Your Arms Need These Exercises

With so many arm exercises out there, it's hard to know what arm workout to do. But you're probably doing too many bicep exercises and tricep exercises and focusing on the wrong areas. In fact, after cutting out all the fluff and focusing on just 2 science-backed arm exercises, I’ve gotten fuller and bigger arms. I also asked the top natural bodybuilders and muscle growth researchers (Alberto Nunez, Mike Israetel from RP Strength, Daniel Plotkin) the same question. "If you could only pick 2 exercises — 1 best exercise for bicep and 1 tricep exercise — to maximize growth, what would they be?” And they all pointed to the same 2 weird exercises.  Today, I’ll show you what these 2 best arm exercises are and teach you how to do them properly in your arms workout at the gym so your arms grow faster than ever. Click below to try the BWS+ app for free for 2 weeks, no strings attached: https://builtwithscience.com/ Click below to subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1 Out of the many bicep arm exercises, I started in the gym with standard bicep curls. But here’s the problem. They challenge your biceps mostly in the middle position when your arm is flexed. This is a similar challenge your biceps already get from your back exercises. Plus, because the biceps cross all the way over the shoulder, exercises like dumbbell curls don't stretch your biceps as much as they could by exercises where your arm stays behind you. Which, at least based on research on other muscle groups, seems to be a powerful way to stimulate more growth.  To discover the best exercise for your biceps, scientists from a brand new 2025 study ran an exercise comparison. They split participants into 2 groups. One group did only incline curls for 8 weeks, whereas the other group did preacher curls. Incline curls led to more growth in the upper part of the arm, but preacher curls led to more growth in the lower part of the arm! Meaning? Theoretically, to maximize growth in all parts of your biceps, you’d want an exercise where the challenge is hardest at the bottom but without the arm held in front of the body, so the biceps are more stretched. Fitness experts share 3 options when it comes to the best exercise for biceps: reverse preacher curls, flat bench dumbbell curls, and behind-the-body cable bicep curls. But even with the best arm exercises for the bicep, your biceps only contribute about a third of your arm size. The other two-thirds? The triceps. Unfortunately, most people use arm exercises — like pushdowns, close-grip presses, or dips — that don’t allow this muscle to reach its full potential. Those arm exercises primarily work just 2 parts of the triceps: the lateral head and the medial head. Which are what beef up the triceps from the front and side.But the third head, the long head, is the biggest part of the triceps and beefs them up from the back and hangs down when you flex your arms. So, what’s the better option? To find out which tricep exercise would yield bigger arms, Scientists from a 2022 study had subjects perform overhead extensions with one arm and pushdowns with the other arm for 12 weeks. Now, because the long head crosses over the shoulder, whenever you do a triceps exercise with your arm overhead, this muscle gets stretched, which, as you know by now, seems to boost growth in certain muscles. But surprisingly, all 3 heads grew more with the overhead extensions, resulting in 1.4x more overall triceps growth than the pushdowns. Now, we don’t yet know why the other 2 heads grew more, and we could definitely use another study to confirm these findings, but the researchers used MRI, which is the gold standard of measurement, so the study is strong.  This is also why every single expert I spoke to chose the overhead extension as their #1 triceps exercise. Alberto prefers the overhead tricep extension with a rope. Daniel likes the overhead tricep extension with a cable, usually with his hand wrapped through the D handle and elbow propped up. Which variation should you choose? What you’re looking for is a variation where you feel very little to no pain in your elbows or shoulders as you do it, yet feel a great pump in your triceps after you finish your set. Whichever you choose, here’s the key. For cables, bump up the cable to about hip height, and stand close to the cable so that the challenge is hardest closer to the bottom when the muscle is stretched. For the dumbbell version, keep your upper arm locked straight up and down; don’t allow it to bend as you tire. And on all the variations, don’t stop halfway. Get as deep a stretch in the triceps as possible by letting your hand come down behind your neck as far as it can. As for how to implement these arm exercises in your arms workout in the gym, while other arm exercises are still great and can help grow your arms, for the best results, you’ll wanna do these 2 specific movements for 3 sets of 10-15 reps at least 1-2 times per week.