[quote]leaNbig wrote:
[quote]its_just_me wrote:
[quote]leaNbig wrote:
[quote]its_just_me wrote:
[quote]leaNbig wrote:
how come around my body I’m progressing at such a strong rate, but particularly in my arms it’s at such a low rate? Does it have to do with anything about my wingspan?[/quote]
You have to consider that progress will be in proportion to size of muscle group. If say you can add 2kg (sorry, I’m British) to your bench press every week, you couldn’t expect to add 2kg to each dumbbell (if you use them). Also, with low rep ranges (like 6 or under), every rep is like worth twice the rep progression in the higher rep range. Say for example you progressed from 6 reps to 7 reps, that’s like jumping from 10 reps to 12 reps in the higher rep range.
So when I said do higher reps for the arms (e.g. 10-12), it’s not just so that it targets different muscle fibres, but also because the progression is more PROGRESSIVE. That is, it’s far easier to get another rep in the 10-12 rep range, than it is to get another rep in the 6-8 rep range. That’s using the rep progression method (rather than just load progression method where the reps per set stay the same)…this is superior for arms because like I said the progression is more progressive/gradual which is needed for a small/weaker muscle group.
If you just decide to add say 2-5lbs to your curling/arm pushing exercises, and stick to just 6 reps per set, then if you’re muscles haven’t adapted to that load yet, you will just get a failed lift (and little progression).
So, next step (besides making sure over-all strength is going up…which it seems to be) is to increase rep range and switch to training arms directly about twice a week.
One little note just incase…in the past my arms never grew much due to “overstimulation”, I was training loads of upper body exercises 2-3 times per week, and then training arms AT THE END of a hard training session - this will hinder arm growth. Try to train them as fresh as possible and bear in mind the accumulated fatigue caused by upper exercises like pulling/pressing movements.[/quote]
Right, perhaps, I should try out a day for just arms?
I generally do biceps at the end of pull day and triceps at the end of push day.
I go Push-Off-Pull-Off-Legs repeat. Push has bicep work, pull has tricep work.
[/quote]
OK, here’s the deal, you need to focus on your whole body…but with the exception of maybe optimising your arm training.
What you don’t want to do at this stage is swap whole training programs all the time. Stick to a decent one, and hammer the hell out of it for months and months. Many advanced trainees stick to the same program for YEARS. The only exception is minor alterations; it evolves.
So here’s a decent balanced split that is used by MANY with great success (directly cut and pasted from CC):
day 1 chest, bis, tris
day 2 legs
day 3 off (or not, your call)
day 4 delts, back
day 5 off
day 6 repeat
-split. Can be done anywhere from 3 days a week only to 3 out of 4 days…
There are slight variations of this split (e.g. doing back and chest together, then moving arms to shoulder/delts day…or doing the split you gave; push/pull, but with less days off inbetween).
Right now, I wouldn’t worry about giving your arms their own day - this will simply delay frequency of training the whole body (which needs to be relatively high for someone getting stronger). BUT, you CAN increase the sets for them AND increase the rep range like I said (from 6 reps/set to 10-12 reps per set and do about 2 max sets per exercise). If a bodypart is lagging, and you’re doing it almost twice a week (e.g. every 5 days), best alternative is to increase volume for the muscle group (assuming everything else is growing fine).
Main thing is progression in strength. At this stage you should either be increasing either reps by 2 each week and/or load by at least 2% each week. Strength should be upping in leaps and bounds…don’t lose focus of this.[/quote]
Looks like a very good split. I’ll implement this first.
I’m trying my hardest to progress in strength, as you can see numbers in about 90% of my lifts have gone up from 30 pounds to even 100lbs in these 12 weeks. The 10% being my arms, but we’ll try this out. More volume and new split it is.[/quote]
That’s good to know.
You do need to practice a bit of humility though and understand that the respectable others have good points - keep your head down and keep at it.
Be positive. It really doesn’t take THAT much time to gain really decent amounts of strength/mass at the start - like Scot M has said, you can really blow people away with potential results.
Which brings me onto the next point; the essence of what ones like PX say is true when it comes to eating/lifting…that’s the “secret” to great gains. And ones like CT will not tell you completely different - in fact, in the words of CT himself, he said ironically that he would recommend to eat more than PX may recommend! It’s just the strategies that may differ a little. For example, CT may recommend for those with heavy builds to have more frequent “damage control” days while gaining (but you still eat plenty on the gaining phases). Then you have schemes like Dogcrap training (favoured by Scot M), where it is recommended to eat as much as possible and do plenty of cardio at the same time.
Seriously though, last ditched effort at trying to be helpful. oh well.