I would focus on gaining weight.
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This is a good point. I would be pretty confident that, barring acute disease states, there is not a single 5’8 160lb man in the world with arms bigger than 18". I’d probably be safe in that comment down until something like 16". If you get your BW up to 180, and it doesn’t matter how (fat mass increases circumference), your arms will be significantly bigger. If you get your BW up to 180 and its mostly muscle, your arms will be bigger AND look bigger / better.
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Instead of focusing on growing your arms focus on getting a strong ass close grip bench and weighted chin up. Iwas helping someone with their programing that said he could not grow his arms and had him do this. It worked well. He went from about 250lb Cg bench and 40lb chin up to 280 Cg bench and 100Lb chin up and grew like 1.5 inches over the course of 12 weeks or so.
I find it odd that you at 160 can do dips for 8 reps with a additional 90 strapped on. But can only do 185 x 5 on bench.
For clarification you wrote your 36 and been lifting since you were 14 consistently?
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That’s a training and nutrition issue, and both are fixable with the right planning.
What’s your current weight and bodyfat?
What did you weigh 8 weeks ago?
All the above statements are very true. To make things even stranger, I have squated 195lbs for 20 reps yet my max isnt much further north. It was like I could do 20 singles and recover fast.
Body fat is 10-12%. Body weight didn’t change much in those 8 weeks but like I mentioned I did get stronger on all lifts
What do you weigh currently?
EDIT: Nevermind, didn’t catch it in the earlier post.
You’re 160 and 10-12% bodyfat now. You gained zero weight during the arm phase, which means your body didn’t have any reason to build muscle since you can’t build size out of thin air.
Most importantly, over two years ago, you were “currently at 162lbs around 10% body fat.” The reason you’re not seeing any progress is that you don’t know how to eat. Period. End of sentence.
Focus more on fixing your nutrition and less on “getting stronger on all lifts”. You say you gain fat whenever you put on size? I’m not sure that’s the case. At your current bodyfat, you should have some decent ab definition. You need to think long-term and come to terms with the abs getting a little blurry in order to see results.
Some “damage control”-cardio should be part of your muscle-building plan along with a dialed in diet, but the only reason why you haven’t gained an ounce of muscle in two and a half years is that, basically, you just don’t know what you’re doing. Either fix that or go ahead and “throw in the towel”. No skin off our noses.
So you’ve been lifting consistently for over 2 decades, and your working sets on squat and bench are 225 and 185?
Dude. Find another hobby. This ain’t it for you. If you haven’t figured it out by now, you aren’t going to.
So that being said, I’ll echo what pwnisher said. your height and weight are proportional to your arm size. 14.5 is about what you’d expect at your size for someone who lifts and is relatively lean.
So yea. You need to eat more. Your diet sounds like you barely eat anything. That’s a problem. For someone as small as you, eating is EVERYTHING. You clearly haven’t figured that out in 20 years. If you eat properly, meaning not just adding junk food to gain weight, and not eating EXCESSIVELY, you’ll be more likely to succeed. My guess is, when you’ve tried to gain weight in the past and added too much fat, it’s because you went overboard and either ate too much extra food, or the wrong stuff. If you add 250-500 calories to your diet every day in the form of meat and vegetables, and don’t change anything else, I highly doubt that you’ll be putting on tons of fat. I’ve never, ever seen that happen in my 2 decades in the gym.
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I may have to do a week of 1RM to see exactly where my lifts are. My ending strength on close grip bench was 165 for 6. I was curious what regular grip was but was feeling a lot of neuro fatigue and everything felt heavy. Only made it through a couple reps with 185. I’ll try it this week and see what I get. The diet component is tricky because I’m trying not to become a diabetic. I can eat a lot and I’m holding back with what I’m currently consuming and often feeling unsatisfied when I’m done eat, especially at night but I’m just unwilling to get fatter to get bigger. I’m already at the “fattest” I’ve ever been.
Is this a present risk for you? Don’t see many 160lb 10% bf people ‘developing’ diabetes.
Who said you have to get fatter? Eat more and train harder.
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Me neither. I’ve been tracking my blood work for a few years. Last tested 2 months ago, fasting blood sugar was 110. 4 years ago was 106. Just trying to keep the majority of my carbs around my workout.
This is one hell of a word salad, my friend. Don’t listen to these philistines, though. I think you’re looking for the answer that everyone in your particular position comes on here looking for:
You are cursed. You have been doing everything right, and nothing wrong, but the universe has cursed you to not respond to any of the things that work for us. None of our suggestions are going to help you. You should throw in the towel.
Satisfied?
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It’s a weird trick where people try to hold themselves hostage.
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Not that weird - it’s a lot easier to find out that the cards are stacked against you and give up than it is to fight on in spite of the bullshit life throws at all of us.
It’d also have been hard for me to make any progress if I gave up every time I was
Oh no, not the giving up part, the whole “going online and threatening to quit to a bunch of strangers” part.
Like you, I tend to tell those folks quitting is the right call.
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do you think this stems from a false sense of self importance? I don’t even assume my friends would care how I felt about a hobby- much less strangers on the internet
It’s a desire to be talked off a ledge and told how much they’ve already achieved and how great they’re doing and how they just need to stick with it. Basically an attempt to force a pep-talk and get some compliments.
Because often, when people say they should just quit and they get encouraged to do so, they get upset about it.
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why would anyone want to give that douche of an OP any compliments 
(I admit, I’m probably not much less a douche)
I don’t feel any ill will toward him or that he’s lacking in character or anything. I just find that these threats to quit are in bad faith.
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