I really don’t see anything wrong with doing an arms speclization phase, I have personally found optimal frequency to be about once every 5 days but everyone is a little different. I just started training at Westside Barbell here in Columbus and those guys hit triceps a minimum of 2x weekly (Sundays and Wednesdays) and it seems to work great for them.
I myself started upping the frequency and have had great results. You need to be cognicant of the overall volume of your program and monitor your recovery but, arms recover quickly and I think you may benefit from a little specilization.
[quote]ds77 wrote:
Wonder if its time for you to switch back to a split routine. Maybe you have been following the TBT routine to long. You are basically now going back to “some” form of a split just by having arm only days…you have to wonder if your body is trying to tell you something.
You might be better off having a “major” body part worked on your arm day as arms are not that demanding…arms are easy to work with another major body part…but it can be difficult to do all major body parts during the same workout; you might be able to spread the TBT over several days rather than one while lowering the daily workout load and upping the volume per workout/body part. Just something to think about; trying to be constructive.[/quote]
Do you even read the fucking posts? He said that he did make progress on the split in some areas but was growing bored of it and he has only been on TBT for a week.
OP, if some parts of your workout routine are working and some parts aren’t, you don’t just overhaul the entire thing and do something totally different.
If you try to, you wind up with stupid ideas like the one you’re trying to pull off right now.
You need to keep what is working, and find out why the rest of the program wasn’t.
You made the mistake of completely overhauling to a program that isn’t very forgiving of extra arm training.
WHY wasn’t your previous program working?
I had editted my previous post but I guess that didn’t show up for some reason.
If that picture of you is current it doesn’t look like your arms are lagging at all. It looks like EVERYTHING needs more size. Consequently a thread like this is a big red flag to a lot of people because you come off as the type of person who just wants big arms and a six pack, and that isn’t what this site is about.
Well it disapoints me you would say that. I don’t like the way I can’t want to bring up my arms without being accused of only being concerned about the ‘beach muscles’ what’s up with that? Do you not think that by doing a TBT program that I am trying to grow overall?
I know I need to add mass generally but I dare say that is the goal of the majority of people on these forums. I personally feel my arms need extra work, I WANT to bring them up and I don’t feel that they are being sufficiently challenged by my main program alone…So what’s the issue?
[quote]MagicJohnson85 wrote:
Well it disapoints me you would say that. I don’t like the way I can’t want to bring up my arms without being accused of only being concerned about the ‘beach muscles’ what’s up with that? Do you not think that by doing a TBT program that I am trying to grow overall? I know I need to add mass generally but I dare say that is the goal of the majority of people on these forums. I personally feel my arms need extra work, I WANT to bring them up and I don’t feel that they are being sufficiently challenged by my main program alone…So what’s the issue?[/quote]
Ok, to get back on track:
Try out adding one direct BI and one direct TRI exercise to the end of your total body sessions and see how it goes…
I’d use three different exercises and rotate through them over the course of the week. If you use the same each workout, you’ll stagnate very fast.
What set/rep scheme do you want to use for your additional arm work ?
Note: Do some direct forearm stuff perhaps, those look a little thin in comparison.
You could do reverse-grip EZ Curls, Pinwheel curls or Hammer Curls (maybe incline) instead of regular bicep work if you don’t want to add a third arm exercise to each workout…
If you use a 2 warmups and one set to screaming failure approach on these additional exercises, you shouldn’t need much extra time… Wouldn’t do forced reps/rest-pause at the end as that’ll likely be too much on a 3/week schedule…
The 5 days a week tbt+arm days thing…
Could work for a while, but that may make it real difficult to continually increase the weight/reps of your arm exercises and will definitely cut into your recovery, so that you’ll need to take time off or de-load earlier than otherwise necessary.
Or maybe do an upper/lower or just any 2-way split 4 or 3 days a week ?
Best of both worlds I’d say.
[quote]MagicJohnson85 wrote:
Well it disapoints me you would say that. I don’t like the way I can’t want to bring up my arms without being accused of only being concerned about the ‘beach muscles’ what’s up with that? Do you not think that by doing a TBT program that I am trying to grow overall? I know I need to add mass generally but I dare say that is the goal of the majority of people on these forums. I personally feel my arms need extra work, I WANT to bring them up and I don’t feel that they are being sufficiently challenged by my main program alone…So what’s the issue?[/quote]
It’s hard to post anything around here before someone starts flaming you. I don’t care what anyone says, a few complex exercises are not enough for arms, just like squats are never gonna completely blast your calves.
Why is it okay to want to build your back, chest and thighs, but nothing else? “Oh, arms will grow with everything else”… No they won’t, they’ll grow, but they won’t keep up.
I think I may be the first person to read your original post (okay, maybe third or fourth), so here it goes.
I would highly recommend NOT taking a separate day for arms. From my own personal experience, I find that my arms grow with high volume, but still good amounts of rest.
This is what I would do if I could keep a consistent schedule of monday, wednesday, friday. I would throw arms in my monday and friday exercises, doing something like 4-5 sets of 8-10 for each. I would also take a week off every 6-8 weeks. This just seems to work for my arms.
I’ve also had success with doing sets of 15 (dips and tricep pushups), arms just seem to do alot better with lots of volume in my experience.
[quote]jimmyjamesii wrote:
I don’t care what anyone says, a few complex exercises are not enough for arms, just like squats are never gonna completely blast your calves.
Why is it okay to want to build your back, chest and thighs, but nothing else? “Oh, arms will grow with everything else”… No they won’t, they’ll grow, but they won’t keep up.
[/quote]
Even if they grow along, they never seem to look as impressive as those of someone who trains them directly (and properly so).
[quote]MagicJohnson85 wrote:
Well it disapoints me you would say that. I don’t like the way I can’t want to bring up my arms without being accused of only being concerned about the ‘beach muscles’ what’s up with that? Do you not think that by doing a TBT program that I am trying to grow overall?
I know I need to add mass generally but I dare say that is the goal of the majority of people on these forums. I personally feel my arms need extra work, I WANT to bring them up and I don’t feel that they are being sufficiently challenged by my main program alone…So what’s the issue?[/quote]
The issue comes up because I ask you WHY you think your arms are lagging… and you can only tell me that you “WANT to bring them up”. Well no shit.
TBT programs don’t allow a person to focus very intensely on any particular part of the body, so the fact that you chose to do that but still wanted to do excessive arm training on top of it… yes, it makes you look like a weenie.
If you really want to be able to focus on individual bodyparts like that, stop doing “full body training” and figure out an intelligent split that fits your goals.
Well surely its obvious why I think they are lagging, if you really want me to spell it out for you then I’ll happily oblige. I think they are slightly disproportionate in terms of size to the rest of my body. No shit.
I would have hoped you’d be able to gather that from the content of my original post but obviously not… Hope it’s clear now.
I’m slightly bemused by your accusation that I’m a ‘weenie’ simply because I’m thinking of adding an extra arm day seeing as they are not being directly trained in the core program. If thats your opinion then fine, but perhaps you’d like on elaborate on exactly why I look like what you call a ‘weenie’.
You may have also noticed that my original enquiry was not whether I should do full body or a spilt, but that I AM doing a TBT program at the moment and was simply asking how to train arms effectively within the context of this program.
To those that have offered constructive advice, thank you. I will consider adding in arm training at the end of my regular training days. If doing this I think I would superset the Bench/Rows and Presses/Dips in order to make sure I’m not spending an excessive amount of time on one workout.
It wouldn’t be bad to add a seperate arms session in the evening 1-2x weekly on your training days spaced 6hrs after your am session. 2 ways you might set it up are:
To the guy talking about “overtraining”…do you honestly think that he is going to become systemically overtrained from doing a few extra sets of isolation movements for his arms?
You cant “overtrain” a bodypart and you certainly arent going to do enough damage as to overreach your recovery ability by adding a few isolation exercises twice a week.
[quote]Stronghold wrote:
To the guy talking about “overtraining”…do you honestly think that he is going to become systemically overtrained from doing a few extra sets of isolation movements for his arms?
You cant “overtrain” a bodypart and you certainly arent going to do enough damage as to overreach your recovery ability by adding a few isolation exercises twice a week.[/quote]
I think this is directed at me, so…
No, not if he hits arms at the end of his workouts and still allows the off days to be just that, for recovery.
The problem isn’t adding a few isolation exercises here and there, it’s adding them in on days meant for recovery. And yes you can overtrain a bodypart, not in the normal CNS-fatigue context of “overtraining” (which is where I think you misunderstood what I’m trying to say) - but let me explain. If you train triceps hard 5 days straight, week in, week out, you are going to be inducing more microtrauma to the muscle than it can fully recover from, at least intitially. Therefore, your triceps training will suffer because of the lack of recovery time, so you’ll more or less be spinning your wheels in the gym.
Now, eventually your body will adapt to a degree to training tris every day, but at what cost? You would have made better progress allowing recovery time. If you could train arms every day with no negative effects, don’t you thik someone would have figured it out by now?
I mean, look at what he wants to do. Bench and dips M W F, and isolate tris on T and TH? You really think he won’t be overtraining his tris? I do.
[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:
ds77 wrote:
Wonder if its time for you to switch back to a split routine. Maybe you have been following the TBT routine to long. You are basically now going back to “some” form of a split just by having arm only days…you have to wonder if your body is trying to tell you something.
You might be better off having a “major” body part worked on your arm day as arms are not that demanding…arms are easy to work with another major body part…but it can be difficult to do all major body parts during the same workout; you might be able to spread the TBT over several days rather than one while lowering the daily workout load and upping the volume per workout/body part. Just something to think about; trying to be constructive.
Do you even read the fucking posts? He said that he did make progress on the split in some areas but was growing bored of it and he has only been on TBT for a week.[/quote]
i missed op had only been doing TBT for a week.
To op, it seems to me that your not giving the routine a chance…you have only been doing it for a week. Your saying that the old split was doing great for your arms; but the rest of your body was lagging behind.
It just seems like your putting a big emphasis on your arms which are not your problem…the emphasis needs to be on your other body parts that are lagging…in 6 or 8 weeks if your arms are lagging behind your other body parts, then change or add an arm day. You really have not even given this program a chance yet.
This is stupid. Some of the best progress on my back came from us doing sets of pull ups just about every time we trained no matter what else we were training that day. According to some here, I should have “overtrained” and all progress should have come to a stop.
How many people here who cry about overtraining this much have actually gained significant amounts of muscle mass (as in, you are now pretty big when compared to OTHER WEIGHT LIFTERS) and also experienced being severely overtrained?
Why does it seem like it is usually the smaller guys who worry about this?
Unless you are simply doing something stupid like lifting for 5 hours a day, I think some of you underestimate your own body’s recovery ability as well as the importance of diet and sleep to allow you to deal with more training.
If you are eating so few calories due some fear of fat gain that training arms twice a week will destroy all progress, you may want to quit approaching this like a little girl and eat to grow.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
This is stupid. Some of the best progress on my back came from us doing sets of pull ups just about every time we trained no matter what else we were training that day. According to some here, I should have “overtrained” and all progress should have come to a stop.
How many people here who cry about overtraining this much have actually gained significant amounts of muscle mass (as in, you are now pretty big when compared to OTHER WEIGHT LIFTERS) and also experienced being severely overtrained?
Why does it seem like it is usually the smaller guys who worry about this?
Unless you are simply doing something stupid like lifting for 5 hours a day, I think some of you underestimate your own body’s recovery ability as well as the importance of diet and sleep to allow you to deal with more training.
If you are eating so few calories due some fear of fat gain that training arms twice a week will destroy all progress, you may want to quit approaching this like a little girl and eat to grow.[/quote]
I believe if some people were to eat more (even if they are already eating to bulk), they would be able to train harder and find out just how far they can go without overtraining.