Before you turbo a car, it helps to blueprint the engine to racing specs first.
As people age, all systems must be brought up to beyond par. Cardio / stretching / etc.
“Slingshot” mental approach helps e.g. “I will, on August 1st, follow this plan.”
(Failing to plan = planning to fail)
When asked after his last wrestling match, whether he would return, Aleksandr Karelin replied that the preparations would be too involved. [to warrant returning]. He did not say impossible.
Just as many lifters get a 300 bench by focusing on tissue building, incremental increases, and forgetting about “300…300…300…”, Ivan Abadjiev a successful coach would tell his lifters, ~‘one kilogram more next workout, than this workout, than last workout’, ‘slow and steady, that’s how we do it’, 'you can do that." He’d convince the lifter that it was possible, and Then that the lifter “must”.
Working the muscle through a fully stretched position yields slabs on the same when it’s returned to its normal resting position.
You will most likely get a 2 inch gain, by aiming for a 3 inch gain.
When I asked Bill Grant what the single most important variable/factor was that allowed him to achieve his monster arms, he said that it was supersetting biceps with triceps.
This forces the outermost fascia to stretch instead of staying the same circumference while the humerus moves up or down away from one pumped muscle belly to the unpumped.
1.4 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day without fail.
A side effect of living hell 20 rep breathing squats* is that you can train one other body part hard along with that regimen and the smaller body part will be swept along upward, with your legs. 3 breaths per rep 1-5, 3 breaths per rep 6-10, 5 breaths per rep 11-15, whatever it takes breaths per rep 15-20. ~3 gallons of milk a day goal.
Biceps are not glutes, do not overtrain. Charles Glass had an extremely effective seven set* bicep routine of: ( **at least one warmup set per exercise - do half the weight, double the reps. Consider preceding that with 1/4 the weight for 4 times the reps.)
Wide grip preachers - 2 sets 6-8 reps,
Narrow grip preachers - 2 sets 6-8 reps,
Flat bench curls 2 sets 6-8 reps, (on a raised horizontal bench, lie on your back, facing the ceiling, head touching bench and upper arms hanging vertically downward. Do Not allow the elbows to move forward. [ This is as dangerous an exercise as it is effective…You Must first attain the flexibility using seemingly ridiculously light weight. E.g. try 2 1/2 pound plate in each hand. High reps, light weight, gently increasing the stretch.]
By doing these curls with the elbows kept back, you’ll work the belly of the biceps toward the origin end. If you cheat, you will temporarily get to use weight for your ego while overtraining the insertion end of the belly which was trained by the earlier preacher sets. Intelligent lazy people know that it’s Easier in the long run to train strictly.
Last: one set of Concentration curls, 8-10 reps, to contractilly “smash” the pumped tissues into a peak, so to speak. Think of the muscle as parallel spaghetti, you must first work it at either end, stretch and work its length, then, “push” the parallel fibers into as high a peak as possible. Contract your triceps at the bottom of every rep. Concentration curls do not so much add clay, as they do allow you to peak it.
Triceps = pullover press 4 sets: 9 x X, 9 x X+5lb, 2 sets 7-9 with X+10lb,
(IMO kickbacks if you must = one set at the end.
Hope this pisses a lot of people off *
*just kidding
