weight and a phase during which the weight is stretching the muscle.
For instance, the concentric phase of a bicep curl refers to the motion of curling the weight upward. People frequently focus primarily on this stage of exercise. Eccentric muscle contraction, which occurs as you lower the weight, has been demonstrated to be one of the primary factors to stimulate muscle deterioration and regrowth.
You might be doing a poor job of controlling the lowering phase if you are doing everything up to this point and still getting poor results. To maximize muscle growth, you should control the eccentric phase for 2-3 seconds, occasionally longer (4-6 seconds).
You Aren’t Eating Enough
If you are currently following all of the aforementioned advice exactly as directed and are still unable to bulk up your arms, there may be a problem with your ability to maintain a healthy weight through eating.
You need raw materials (calories) to turn into muscle in order to build muscle. Some people who struggle to bulk up and build muscle do so simply because they aren’t eating enough. Probably feeling that you are eating enough but still not gaining weight, is also a difficult concept to accept.
If this is the case, you are still not eating enough, and that is the cold, hard truth. Eating a lot of food one day, then another, and then forgetting to eat a lot for the following two to three days won’t work.
If you believe that your diet is the primary cause of your inability to gain arm size (which is really only a problem for people who are doing everything else right and who are frequently very lean and skinny), you should eat more to achieve the best results. Start a bulking program, train a lot, and begin to gain muscle.
You’re Not Eating the Right Foods
Food selection is crucial because eating only fatty foods won’t help you gain arm muscle mass. Make sure you’re eating a balanced diet that includes fats, carbohydrates, and proteins.
Since proteins are the constituent parts of your muscles, the last one is the most crucial. Between 10% and 35% of your daily calories should come from protein; some people also choose to drink protein shakes.
Tips for Getting Rid of Skinny Arms
The nine best suggestions to get rid of skinny arms are listed below. Within 8–12 weeks of committed and consistent training (not skipping workouts and giving it your all during every session), if you follow these nine steps and do them well, you will develop larger arms.
Train Arms 3-4 Times a Week
You can increase the overall volume of your training by increasing your training frequency (training more days per week). Exercise twice a week instead of just once. Do three instead of the usual two.
However, if you are already exercising your arms 3–4 days a week, you should concentrate on the other suggestions rather than increasing your arm workouts to 5+ days a week.
Train to Failure in the 5-8 Rep Range
The biceps and triceps are muscles, as was already mentioned, and they can react to different loads. You are missing out if you are not training with heavier weights in the 5–10 rep range. The key to training heavy with arms is that you never allow yourself to “cheat” reps, use momentum, or do half reps.
Training heavy with arms with good form often means still lighter than what you “could do” if you let your back, shoulders, or other muscles into the moment, however, it also means that you should rarely be able to lift the load with good form for more than 10 reps.
1-2 times per week, train your arms hard.
Train to Failure in the 8-15 Rep Range
This rep range might provide the greatest return on investment when trying to gain muscle mass and size. By using this rep range, you give yourself the chance to train with heavier loads and high volumes, a potent combination that can seriously accelerate muscle growth.
You can perform enough muscular work during this rep range of training to increase the size and strength of your muscle fibers as well as give yourself a massive muscle pump.
Generally speaking, you should devote 50% of your arm training to this rep range, with the remaining 50% divided between 5-8 reps (25%) and 15-25 reps (25%). Aim to complete each set with no more than a few solid reps remaining, or very close to failure.
Train to Failure in the 15-25 Rep Range
When executed properly, the last high rep range is a nasty one. Most people will train in the high rep range with light weights and get ok results, but to really be effective and maximize muscle growth and the pump, you need to use very difficult weights and train in this high rep range to fail.
With the most weight you can use while still performing quality reps, you are training to fail in this rep range.
For instance, the weight was probably too light if you used it for sets of 20 to 25 repetitions and found that you could have completed 5 more reps with it.
When you lift extremely heavy weights for a few repetitions or extremely light weights for many repetitions, something is known as the stimulus-to-figure ratio comes into play.
In essence, there is an inverse relationship, requiring a lot of repetitions (25+) to stimulate significant muscle growth when using extremely light weights. When you reach a certain point of general fatigue, performing high repetitions becomes increasingly taxing and the stimulus is reduced.
The muscle should give out before your energy, focus, and motivation in this situation; otherwise, it won’t be ideal. Therefore, it’s important to pick a weight that is still extremely difficult, such that you struggle to complete the higher rep range.
Incorporate Drop Sets, Extended Sets, and Supersets
This is a great way to increase the intensity of your workouts without having to increase the number of sets or training time significantly.
Drop sets are when you complete your set, immediately reduce the weight by 10–20%, and complete additional reps until failure. This is an excellent way to build up muscle or to increase the volume and intensity of your workouts.
The key in this situation is to attempt to survive on the drop set while not pacing yourself during the first main set.
Too often people know they are doing a drop set, and pace themselves or try to save “energy” for the drop set. This is why I still believe in performing straight work sets with the highest level of intensity occasionally and using drop sets.
Train Every Rep Range Every Week (Different Workouts)
There are three main rep ranges, as was previously discussed, and each has advantages of its own. If you are only working out in one or two of them, you might be missing out on opportunities to increase your strength and size (5-8 rep range) or your blood flow and muscle size (15-25 rep range).
In a well-planned program, you would train each rep range each week in a different session (ideally three times per week or more). As the week progresses and your muscles become more fatigued and in need of recovery, you should train with moderate to higher rep ranges at first.
Focus on Isolation and Single Joint Movements
Compound exercises are a great way to build muscle, but if you want to target your arms, chin-ups and dips might not be sufficient. When performing compound lifts, lift pull-ups, chin-ups, and presses, the larger muscles, such as the back, chest, and shoulders, frequently bear the brunt of the work.
Although you should continue performing those exercises because they have numerous additional advantages (and still improve arm strength), you should adopt a more focused strategy to develop bigger arms by including isolation exercises like curls, pushdowns, overhead extensions, and any motion that only involves the elbow flexing and extending.
You lose the ability to use the larger muscles to help with the movement (or take over the movement) when you concentrate on isolation and single-joint movements (exercises that only allow the elbow to move through a full range of motion).
The direct stress on the biceps and triceps is automatically reduced whenever you allow the shoulders to move during an exercise.
Use Machines and Cables to Train to Failure
The benefit of using machines and cables is that they let you train to failure while frequently preventing you from using excessive momentum or poor form (machines are better for this). It can be challenging to lock yourself in and make sure that you are not allowing your body to move around while lifting the weight when you are working hard and to failure.
We have all seen those lifters who flail their body and the weights around them “get a few more reps”. Those careless reps do little to actually build muscle and may even be detrimental.
Forcing better lifting and form is therefore often a go when it comes to pushing to failure. This is why machines and cables are often used. It often leads to better repetitions, more focused bicep and tricep workouts, and fewer injuries when the ability to use poor form is removed.
Consume More Calories Than You Burn
The most likely solution is to eat more food to support muscle growth if you have tried everything else and are still experiencing problems.
This is typically a problem for thin or lean individuals who have trouble gaining muscle and weight and have body fat levels below 10–13%. Start increasing your calorie intake if this is the case. In this article, you can read more about how to increase your caloric intake to build muscle.
It is crucial to remember that if you have body fat and aren’t lean (less than 13% body fat), you probably eat enough to gain muscle and should reconsider the aforementioned advice because, contrary to what you may believe, one or more of these are not being done.
Up Your Carbs Intake; and Pump in Some Proteins
Lean and healthy weight gain will be aided by protein, and hasty weight gain will be made possible by increasing carbohydrate intake. You can think of carbs as your body’s natural performance booster. Carbs can help you gain weight more quickly than you might think when used properly.
The carbohydrate portion is fairly simple, but sometimes the protein increase can be challenging. My recommendation is to purchase a tasty protein powder.
Final Thoughts: Bulking for Skinny Arms
Why are your arms so thin? The preceding list includes nine possible explanations. It shouldn’t be necessary to hire a personal trainer or have years of fitness background to bulk up. A straightforward, sustainable plan must be followed if you want to grow.
Discovering your mistakes and fixing them is the trick. You’ll need to make some long-term changes; doing bicep curls more frequently won’t cut it, but the rewards will be worthwhile.
Use the advice we’ve provided. Make sure you consume enough calories and that your diet has a wide variety of foods and a good balance of nutrients.
Be sure to use the proper exercises and lift a sufficient amount of weight. As you continue to increase the weight in your sets, start using compound exercises to focus on more muscle groups.