The proposed paper aims to describe a novel strengthening technique for reinforced concrete beams which employs non-prestressed external reinforcing bars anchored at the supports of simply supported beams or slabs. External reinforcement can be easily retro-fitted to existing reinforced concrete structures. The simplicity of the proposed technique offers advantages in terms of ease of installation, quality control on site and future inspections in comparison to other methods. The proposed paper reports results of physical tests and numerical analyses. The corroboration of test results allows the extension of the study to a broad series of tests, aiming at the investigation of the effect of different percentage of external reinforcement and of different collapse mechanisms (shear and flexure), in order to optimise the amount of external reinforcement that could provide enough bearing capacity and sufficient ductility prior to collapse.