Compound Exercises for Big Arms
Compound exercises are the ones that work a number of muscles at the same time as opposed to isolation exercises that work only one muscle group at a time. Although compound exercises are usually associated with training the bigger muscles groups like the chest, back and legs, there are a number of very effective compound exercises for big arms that you can incorporate into your biceps and triceps training routines.
One of the most popular compound exercises is the bench press which is, as most of us know, one of the most effective exercises for building muscle mass in the chest. The bench press is however a great compound exercise to help build the shoulders and works equally well to build and develop thick triceps. The standard wide grip bench press will help to build the triceps but the close grip bench press has a profound muscle building effect on both the inner and outer heads of the triceps and for this reason the close grip bench press is the ideal compound exercise to build big triceps.
The shoulder press is another compound exercise that works the deltoids but this compound exercise also stimulates growth in the triceps as well. For those of you who train shoulders and triceps in the same workout, the shoulder press performed with either a barbell, dumbbells or the shoulder press machine is a great compound exercise to target the delts and gets the blood flowing through the triceps before you move onto the isolation exercises for the triceps.
Deadlifts are perhaps the ultimate compound exercise for big arms and so many other muscles since they stimulate growth in more muscle groups than any other weight training exercise. While performing deadlifts you are stimulating growth in the back, the quadriceps, the hamstrings, the shoulders, and the biceps and triceps since the biceps and triceps need to strain hard to lift and hold the heavy bar.
All rowing movements for the back muscles like bent over barbell rows, long pulley rows, dumbbell rows and machine rows are great compound exercises since they not only target the back muscles but encourage phenomenal growth in the biceps, brachialis and forearms as well. After performing heavy rowing movements with high intensity you will notice your biceps muscles will be very sore the next day since these compound movements work just as well to grow the biceps than most isolation exercises for the biceps.
Believe it or not, doing squats even stimulates grow in the arms since when you perform squats your body promotes a high level of testosterone production which is directly responsible for all over muscle growth within all muscle groups. So if you want big arms do squats, they will really make a difference.