A few friends and I were discussing muscle growth and which muscle is the hardest to develop. One of them, a BJJ practitioner, mentioned that anyone could increase their bicep size from 10 inches to 14 inches within six months—and with dedication, it could even be achieved in three months.
What’s your opinion on this?
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
You know an adult male that has a 10 inch bicep?
How does his boyfriend feel about him getting bigger arms?
You probably can, depending on where you’re at training wise. If you just want to get fat, sure, no problem.
If you want it to be solid muscle mass, volumizers like creatine would help but you will have to work your ass off(smartly, I may add).
Eat, sleep, lift. Repeat. No way around that.
Don’t forget, triceps are 3/5 of the upper arm, so don’t just curl your ass off.
No muscle boosters at all—just protein and consistent workouts. When you say it’s achievable if done “smartly,” what’s your take on the ideal days, sets, and reps?
For example:
1 day on, 1 day off – Reps/Sets: 15/12/10
2 days on, 1 day off – Reps/Sets: 15/12/10
2 days on, 2 days off – Reps/Sets: 15/12/10
We were discussing his 16-year-old son
I had 13" biceps at 15 years old and I didn’t have really any meaningful time training. I’m average height.
Your friends son needs some fuckin food bro.
4" of biceps growth is not going to happen in 3 or 6 months. Whether he was an adult or kid, gear or not.
I’m more curious how you landed on biceps being the hardest muscle to grow when calves are literally right there.
Yikes. Thats a humongus question.
In a vaccuum I’d:
Place them on the first day of the work week, first exercise of the session. Since thats the priority.
An example would be for a pull day-
Pull ups- as many as possible. Hit them hard with a big compound movement.
Some kind of row- higher volume, moderate tempo, minimum of 3 sets, 8 reps, any permutation of reps greater than 24 5×5, 6×6, what ever. Volume builds volume. So do high volume.
Then in isolation prone & supine supersetted until when ever. If he’s a kid, he can do curls until his arms fall off. He’s not strong enough yet to accumulate a tremendous amount of fatigue or repetitive motion injury.
The push day/bro split or what ever would be similar for bench/ ohp/triceps
And have a second bicep (if thats the point of emphasis) day with like 2 or more days between it and the next work week.
Progress with reps until you’ve achieved a 20% increase, then add weight.
Real trainers/authors like Christian Thibadeau and many others have arm specialization routines, but thats about what I did to get what I got, among other things that may or may not work for others. 
.
Lets get some scope on this question so we can autist this thing to death the proper way.
Are we only training the biceps or are we training the whole arm?
Are we training any other muscles at all, or only arms?
Its just me, but Id say whole arm (bi’s + tri’s) if thats whats being measured.
I agree completely, this is what I call this measurement as well.
But the dude thought biceps were harder to grow than calves, so I’m making sure we have clear definitions.
Calves grow like crazy on their own. Hell, in 6 mos they’re almost cows.
Deadlifts, 21’s, scrambled eggs, chronic masturbation.
At a baseline of 10” and 16yo, I’m assuming this 6mo timeframe is late puberty… so I’ll say easy yes to growing 4”.
I’d bro split it. If you haven’t been training at all, one arm day. If you’ve been training, a separate day for bis and another for tris.
My biceps workout:
My triceps workout:
Intraworkout carbs would be part of it for me, with this kind of volume.
I’m going to take this entirely out of context and forever say you said 4" of arm grow within 6 months was easy… 20" guns here I come.
I’ll want my money back if it doesn’t happen!
That’s fair; my advice is exactly as valuable as what you paid.
Sounds like a great book title
Assuming he really has 10 inches upper arms, he’s probably really thin! Like 110-130 pounds. You don’t have 10 inches upper arms weighing 200 pounds. I was 120 pounds at 16 years old so it make sense. However I don’t know my upper arms measurement from that time. I was fucking thin though.
He won’t be able to just grow his arms 4 inches and not the rest of his body. So how to do it? Gain 30-50 pounds of overall bodyweight. Reach 150-160 pounds which would make sense with 14-15 inches arms.
I don’t think it is even useful to talk about triceps vs biceps and sets and reps for arm workout. He needs to fucking grow all over if he wants to gain 4 inches of upper arm.
Can he do it in 6 months? We are talking about 1-2 pounds per week of bodyweight gain. Possible. Will he gain some fat? Yes probably a little. How to do it? Do a beginner program. Eat a lot.
I am going to say that it isn’t likely to happen, unless he is just starting a recovery from anorexia, or he is willing to gain a lot of weight in that 6 months.
If he actually has 10" upper arms, he doesn’t likely have good arm genetics. I think 2" is possible in this amount of time. On a small frame dude with poor arm genetics, 14" is actually not bad if it is achieved while lean. 15" will look developed to most people if the guy is around average height and lean (It will likely look more developed to most people than a 16" arm, if there is around a 10 point lower difference in body fat %).
He can gain fatceps by 4" in 6 months. A true 4" gain of muscle, is unlikely.
Granted, but tissue + glycogen, water, and a little inflammation? I still think it’s doable, given our baseline in this case. I was a little tongue in cheek in my first response, as I’m assuming it’s growth spurt time at these starting number - like where you see little boys go home for the summer, replaced by grown men showing up for fall practice.
Anyway, to make this weirder, anyone ever thought about measuring their arm in volume? Like my guns are 60 cubic inches?
