You might not be eating enough food to build muscle, or you might be eating the wrong type of food (i.e. not enough protein). You might also not be performing the right exercises in the gym to build muscle size in your arms, or you're simply not lifting heavy enough weights.
Getting rid of skinny arms entails training the muscles directly 3-4 times per week. The key is to train both biceps and triceps and use heavy, moderate, and light weights throughout the week to increase strength, size, and vascularity. It's also important to train the arms using a full range of motion with good form.
Skinny guys can build their arm muscles fast by following a regimen of strength training and eating muscle-building foods. Building muscle can seem like a difficult challenge for men that have been skinny their whole lives or who have recently lost weight and muscle mass at the same time.
You might not be eating enough food to build muscle, or you might be eating the wrong type of food (i.e. not enough protein). You might also not be performing the right exercises in the gym to build muscle size in your arms, or you're simply not lifting heavy enough weights.
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.
If your flexed biceps measure less than 13.3″ in circumference, that's a good sign that your muscles are smaller than average, and so you could be considered skinny.
Bad Foods. A diet that is high in sugary carbs and low in protein contributes to the big belly, skinny limbs body shape. The sugary carbs in a bad diet will contribute to the fat accumulation to the midline, while the lack of protein in the diet will prevent you from adding any muscle tissue to your arms and legs.
Diet for Big Biceps
You should try to eat at least 1.4 to 1.8 grams of protein daily per pound of body weight, according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Some of the best muscle-building foods include lean meats, fish, dairy products, eggs and beans.
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!
Usual causes of arm weakness include injury to, or infection of, the arm; muscle wasting, such as from certain muscular disorders or from lack of use; nerve damage or compression at the vertebral column; or certain hereditary conditions.
If your legs are skinny, it could be because you're not performing enough strength training on them, or you're not eating enough calories to build muscle there. Lots of steady-pace cardio training like running can also lead to skinny legs.
Also, it's possible that your skinny forearms are due to your genetics. If you're somewhat tall or simply have less overall muscle, then your body mass will naturally be distributed over a larger surface area, which can result in your lower arms looking a little thin.
There's nothing wrong with having skinny arms — in fact, some people would be thrilled to have them. But if you find yourself thinking "My arms are too skinny," adding just a little bit of muscle can give them a sleek, defined shape.
Arm exercises include hammer curls, preacher curls, concentration curls, triceps dips, overhead extensions, pullups, pushups, flyes and triceps kickbacks. For your legs, appropriate moves include squats, lunges, step ups, leg presses, calf raises, dead lifts and leg curls.
If you want to increase the size of your legs, you need to concentrate on volume training. (1) Lower loads, as well as high volume training, will help build your legs. You can also combine the two for even better results. You could do a week of low loads and volume training and then the following week you can go heavy.
At this point, the average teenage bicep size is 12.8 inches for males and 12.05 inches for females. This difference would likely be even greater if the measurements were taken when the biceps were flexed rather than relaxed.
While 11 inch arms are smaller than average in most cases (except if you're a lean female or teenager), they're not way below average either. Lean, short individuals naturally have smaller arms than taller people and those with a high body fat level.
So, how often should you train your arms if you are looking for optimal muscle growth? You can train arms between 2-6 times per week. The more frequently you train arms, the less you should do per day. If you train arms twice per week, you'll do 2-3 exercises per session with 3-4 total sets.
You aren't lifting heavy enough.
In the resistance training context, hypertrophy occurs when skeletal muscle tissue enlarges, because the resistance stimulus increases the size of the muscle's component cells. Achieving hypertrophy puts you in a muscle-building state, but you won't get there by lifting light weights.
The short answer: no — “toned arms” are not reserved for winners of the genetic lottery. (Although, some will find their desired look easier to achieve.) The real problem is that your workouts — the constant focus on biceps and triceps exercises in one rep range — are suffering from a lack of TLC.