Hey Coach Thib , I want to say that I love you and I’ve learnt so much from you by just seeing your videos on youtube and reading your articles on T Nation. I understand everything you say on different strategies for Long limbs and short limbs , on Natural training and on Easy-hard gainers! I’m a tall guy 6’2 and weigh about 190 pounds. I’ve build my muscle mass mostly from heavy and intense training. Strength = size is 100% for me. High volume light work with higher reps never worked for me, everytime I did higher reps I just faded away and I looked flat.
My question to you is how to train my weak arms ?? I’m a As I’m a tall natural lifter and you’ve mentioned that Taller lifters should train arms directly and often but train them with higher reps and isolate them. But as I am a easy-hard gainer and I’ve to train heavy and hard in the 4-8 rep range, then how light weights higher reps gonna give me that growth in my arms ?? I’ve been confused so many times on this thing that how to train my arms as I’m an easy-hardgainer!
I will be a disappointment in that I can’t give you what you want: a solution to get big arms right now.
Or rather, I can tell you what you need to do but you won’t like it.
FIRST a dose of reality: we all have muscles that are extremely hard to develop. I personally still have a poor chest and lats development even with all the years and all that I know. They are better than they were, but they are still lagging behind my stronger muscles.
The fact is that most long-limbed individuals will have a very hard time building big arms (without using drugs).
There is just no magic formula in that case.
I’ll give you the example of a friend of mine (ironically, he actually posted this on his facebook page today, weird timing).
He is 6’5" and was very skinny, especially skinny arms.
He actually developed legit 18.75" LEAN arms (gaining over 6") on a height of 6’5" with long arms (former volleyball player).
How did he do it?
By getting strong as hell overall. Not only on the big basic lifts, on which he is super strong, like 200kg bench, 200kg front squat, 230kg zercher and back squat but on every movements… for example he can do strict barbell curls with 75kg for 8-10 reps.
By gaining 80lb/36kg of body weight (he started out VERY skinny)
It took him YEARS of training hard and heavy and eating a surplus to increase his body weight.
Not everybody needs to significantly increase their body weight to get bigger arms. People with shorter limbs can build big arms much easier. But for tall and long-limbed individuals, you need to increase your overall body weight a lot to get bigger arms. And you need to do it slowly to avoid getting too fat. That’s why it’s a multi-year process.
My friend needed to gain around 7kg of body weight for each 1" increase in arm size. And he is lean, so that 7kg was likely mostly muscle mass. Maybe you’ll need only 5 because he is 1.96m. But you get the idea.
So my recommendations, which you will not like, are:
Lift heavy for arms too, but without losing the mind-muscle connection. If you go too heavy on more isolated movements you start to compensate and lose the feel for the muscle. So go as heavy as you can, without losing the feeling, for sets of 6-8 reps
Include arm work 3x a week on non-consecutive days.
Hey coach, you’re actually the only guy I like in this industry. I wait for your videos on YouTube more than I’ve ever waited for anything (Your videos are like a present to me). As you were talking about your friend above I thought you were talking about me because that’s the exact same case with me. I’m an easy-hard gainer and i always love to live in the 4-10 rep range because it works for me. Whenever I put on 4-5 kgs of bodyweight, my arms grows by almost an inch. And also when I see progress on compound exercises as well as on single joint movements I see growth in my arms so these two things are very similar to me (Maybe I should take your friend for a coffee someday haha). Hey man you’re one of a kind and I’ve learnt and still learning so much from you (I love your Accent too). You’ve made me a better coach and also a better thinker. I’ve watched all your podcasts and the one with Fouad Abiad where you said this line " Always learn from the one who have different opinion than you" this was one heck of an inspiration to learn more and more.
That shows you haven’t read every article of Coach Thib. I guess in 2005 Thib published an article on every type of Gainers( including easy gainers , hard gainers and Easy-hardgainers). Easy-hard gainers are those who are blessed with very high ratio of Fast-twich fibers that means they can gain pretty good amount of muscle on a strength and power program and they don’t need long sets of time under tension because their fibres starts firing from the first rep because of their high Type 2 fibre ratio. Whereas they have a very high metabolism like the same case with the Hardgainers. Main difference is that Hardgainers have high amount of Slow twitch fibers so they’ve less potential for growth but in the case with Easy-hard gainers they’re blessed with the high amount of Type2 muscle fibres and can build huge amount of muscle only if they have a good high caloric diet. I’m an Easy-hardgainer because I gain muscle mass quickly by doing anything under 10 reps but I know without my diet I’m nothing because of my high metabolic rate. The top athletes like Boxers and sprinters (those atheletes who are in those sports where power and explosiveness are the most important thing) that’s why Sprinters are super jacked as well as boxers. However they do train mostly 3× week workout to increase their power and explosiveness.