ExRx.net

Yes, way to pull out that one line.
There was also the part wherer I agreed he'd want to heed your advice for maxmium arm dvelopment

But are you so defensive of your "ISOLATE THE ARMS" banner that you are completely skimming over the fact that he has 11 inch arms, is scrawny everywhere and still worries about "gaining fat around the obliques"

honestly, I'm a bit dissapointed in the entire set of responses that seem to whittle this down to a misplaced ARMS or NOT discussioin. This twig is not allowing growth anywhere. I suppose, Robert, if I read what you say, that you gladly dismiss this obvious truth and streadfastly say "He wants bigger arms, so lets help him direct more of those calories (i.e. for now presuming there are enough in there to make a difference) aways from his "well developed chest and thighs" {paraphrasing the op}. So, basically, a recomp, moving the development to the arms. Ok.

In other words Robert, if this fella has a basically fit (not under nurished) body and lagging arms then your defensive stance makes more sense. To me it just looks like you jumped the gun(s) here.

ETA:
This, my point about Deadlifting. He is weak everywhere, I bet. And not "well developed".

Back in October I had my arms measured, flexed and out straight. I then added direct arm work into my upper body days for the first time, namely preacher curls supersetted with pushdowns on one day and some form of extension exercise the other. I did this for just over three months, and I did it like I meant it. Trained to failure, drop sets, forced reps, negative reps et al. At the beginning of Feb I had my arms measured again the reslults were as follows -

Flexed Gun Pump - no change
Extended Arm - 0.4cm growth (when you take into account measuring accuracy it's negligible)

I was a little taken aback. I would have though 3 months of training with an extra 100 reps (roughly) a week would have made more of an impact. Especially when you consider that I had never really implemented any direct arm work into my training before.

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What if the Hokey Cokey really IS what it's all about?

that's interesting. did you increase your strength for doing direct arm work anyway? and did you improve overall? sorry, i'm too lazy to look up everything in your journal.

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"his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see" - muhammad ali

?

Has the planet gone mad?

when did I say he shouldn't try to get bigger? When did he say he wasn't trying to get bigger overall? How do you know the "twig" isn't allowing growth anywhere? How do you know he wasn't even skinner 6 months ago?

He said that if he eats too much he puts on fat. How do you know he wasn't eating 6000 calories a day when this happened? If skinny people overeat then they'll get fat, just like anyone else. If you are eating to get bigger but gaining more fat than you're comfortable with then you would scale it back a little. How do you know this isn't what he's doing?

all we know is that this dude is skinny, and he feels his arms aren't developing at the same rate as the rest of his body. So the advice was to get bigger by doing compounds - which you'll notice I told him SHOULD STILL BE THE FOCUS of his workouts - and to train his arms directly.

How there can be any confusion or debate about that is beyond me.

Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed in the entire set of responses where people aren't just answering the question the guy asked, instead of making inferences about what they think he's doing, despite having very little information to base their inferences on.

are you giving your arms the same dedicated effort you give the rest of your body? I leave the gym after an arm workout just as knackered as if I've trained back or chest.

My arm workouts hit about 200 reps for both biceps and triceps in a single workout. That's just the direct stuff, and they get hit hard on chest and back day too. All that stimulus means they grow just fine. I have made more progress on my arms in the last three months than I did in the previous two years, because I have started treating them the same as every other bodypart (by giving them a dedicated workout) instead of training them as an afterthought. Also having them fresh when I train them has meant significant increases in strength. Training them at the end of upper days had arm strength going nowhere fast.

I'm not saying everyone needs a dedicated arm day, but I certainly did. If you are unhappy with your arm development, and you are not doing very much arm work, then I don't see what else you could expect.

If direct arm work didn't work then every single bodybuilder on the planet must be doing it wrong. And before someone screams "ROIDS!!!" the natural bodybuilders do it too.

Are they wrong? I doubt it.

I brought up food consumption in the original reply precisely because I figured that was part of the problem. We never got more details. In your scenario of a growing-everywhere-but-the-arms-and-diet- supports-growth OP, we have essentially no disagreement. As you state, we both agree Compounds should comprise the large majority of training.

My question on Deadlifting wasn’t to suggest his arms grow thru deadlifting (although, they do to some extent for many people simply because your body says “these scrawny arms are not going to cut it lifting 350 lbs”) but that he quite possibly is misplacing his concerns. I was probing for more info.

I highly suspect he is too concerned with a little fat gain and will have a terribly hard time bringing up any parts, lagging or not. Combined with many young mens mis-diagnosis of “developed vs lagging” parts.

You took him at face value
And you jump at opportunities to take a defensive stance for the cause of Arms Isolation. It might blind you to reading others' intents

food consumption may well be part of the problem, but there's no need to jump to conclusions, just answer the question he asks. If he comes back and says he can't gain weight overall, then I'll tell him to go stuff his face. In the meantime though I was just dealing with arms.

I didn't take your deadlifting comment as probing for more info, I thought it was meant in a "just do compounds" way so I apologise for the confusion.

it's just the analytical cynic in me; to probe before trusting

cheers

Bob, i'm not doubting that a boat load of direct arm work, ie. a session devoted exclusively to it, is going to make someone's arms bigger. Of course it will.

What i've found out is that tagging a few extra sets of direct arm work at the end of my upper body days for 3 months made no difference to my arm size. I was expecting at least a cm growth for all those reps, but alas nothing happened.

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What if the Hokey Cokey really IS what it's all about?

you're missing my point. I was talking about how you wouldn't expect another bodypart to grow properly training it as an afterthought, so why arms?

A conclusion I see you have now reached yourself. Kudos! Now to add an arm day.

Big arms are not a goal of mine. I performed this little experiment just to see what the results would be, now I know. I have no desire to include an arm day into my training.

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What if the Hokey Cokey really IS what it's all about?

Don't you lie to me Philip. DON'T YOU LIE TO ME

I honestly don't remember anyone saying this. Maybe I missed it. Hoose said something like that, but it was obviously just a joke intended to wind you up.

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

I already quoted examples.

It's cool, we've been over it and the thread has reached it's natural conclusion. There were dizzying heights, terrifying lows. All in all, an emotional rollercoaster.