Lifting for a Good Body

Training Beginners
21

[quote]Stronghold wrote:
zephead4747 wrote:
Wimpy wrote:
Scott M wrote:
sphaw wrote:
Dude… you can’t compare a 17 year old with a bodybuilder. Are you REALLY saying that a 17 year old kid will benifit more from doing bicep isolation work than sticking to compound movements? If you are, i hope you’re not serious.

didn’t say professional or amateur bodybuilder, to me anyone that lifts to look good is well… a bodybuilder haha, what else should we call the OP? I think his BICEPS will benefit from BICEPS work. I’m not steering anyone away from hard lifts, but to build the best arms he can he’s going to need to hit them directly in some fashion.

Triceps I can agree are primarily built through presses(dips close reverse etc) but biceps are not as involved in back exercises as triceps are in pressing and therefor need to be hit directly. There isn’t a mounting evidence of people(see I took that B-word out) building impressive arms that I’ve seen, I have seen a lot of people that have good arms do curls.

A professional bodybuilder, or an amateur for that matter who’s been training for years can of course mix things up, but for a complete newbie, there is no point. The best is naturally a combination of both, but in this case, yes, i truly believe what i said.

I also agree that a combination of both is best, so why didn’t you say that first?

How many “My arms are lagging cause I was on that no direct arm work fad for awhile-big mistake” type posts do we need on here?

I wouldn’t mind seeing someone on a system like this(with whatever set reps they want I don’t care)

Upper
Incline Press(barbell or dumbbells)
Seated Overhead Press(dumbbells barbell behind the neck etc)
Close Grip Press
Pullup/lat pulldown
Dumbbell Curl

Lower
Leg Press Calves
Stiff Leg Deads
Back Squat
Decline Situps

I’m going to agree with Scott here. My training until recently consisted almost entirely of overhead presses, horizontal presses, rows, deadlifts and squats. And I build a pretty good base this way (~2.9 pounds of lean mass per inch of height). The problem? My arms are pathetic. They measure a pitiful 15 and a quarter inches flexed and cold and nearly all of that mass is tricep. I flex and there’s hardly any bicep. Maybe some people can build great arms using only compounds, but it’s certainly not the case for me.

Heavy weighted chins put more arm muscle on me then curling ever did. I have bigger fish to fry but if you have time 2-3 sets of preacher or standing bb curls can only help.

Umm. Im sorry, arent you like 160 lbs and a sophomore in high school? How much arm muscle do you have?[/quote]

it’s pretty crazy when you where 120 pounds once.

hell you’ve been training for 3 years and weigh 190 pounds. Are we supposed to be in awe of you?
lifts #s please?

22

[quote]zephead4747 wrote:

Heavy weighted chins put more arm muscle on me then curling ever did. I have bigger fish to fry but if you have time 2-3 sets of preacher or standing bb curls can only help.[/quote]

And that’s fine if you found that out for your arms, but the majority of the people the majority of the time need to train their biceps directly. I’d go so far as saying if your biceps are growing significantly from chins then you are robbing your back of growth.

Who doesn’t have time for 2-3 sets of curls though? haha, this is what bugs me. If the OP had said “Hey guys I’m working 50 hours a week, part time student with a family I need the most bang for my buck 30-40 minute 3 times a week workouts I can get”, or something along those lines then this would be a different conversation.

The poster above(sorry can’t see your name right now) said he went down the no arm training route and is now playing catch up, this doesn’t really sound like it would make our OP happy.

23

[quote]Scott M wrote:
zephead4747 wrote:

Heavy weighted chins put more arm muscle on me then curling ever did. I have bigger fish to fry but if you have time 2-3 sets of preacher or standing bb curls can only help.

And that’s fine if you found that out for your arms, but the majority of the people the majority of the time need to train their biceps directly. I’d go so far as saying if your biceps are growing significantly from chins then you are robbing your back of growth.

Who doesn’t have time for 2-3 sets of curls though? haha, this is what bugs me. If the OP had said “Hey guys I’m working 50 hours a week, part time student with a family I need the most bang for my buck 30-40 minute 3 times a week workouts I can get”, or something along those lines then this would be a different conversation.

The poster above(sorry can’t see your name right now) said he went down the no arm training route and is now playing catch up, this doesn’t really sound like it would make our OP happy. [/quote]

Yeah, I can agree with that, but my workout partners tend to be extremely slow. What would be a 40 minute workout alonecan be a 70 -80+ minute workout with my friends.

and other then that I compete in powerlifing, and I don’t see much carryover from curling to my competition lifts :(.

Don’t get me wrong, I will probably start doing curls again when it gets closer to summer to pretty myself up for the girls. and I’ll probably end up doing cardio BLEH.

24

I’ve gotta agree with Scott as well (beat me to it). I’m all for doing the heavy compound movements, but to suggest that avoiding direct work for biceps is going to make them grow faster is certainly questionable. Like was said before, where is the evidence to support this statement?

Also, sphaw, did this statement really make sense to you while you were writing it?

Name for me one other muscle group that this applies to. Do you also believe that the less you train your chest the more it grows? How about your legs? Back? Anything else?

If you follow that line of reasoning to it’s logical end, then why not just not train at all, that should produce the fastest results possible.

I actually think someone did try to make that argument, Mike Mentzer. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone agrees that he had pretty much gone off the deep end by the time he made that statement.

Once again, I’m not saying that someone shouldn’t do weighted chins, rows, deads, and other pulling exercises. But if one wants their biceps to reach their potential, they’re most likely going to need to do direct bicep work.

Zep,

The thing you need to remember is that your goals are not the same as Houston Texan’s. You are a powerlifter, and therefore your goal is to lift the most amount of weight possible. Like you said, doing isolation work for your biceps probably isn’t going to make or break your total. So, it would be a, I hesistate to say waste so I’ll say unwise, use of your energy.

But the OP is interested specifically in lifting for aesthetic reasons. So giving him advice that pertains to a powerlifter might not be the best course of action.

Like Scott said, if you’ve found that you don’t need direct arm work to reach your goals then more power to you. But telling others that they don’t either, especially when they have different goals than you might not be all that wise.

Just something to think about.

25

[quote]sphaw wrote:
Dude… you can’t compare a 17 year old with a bodybuilder. Are you REALLY saying that a 17 year old kid will benifit more from doing bicep isolation work than sticking to compound movements? If you are, i hope you’re not serious.

A professional bodybuilder, or an amateur for that matter who’s been training for years can of course mix things up, but for a complete newbie, there is no point. The best is naturally a combination of both, but in this case, yes, i truly believe what i said.[/quote]

No reason to AVOID direct work or why the compound work he should be doing should crowd it out entirely. Which is what you implied.

26

[quote]zephead4747 wrote:

it’s pretty crazy when you where 120 pounds once.

hell you’ve been training for 3 years and weigh 190 pounds. Are we supposed to be in awe of you?
lifts #s please?[/quote]

Holy shit, you hit puberty and gained 30 lbs!!

Well, I started out at 8 lbs, 4 oz. Iv gained 182 lbs!!!

Seriously. Iv been training since I was 17 and I stopped growing at 14. I was 140 lbs when I started and was recovering from a condition in which I did not eat. Am I a superheavyweight anything? No. Have I been around this longer than you? Yes. You are in no position to give advice or criticize anyone…maybe except for the freshman at your school, but Im tired of seeing you whine about them on here too.

How big are those giant arms youve built with just chins? 13 inches? How about your oversized traps? How are those doing? So far it seems like the only thing youve managed to build in the gym is your ego.

I do have to applaud your awesome 300 lb total though!

27

[quote]Stronghold wrote:
zephead4747 wrote:

it’s pretty crazy when you where 120 pounds once.

hell you’ve been training for 3 years and weigh 190 pounds. Are we supposed to be in awe of you?
lifts #s please?

Holy shit, you hit puberty and gained 30 lbs!!

Well, I started out at 8 lbs, 4 oz. Iv gained 182 lbs!!!

Seriously. Iv been training since I was 17 and I stopped growing at 14. I was 140 lbs when I started and was recovering from a condition in which I did not eat. Am I a superheavyweight anything? No. Have I been around this longer than you? Yes. You are in no position to give advice or criticize anyone…maybe except for the freshman at your school, but Im tired of seeing you whine about them on here too.

How big are those giant arms youve built with just chins? 13 inches? How about your oversized traps? How are those doing? So far it seems like the only thing youve managed to build in the gym is your ego.

I do have to applaud your awesome 300 lb total though![/quote]

I have to agree.

A couple of observations…the Op says his arms are above average for a 17 year old at only 15". High school apparently isn’t producing any future pro football players anymore, huh? I started lifting because my arms were ONLY 15". Now that’s a final destination for some people. All I really see is people trying to avoid hard work by making goals so minimal that they think it takes less effort to achieve.

If you want good overall development, TRAIN EVERYTHING DIRECTLY AND INDIRECTLY.

What the hell is the problem with people that they now think training biceps directly should be avoided? Who claims they don’t have time to train certain muscles directly?

When did it become fashionable to avoid training everything?

If your biceps are growing that well from back training, I would check your back training. The muscle growing the most SHOULD BE YOUR FUCKING BACK.

28

[quote]Professor X wrote:

If your biceps are growing that well from back training, I would check your back training. The muscle growing the most SHOULD BE YOUR FUCKING BACK.[/quote]

That’s always been my feeling as well. If “back” exercises are building your arms that much, I’d suspect that your back probably isn’t growing at the rate it should be.

In fact I was taught (and still see the majority of pros writing articles saying) that you should try to limit the amount of work that your arm flexors do on pulling exercises as much as possible. Things like “pull with the elbows” or “think of the arms as just hooks to hold the weight” are coaching tips to help make sure that the back muscles are doing the work, not the arm flexors.

I’m not (nor do I think X is as well) saying that pulling exercises won’t result in some indirect bicep stimulus, but using them as your only bicep mass building exercises is going to limit your progress (unless you’ve got fantastic arm genetics, and even then it’s debatable).

29

Read my post guys I said to do your chins and to throw in curls if it was good to you. It wasn’t really an extreme statement.

Yeah, I never really get a “pump” from doing chins. I switched from pullups to chinups after reading an article on here about how the chinup is superior. I also have rows and olympic lifting in my routine, So I would think my back is getting enough stimulus to grow. Any bicep/back imbalence I have is from being a bench and curls doufus for my first few months lifting.

I also said that in an upper/lower routine. The movements I see freqently as fluff are bis or tris and calves, and I totally agree with that.

Stronghold did you look up my stats? I found that funny because on my first meet I missed all my attempts except my dead attempts haha. I ended up with a 330 dead and a 330 total. My coach made me stop cutting so I ended up lifting at 165 @155.

30

[quote]zephead4747 wrote:

Stronghold did you look up my stats? I found that funny because on my first meet I missed all my attempts except my dead attempts haha. I ended up with a 330 dead and a 330 total. My coach made me stop cutting so I ended up lifting at 165 @155.[/quote]

I didnt look up your stats, I remembered all of the dumb ass threads you started when you got here and the fact that you have your 160 lb ass deadlifting 300 lbs in your avatar and I remembered you saying that you nearly bombed out of your meet.

31

[quote]Stronghold wrote:
zephead4747 wrote:

Stronghold did you look up my stats? I found that funny because on my first meet I missed all my attempts except my dead attempts haha. I ended up with a 330 dead and a 330 total. My coach made me stop cutting so I ended up lifting at 165 @155.

I didnt look up your stats, I remembered all of the dumb ass threads you started when you got here and the fact that you have your 160 lb ass deadlifting 300 lbs in your avatar and I remembered you saying that you nearly bombed out of your meet.[/quote]

there’s 3plates+ on each side of the bar. Learn to count. Unlike some of the new posters here I actually tried the search engine here when I had questions, sadly most of the results were unrelated. live and learn I guess. yet again, take it to my log so we stop cluttering other’s threads.