If someone tells you to "make a muscle," what do you do? Instinctively you roll-up your sleeve and flex your bicep.

So without further delay, let's look at how we can optimally increase the size of your arms.

1. Compound exercises

Compound exercises are those that use more than one joint at time. This allows for big loads to be used and activates a lot of of muscle fibers. These 2 factors mean big gains for your arms. Some of my favorite exercises are pull-up and chin-up variations as they put tremendous stress on the biceps.

2. Add muscle

You're simply not going to have 20 inch arms if you weigh 160 pounds. Your body does not like to get out of balance, so even if you are striving strictly for bigger arms, you will want to train the rest of your body as well. Some have even stated that it is necessary to add 15-20 pounds of muscle in order to gain one inch on your arms. Suffice it to say, you need to follow a training program that works every muscle in your body and you need a complementary nutrition and supplement plan as well.

3. Lose fat

Big arms are great, but I would bet that what you really want is arms that are big AND defined. In order to for this to happen you need to be relatively lean. Otherwise your arms will just look big and fat, no matter how much muscle you have. Bodyfat percentage is mostly a function of diet, so you need to make sure that while you are eating to increase your weight you aren't putting on too much fat in the process.

Keep in mind that the arms are muscles just like any other. So you don't need to constantly do sets of curls to get them to grow. Muscles grow while you are resting. So make sure to train hard and then rest hard (eat big and sleep enough).

And don't forget to work your triceps as well. While not the show muscles that the biceps are, they do make up roughly 2/3 of your upper arm mass, so neglecting them is not a good strategy if bigger arms are what you're after.