Through weightlifting exercises, you may be able to put an inch of muscle on your biceps in a week. You may be able to gain another inch in two weeks, but soon your body will plateau and you won't see that kind of growth every week.
To get bigger biceps, start by doing biceps-specific exercises like dumbbell curls, concentration curls, and chin-ups to build muscle. Next, build the muscles that surround your biceps by incorporating pectoral fly exercises, push-ups, and daily stretching into your exercise routine.
Now, 15 inches might sound like a magic number, but remember, it looks different for everyone. Factors like height, weight, and overall body composition play a big role in how those 15 inches appear. For some, 15 inch arms might be the pinnacle of their fitness journey, while for others, it might be a stepping stone.
Growing biceps is a real game changer but not an overnight process. It takes dedication and time, along with a proper set of exercises. The best way to grow biceps is to start by adjusting your exercise volume to 30 sets per week, and your per-set volume should be, at most, 8-10 complex sets per muscle.
There are two main training errors people make that keep their biceps from growing. These are overtraining the biceps (often unintentionally) and a lack of variation in training techniques. Adding additional biceps focused workouts and trying multiple biceps exercises doesn't work.
For optimal results when starting out, consider training your biceps no more than twice a week. Two sessions a week gives your muscles enough post-workout recovery to perform at their maximum capacity during the next session.
Do Push Ups Work Biceps? Whilst the biceps help to stabilize the shoulder and elbow joints during the lowering phase of a push up, they don't directly work the biceps. If your goal is to build your biceps, you'd be better off focusing on bicep isolation exercises such as bicep curls, hammer curls, or chin ups.
By these standards, biceps measuring 15+ inches for men and 13+ inches for women are generally classified as big.
On average, our members can add 1 inch to their arms for every 10 pounds they gain. Different guys bulk at different paces, but a good rule of thumb is to gain around a pound per week.
Years ago I developed a rep scheme for super sets known as the 5/10/20 method. In it's simplest form, this is a 3 exercise superset for a single muscle group where you do 5 reps of the first exercise, 10 of the second, then finish up with 20 reps on the final exercise.
Typically, it takes around 6-8 weeks for you to start noticing changes in the appearance of your arms. At around the 12 week mark, this is typically when you can expect to see more significant changes, especially if you didn't already have a large amount of muscle mass in the area!
To grow your arms, you need to hit your biceps and triceps equally hard, using both low reps (4-6) with heavier weights and higher reps (15-20) with lighter weights.
Pull ups and chin ups are a multi-joint movement, meaning that they engage multiple muscle groups (lats, biceps, shoulders, and upper back). They promote overall upper body muscle development and can lead to some serious strength gains.
To build muscle, aim to eat 1.4– 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight each day, says Cynthia Sass, RD, a registered dietitian and board-certified specialist in sports dietetics based in Los Angeles. (To calculate your approximate weight in kilograms, divide your weight in pounds by 2.2.)
In addition to curls, Galpin says that other exercises such as lat pull-downs, diamond push-ups, dips, close grip bench press, pull-ups, bent-over rows and even lower body exercises like the deadlift can activate the biceps. "Use a variety of exercises; don't just stick to one," he suggests.
Wrapping It Up
The chin-up is indeed a great and effective exercise for the biceps and for building muscle in the upper body.