Strength Training for Skinny Arms: Muscle Building Routines

Tired of skinny weak arms? Here are proven strength training routines that will put muscle on your skinny arms and make them a lot stronger.

Bench Press. The bench press is usually thought of as the best chest exercise, but it also engages the triceps.

Ever see a man with skinny arms bench press 225 pounds? There’s a reason for that. The bench press — either horizontal or inclined — is a cornerstone for building mass in the arms.

Overhead Press. Pressing over the head targets the shoulders and triceps, which will help build up thin arms.

Seated Dip. Seated dips will increase the size of your skinny arms by adding mass to the triceps muscle.

When men struggle to build up thin arms, they often focus a lot on bench pressing, which primarily works the chest muscles.

Though the triceps get worked in the bench press, they don’t get slammed like they do during intense sets of seated dips.

Seated dips will directly target the triceps, which makes up most of your upper arm. If you have well-developed triceps muscles, your arms won’t look skinny.

The caveat with seated dips is that a man with skinny weak arms will not be able to do a full seated dip with elevated feet.

In fact, a man who doesn’t work out and one day decides to try seated dips, even if he has more “meat” on his arms, will simply not be able to perform this exercise. It is inherently difficult, and not a natural movement.

Thus, you must work yourself up to performing dips, but the time it requires to build the strength to do these is well worth it!

Once you’re strong enough to do seated dips, with legs straight and feet propped up on a bench or stool, there is no limit to what you can do with this exercise.

To make a long story short, make seated dips a regular part of your strength training, and keep pushing the envelope and dipping heavier and heavier (add weights to your lap for more resistance), and dang, your triceps will swell!

Biceps Curls. The next biggest muscle of the arm is the biceps, so you’ll want to target these. You’ve perhaps heard that “the biggest mass builders are compound movements.”

The problem here is that the typical skinny, weak person cannot do chin-ups (which recruit the back and biceps), but even the weakest person can immediately do biceps curls for repetitions.

I recommend seated biceps curls with dumbbells, against a slightly tilted-back back support.

This will minimize cheating, though standing curls are also a good muscle building exercise for the arms — as long as you don’t swing your back.