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Danb21
11-13-08, 4:42 am
Alright guys I cant seem to pack mass onto my arms. I have my diet down, and am pounding down a ton of food. Right now I'm working everything once a week, and do tri's and bi's together. As of right now I don't do dips or Close grip bench because of an injury that gets aggravated from those two. I do 3 exercises for tri's 8-12 reps. The exercises I've been doing are skullcrushers, v-bar pushdowns, and another pushdown to finish. For bi's I do bb curls, preacher curls (either one arm or bb), and maybe some cable curls or hammer curls. I stick with 3 exercises for 8-12 reps as well. What can be going wrong? I am pretty tall, close to 6'4 so maybe it's just taking a while to fill out.. but it doesn't seem right. Any ideas and advice would be appreciated, thanks.

sanga
11-13-08, 5:00 am
Drop all arm work and concentrate on benching, dips and pressing heavy as possible for tris and deadlifting, rowing and chins for bis.

J Wong
11-13-08, 6:55 am
Drop all arm work and concentrate on benching, dips and pressing heavy as possible for tris and deadlifting, rowing and chins for bis.

Yes. And in 6 months go back to heavy direct arm training, they will blow up. (That's what happened to me at least) Make sure your diet is on point too, gotta eat big to get big.

AFTazz06
11-13-08, 8:59 am
Also you can try supersetting, try new arm excercises you havent tried. ive added new excercieses and ive added mass and shape to my arms especially my tris which were my lagging part. Sometimes it can be a simple move as using a straight bar instead of a ez-bar.

Factory
11-13-08, 9:08 am
Heavy rack pulls hit my biceps harder than a set of curls... sanga & boom have got it right. I don't have huge arms, but bench & closegrip / rack pulls and rows are really great for arm size.

Cellerator65
11-13-08, 9:52 am
if you have small arms, you probably have a small chest/back too... work on the major muscle groups and the arms will have to adapt and grow

Aggression
11-13-08, 11:51 am
if you have small arms, you probably have a small chest/back too... work on the major muscle groups and the arms will have to adapt and grow

True. Concentrate of the main mass moves. Your arms are worked indirectly when you train everything else.

prowrestler
11-13-08, 3:18 pm
gain total bodyweight

i gained a good 8 pounds recently and my arms are .5 inches bigger cold.

Tiny
11-14-08, 2:11 pm
gain total bodyweight

i gained a good 8 pounds recently and my arms are .5 inches bigger cold.

Yeah, I read the poster's blanket statement that his diet is in order but what exactly does that mean? If you ain't gaining bodyweight, then your diet isn't even close to being in order. That weight scale should be going up weekly - get that to happen first, then assess what is being gained, quality wise, and fine tune from there but the total calories consumed on a daily basis will remain unchanged (other than gradually increasing as you get heavier and heavier). Somewhere there is a number of cals you need to consume daily to get the scale moving - finding this number is step 1.

prowrestler
11-14-08, 2:32 pm
Yeah, I read the poster's blanket statement that his diet is in order but what exactly does that mean? If you ain't gaining bodyweight, then your diet isn't even close to being in order. That weight scale should be going up weekly - get that to happen first, then assess what is being gained, quality wise, and fine tune from there but the total calories consumed on a daily basis will remain unchanged (other than gradually increasing as you get heavier and heavier). Somewhere there is a number of cals you need to consume daily to get the scale moving - finding this number is step 1.

yep captain muscle mass!

i feel for the lower back pain from weight gain man.


so, eat more, train smart and grow

general
11-14-08, 2:41 pm
I am very tall as well (6'5") and I had trouble adding meat to my biceps. My triceps were always a strong point. I read an article about this very issue about 5 years ago. I tried it and it worked. It goes like this. The first thing you do is quit training arms for two weeks. The theory is that most people over work their arms for a number of reasons and you are getting ready to hit them very hard so give them a complete break for two weeks. Now come up with 4 or 5 excersizes for bis and 4 or 5 for tris. For the next six weeks you are going to train them twice a week using any combination of 3 of the 4 or 5 you came up with. Each time you work out arms, change the combination of 3 you use and always use the pyramid principle of a warmup, then 8, 6, 4, 2. This worked very well for me. I put a half inch on my arms in 6 weeks. That doesn't sound like much, but it's alot in that short of time. It took me 2 years to go from 13.5 inch arms to 16 inch arms and another three years to get them to 17. It's only taken the last four months of not working out at all to get them back down to 16.25. But I'm fixin to fix that. I started back Wednesday. But that's another story. Good luck.

newbreed
11-14-08, 5:26 pm
Compounds and less volume, rest, and eat properly

mritter3
11-14-08, 5:56 pm
if you want to add mass then lower the reps to 6-8. and here are your new tricep exercises....close grip bench, skull crushers, and heavy dips, also keep your bench and deads heavy and you will see your arms grow man. good luck.

Tiny
11-15-08, 12:08 pm
if you want to add mass then lower the reps to 6-8. and here are your new tricep exercises....close grip bench, skull crushers, and heavy dips, also keep your bench and deads heavy and you will see your arms grow man. good luck.

I pull and push so much on Chest and Back days that I actually consider that to be my lower rep, heavy arm work, so when I specifically (directly) train "arms" on their own day, I perform mostly higher rep stuff, supersetting bis against tris, with zero to very little rest. Lots of things can and will work but the most very basic prerequisite is that diet must be sufficient/excessive enough to provide for weight gain.

GJN5002
12-10-08, 12:07 pm
This is a great example of why you just need to do trial and error and fin dout what works for you. We have every solution here...low reps, high reps, twice a week, no direct work, etc etc. The only thing that is a common factor is exactly what TIny said, there is a caloric mark you need to find to put on mass and you are under it.

simpleguy
12-10-08, 12:21 pm
I remember reading in Machine's articles that if a bodypart is lagging, and assuming you are eating BIG, it either gets too little or too much stimulus... I know most people don't agree, but at times you might get better results by training them twice a week... that is, if you eat big time... for me it worked, but I only did it for a limited amount of time (I think 8 weeks)... and yes I got better results then by training them once a week


also you mentioned the exercises you are doing... but, are you changing them every once in a while, or changing the rep range? can't do the same workout for weeks on end bro

prowrestler
12-10-08, 1:24 pm
blast your forearms. they look bad if underdevelopped.

uge forearms make up sub par upper arms.

plus extra grip for back training is nice

On Letting Go
12-10-08, 1:38 pm
I'll be concentrating on only heavy compound movements for the next six weeks of my bulk with hopes to add some size to my forearms/bi's/tri's. Heavy Squats/deads/rows/weighted pull ups/benching/close grip benching should work those muscles enough to stimulate solid growth. I'll surely find out.

MVP
12-10-08, 11:57 pm
Drop all arm work and concentrate on benching, dips and pressing heavy as possible for tris and deadlifting, rowing and chins for bis.

Excellent advice.

I couldn't have said that any better.

Ir0nClad
12-12-08, 3:45 pm
Isolation work will only get your arms to grow for so long. You need to force it grow by heavy benching, squats, and deadlifts. If your serious about getting stronger, and putting on mass I would try a 5x5 routine by bill starr, or madcow's variation.