Many people wish to develop arm strength for a variety of practical or personal reasons, and there are many different ways to accomplish that goal. Some individuals wish to strengthen their arms in order to perform better at work or at a sport while others simply want to develop muscular bulk. The best methods for improving arm strength vary from person to person and depend on one's goals, financial resources, and available time. It is possible to strengthen one's arms through a few minutes of daily exercise, through a rigorous exercise circuit at a gym directed by a strength trainer, or through many other means — sometimes, simply playing a sport with friends is sufficient.
One of the most important aspects of building arm strength is setting and keeping a schedule. It is not possible to substantially increase the strength of one's arms in a single workout session. Furthermore, muscular strength declines rapidly when one does not exercise regularly, so sustaining some type of workout regimen over time is necessary and important. Working exclusively on arm strength too frequently, however, can also have a detrimental effect, as it prevents the muscles from resting and healing. Daily hard workouts of the same muscle groups seldom result in a substantial increase in strength and can, in some cases, lead to injury.
The exact nature of one's workout should vary based on one's particular goals. An individual with the goal of increasing arm strength and bulk without regard for endurance should focus on high-resistance, low-repetition exercises that push the limits of his muscular strength. If muscular endurance is a factor, however, one should also spend time doing higher-repetition exercises at lower resistance. The former is almost entirely focused on increasing the amount of resistance that one can handle at a particular moment while the latter improves one's ability to handle sustained resistance over time. For the best overall improvement in arm strength, one should do both types of exercises on all of the main muscle groups in the arms.
Arm strength can be particularly important to particular activities, such as football and baseball, as it plays a significant part in how fast and far one can throw a ball and how effectively one can protect a ball from tacklers. High-resistance weight training to build arm strength and bulk is very important for improving these actions. It is also important, however, to practice the particular action that strong arms are supposed to improve. A strong but untrained person, for example, generally will not be able to throw a ball as well as one who has perfected the nuances of the mechanical action of throwing.