If you go to the gym, I'm pretty sure you also nurture the goal of building massive arms. The kind where your arms look like they need to breathe when you put on a t-shirt. Half an inch more and your sleeves will tear off.

You get the point.

In pursuit of building these massive arms, you keep doing hundreds of bicep exercises with thousands of reps. But despite all these efforts, nothing seems to work for you.

Well, that's because you are hitting the wrong muscle group. This doesn't mean you should stop training your biceps altogether, it's about shifting focus to other areas.

The main muscle you want to focus on for the density and width of your arms is the tricep.

That's correct, the triceps give your arms the volume and the thicker look.

To optimally build the triceps, you need to focus on all the heads and train them in the best possible way.

Your triceps are made of three heads:

1. Long head

2. Medial head

3. Lateral head

Out of these three heads, it is the long head development that gives your arms and in particular, the triceps that beefy look. A well developed long head takes care of most of the size you can gain on your triceps.

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The understand what lifts to do, it is important to know the main functions of your triceps. The two main functions of the triceps are elbow extension and shoulder extension.

To work on all the three heads, you need to do exercises that:

1. Have your arms over the head

2. Have your arms to the side of your body

3. Have your arms behind the torso

This will ensure that you are hitting the three heads of the triceps optimally and ensuring all-round development.

For your arms over the head movement, you can pick one of the exercises from:

1. The skull crushers

2. Two-arm overhead dumbbell press

3. Overhead cable tricep extensions with a rope attachment

For arms to the side of the body, you have:

1. Tricep pushdowns on a cable

2. Machine tricep pushdowns

3. Dips

For arms behind the torso:

1. Cable kickbacks

2. Dumbbell kickbacks

In your next workout where you are working out your triceps, ensure that you are exercising the triceps in all the three different positions.

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This is just one part of the job done, i.e. picking the exercises. The other part is to ensure that you do not commit any rookie mistakes:

Mistake 1: Lifting Too Heavy 

A lot of guys at the gym compromise form for their ego. This particularly is stupid for your isolation exercises. Your goal here is to ensure that you are working out using the best possible form for the desired number of reps. Going too heavy means involving your shoulder and pressing using them. That is not going to develop your triceps.

Pick a load you can work between 12 to 15 reps, to begin with, and even at 15 reps, you can push 2 or 3 more reps for failure. Do not push for failure, keep a buffer for it. 

Mistake 2: Training Frequency 

I have written this article where I have mentioned exactly the problem with the bodybuilders aka bro aka one muscle group a day split.

Want maximal development? Ensure you are training your muscles at least 2x a week. 

Go ahead and build huge arms by beefing up your triceps.

Author bio:

Pratik Thakkar is the co-founder and director of GetSetGo Fitness, an online fitness company and the founder of Mars Nutrition, a nutrition supplement company. Both his companies are geared towards providing you with the right information and products without any false or fake claims. You can reach out to him at pratik@getsetgo.fitness and follow him on Instagram.