Wrong. Because even if you dont have external resistance, you still have the resistance you need to build serious arm muscle, size, and strength. Everywhere you go, youre walking around with enough weight to load and challenge yourself: Youre walking around with your bodyweight.

That means you can get an arm blast in anytime, anywhere, as long as youre creative and you know the right moves and methods. And right now, were going to show you how to do exactly that.

Truth be told, your arms are built to respond well to bodyweight training, and they can get challenged by your mere bodyweight even more than larger bodyparts, in part because theyre smaller muscle groups.

Part of the challenge of building muscle and strength for any bodypart is that you need to overload it to make serious gains. Bench-press five-pound dumbbells, and youll see limited results. Bench 225, however, and youre pushing your pecs to their limits. That overload, when done safely and progressively, is key to growth.

Bigger muscles (think chest, lats, and leg muscles), quite naturally, can be overloaded with more weight. But your biceps and triceps? Those are small muscle groups, so they can be challenged and overloaded with less weight. The same person who maxes out at 225 on the bench wont be biceps curling, say, 225.

So while a standard pushup may not be a challenge for you, finding a way to isolate you triceps with that same bodyweight load just may create the stimulus for arm growth.

Your biggest goal when trying to blast your arms with bodyweight is finding ways to make your arms do all the work. In general, larger bodyparts, such as your lats or pecs, or even your legs and core muscles, will want to assist in most bodyweight lifts. Its natural, because theyre stronger.

You need to focus on not letting those muscles do the work, and to do that, you need to focus on movement at the elbow, because none of your larger muscle groups (such as your lats, pecs, abs, or legs) have a direct role in how your elbow moves. But biceps and triceps drive elbow movement. Your biceps is a key flexor of the elbow, bending forearm towards upper arm. Your triceps, meanwhile, extends the elbow, essentially straightening your arm.

Any move that has your elbow flexing and extending under bodyweight load is going to work your biceps and triceps. The more you make elbow flexion and extension be the driving force of the exercise, the closer you are to stimulating arm growth.

In general, its far easier to find bodyweight triceps movements than it is to find bodyweight biceps moves. Thats for two reasons. First off, its generally easier to find home pushing moves than pulling moves. And your triceps are involved in pushing.

Secondly, many bodyweight pull moves are, overall, just challenging. The gold-standard bodyweight pull move is the pullup or chinup, and, even with your entire body working as a unit, it can be challenging to do. Asking your biceps to shoulder the load gets even tougher. Most of the biceps blast moves you can do with bodyweight will be driven by chinups and chinup variations.

None of this is bad, though, because theres plenty of growth potential locked in your tris. Even if you focus on triceps when youre doing your bodyweight training, youll get serious bang for your arm-training buck, because, very often, its easier to over-focus on biceps training and ignore your triceps when youre working with weights.

Try these workouts and exercises to spice up your arm-day training with only bodyweight. Yes, its possible to build your arms with no gear at all. The closest thing youll need is an ottoman or a chair; sub that in whenever you see a move that requires a bench.

Close-Grip Pushup

The basic close-grip pushup is an excellent triceps move, and it's a fundamental move you should learn.