[quote]sasquatch wrote:
Tiribulus wrote:
Everybody who does direct arm work suffers testicular atrophy and winds up with a voice like Jennifer Tilly. Oh yeah, their arms get smaller and weaker too.
I was beginning to worry. It’s a been a little while since this came up.
Has this come up before!?
It’s amazing that you can leave here for months and come back to the same nonsense.
Especially the people who honestly believe that an arm workout or direct arm exercises are a ‘waste of time.’
Anywho…time to go shrink my nuts[/quote]
Hey big guy. I was wondering if you were going to drop back in. You missed all the hooplah.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Kailash wrote:
Fenris wrote:
In short, my theory is that cycling direct arm work in and out of your program is probably good for someone not juicing. If you’re training hard enough on the core lifts, constant direct arm may just cause problems. However, neglecting direct arm work altogether won’t let your arms reach their full potential.
I agree, because last year I had the same experience as you. Over a period of 6 months my arms went from 15 to 16", by going from a bodybuilding routine to compound movements only, then back to the bb routine. In fact, I put on a lot of mass overall, but the arms grew most dramatically during that time.
Variety is more than just the spice, when it comes to changing the body.
I do not agree because I have been doing direct work for bis, tris and forearms for the past 14 months and all three have grown dramatically.
Look, I’m not going to be the one to tell somebody something didn’t happen to them, but it’s tough to believe that working your arms by itself made them either stop growing or smaller unless you were grossly overtraining them or not eating enough in which case nothing else would grow either.
[/quote]
This is the only place I have ever heard of someone training something…and it got smaller. How fucked up must your training be as a whole to be taking you backwards? And they blame a specific exercise for that? WTF?
I’m also not grasping the “can’t flex bone” thing. Again, if this simply means the guy is small, how is some iso work along with his compound based routine going to do anything except help? How is his non flexible-ness usable for rows and presses, but not pushdowns, curls or lateral raises?
Maybe I misunderstood altogether.
[/quote]
I think maybe what Tate is saying - at least what I get from it - is that you have to have, at the very least, some some flexible mass before you can effectively use isolation exercises.
If you weigh 135 - I think it is a waste of time and effort to have an arm day.
My son weighs 170 - and I have yet to allow him an arm day. His training is the big three with a few isolation exercises thrown in for fun.
I won’t say that I am against all isolation exercises - but If you are 135 - you don’t need a fucking arm day.
Maybe I am against dedicated isolation days when you are a young trainee - but not so much against isolation exercises in the big picture.
Not that it was stated on this thread, but some anti-direct-arm-guys often argue that having an entire “arm day” where you blitz them with 16 sets of 15 reps is not the most productive because you could have been working your back with rows instead.
What I want to know is where does it say that doing some isolation work for your arms means that you have to dedicate an entire day to that muscle? It’s like the thought of adding 3-5 sets of biceps after a back workout never crossed their minds.
I have done direct arm work ever since I started. My personal trainer made me a plan based on the fact that I said I will train as long as it takes for optimal results. He put me on a 5 day split and I gained the newbie gains no problem.
I’ve tried TBT stuff later on but I am very happy I got pushed into direct stuff from the start and came back to splits every time. Why would people avoid direct work for any body part, especially for optimal growth?
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Tiribulus wrote:
Kailash wrote:
Fenris wrote:
In short, my theory is that cycling direct arm work in and out of your program is probably good for someone not juicing. If you’re training hard enough on the core lifts, constant direct arm may just cause problems. However, neglecting direct arm work altogether won’t let your arms reach their full potential.
I agree, because last year I had the same experience as you. Over a period of 6 months my arms went from 15 to 16", by going from a bodybuilding routine to compound movements only, then back to the bb routine. In fact, I put on a lot of mass overall, but the arms grew most dramatically during that time.
Variety is more than just the spice, when it comes to changing the body.
I do not agree because I have been doing direct work for bis, tris and forearms for the past 14 months and all three have grown dramatically.
Look, I’m not going to be the one to tell somebody something didn’t happen to them, but it’s tough to believe that working your arms by itself made them either stop growing or smaller unless you were grossly overtraining them or not eating enough in which case nothing else would grow either.
This is the only place I have ever heard of someone training something…and it got smaller. How fucked up must your training be as a whole to be taking you backwards? And they blame a specific exercise for that? WTF?[/quote]
I agree. You seriously must be stupid about your training to hurt the growth of the muscle by training it. If you work your arms once a week with about 3 or 4 exercises for biceps and triceps and something for forearms you should be fine. Keep in mind that they are small muscle groups and need less sets than other groups like back or legs.
But, there is absolutely no reason why you should have to cycle direct arm work in and out of your routine to keep them growing. That has got to be one of the most ignorant things I have ever heard.
If its hypertrophy you want, then hit them for sure. Performance wise I don’t think its needed at all. It’s not going to contribute to you chinups performance, but maybe even slow down your gains there(depending on your recovery).
The little muscles can recover quicker than the bigger ones, so it makes sense to do extra arm workouts. They also fatigue quicker, so less sets than what you would do for legs.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
No one says it better than Dave Tate:
[b]If you can’t flex it then DON’T ISOLATE IT.
You need to have control of your body if you’re going to do isolation movements. If I asked you to flex your pecs, it’d probably be easy. You can make those boobies bounce with pride. Now what if I asked you to do the same with your triceps, delts, hamstrings, or lats?
If you can’t, why in the hell are you doing tight isolation bodybuilding cable work? Hmm… never thought of that one, did you? Stick with the presses and rows and build muscle first. You can’t flex bone.[/b]
[/quote]
I have an opposite approach to this. If you cant flex your glutes properly, you probably need to wake them up with some isolation exercises before they can be integrated into a deadlift or squat.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
<<< I won’t say that I am against all isolation exercises - but If you are 135 - you don’t need a fucking arm day.
Maybe I am against dedicated isolation days when you are a young trainee - but not so much against isolation exercises in the big picture. [/quote]
Alright fair enough. There is a difference between an arm day and doing some direct work. I don’t have a dedicated day for arms either not that I’m saying that it isn’t a good idea for more advanced guys.
I work bis and forearms after back and tris after shoulders and chest. I do use single joint isolation movements and plenty hard just not on a day by themselves. Medium volume, 6-8 sets depending a on a few things. I keep telling myself if it stops working I’ll change up, but it doesn’t stop working.
I am no one size fits all type of guy, but I really think this type of plan would be better for a lot of other guys I see here than what they’re doing now which could very well mean this week.
If your goal is to get big, do direct arm work. If you have some sport and “big arms” will hinder you in some way, then you might not want to do direct arm work.
Compared to the rest of my body, my arms seem to grow somewhat fast, to the point it tires me in running, thus I don’t do direct arm work while in season.
However, out of season, direct arm work actually helps my other lifts (bench, rows, etc) because a lot of times I’ll find my triceps to be the sticking point in bench and biceps to be the sticking point in certain rowing movements.
[quote]Andrew Dixon wrote:
It’s not going to contribute to you chinups performance, but maybe even slow down your gains there.
[/quote]
And why would that be?
It is sad that this is now 2 pages long, but strange comments keep getting thrown out there. Why the hell would stronger biceps NOT help with chin ups or anything else that used biceps strength? You really believe that direct biceps work would decrease my ability to lift my own body weight?
[quote]Andrew Dixon wrote:
If its hypertrophy you want, then hit them for sure. Performance wise I don’t think its needed at all. It’s not going to contribute to you chinups performance, but maybe even slow down your gains there(depending on your recovery).
The little muscles can recover quicker than the bigger ones, so it makes sense to do extra arm workouts. They also fatigue quicker, so less sets than what you would do for legs.[/quote]
I’m not even getting into the performance thing with you again, but for myself, for the most part I’m onboard with the rest of your thinking here. I hope I’m not sorry I just said that.
[quote]Andrew Dixon wrote:
I have an opposite approach to this. If you cant flex your glutes properly, you probably need to wake them up with some isolation exercises before they can be integrated into a deadlift or squat.[/quote]
I never thought I’d see the day I’d be defending compound work against isos with you, but I’m NOT onboard with your thinking here. Isolating the glutes isn’t going to hurt your deadlifting, but any exercise that truly does so isn’t going to add enough strength to make any difference for anything approaching heavy deadlifting. The whole chain will equalize fairly quickly with some intelligent progression in my opinion.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Andrew Dixon wrote:
It’s not going to contribute to you chinups performance, but maybe even slow down your gains there.
And why would that be?
It is sad that this is now 2 pages long, but strange comments keep getting thrown out there. Why the hell would stronger biceps NOT help with chin ups or anything else that used biceps strength? You really believe that direct biceps work would decrease my ability to lift my own body weight? [/quote]
Aw man ya had ta do it, LOl. Right when I was so proud of myself for not saying exactly what you just did. LOL.
[quote]itsthetimman wrote:
<<< Compared to the rest of my body, my arms seem to grow somewhat fast, to the point it tires me in running, thus I don’t do direct arm work while in season. >>>[/quote]
Lemme make sure I got this. Your arms grow fast which tires you out for running and consequently dissuades you from working them during your track season? I just wanna make sure I’m properly grasping this.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
itsthetimman wrote:
<<< Compared to the rest of my body, my arms seem to grow somewhat fast, to the point it tires me in running, thus I don’t do direct arm work while in season. >>>
Lemme make sure I got this. Your arms grow fast which tires you out for running and consequently dissuades you from working them during your track season? I just wanna make sure I’m properly grasping this.[/quote]
I’m a distance runner. Now I’m not purely skin and bones like many distance runners, but I’ve realized compared to some other body parts (back/chest), I notice my shoulders get sore and arms get very heavy during races when I do direct arm work. My direct arm days are 12 - 16 sets for both biceps and triceps, in the 6 - 8 rep range.
It’s a simple case of, you do what works for you to become better at your sport.
[quote]itsthetimman wrote:
Tiribulus wrote:
itsthetimman wrote:
<<< Compared to the rest of my body, my arms seem to grow somewhat fast, to the point it tires me in running, thus I don’t do direct arm work while in season. >>>
Lemme make sure I got this. Your arms grow fast which tires you out for running and consequently dissuades you from working them during your track season? I just wanna make sure I’m properly grasping this.
I’m a distance runner. Now I’m not purely skin and bones like many distance runners, but I’ve realized compared to some other body parts (back/chest), I notice my shoulders get sore and arms get very heavy during races when I do direct arm work. My direct arm days are 12 - 16 sets for both biceps and triceps, in the 6 - 8 rep range.
It’s a simple case of, you do what works for you to become better at your sport.
[/quote]
How many miles a week are you logging? That sounds rough; the heavy arms while running thing…
Depends on the time of the year. But during base training and competition, I’m usually between 55 and 80. As I was saying before, I don’t do the direct arm work during competition, it’s just not fun running 10 mile runs with sore shoulders and what feels like 20 lb dum bells in each hand for 70 minutes.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Andrew Dixon wrote:
It’s not going to contribute to you chinups performance, but maybe even slow down your gains there.
And why would that be?
It is sad that this is now 2 pages long, but strange comments keep getting thrown out there. Why the hell would stronger biceps NOT help with chin ups or anything else that used biceps strength? You really believe that direct biceps work would decrease my ability to lift my own body weight? [/quote]
My thoughts on slowing gains were along the lines of fatiguing muscles you need to get better a chinups. If I was trainig for chinup performance I’d limit what I did with my arms so I was fresh for chinups.
Its just a thought. More towards pushing out new personal records in chinups. Probably want to cut out the curls at that stage. Worked for me anyhow.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Andrew Dixon wrote:
I have an opposite approach to this. If you cant flex your glutes properly, you probably need to wake them up with some isolation exercises before they can be integrated into a deadlift or squat.
I never thought I’d see the day I’d be defending compound work against isos with you, but I’m NOT onboard with your thinking here. Isolating the glutes isn’t going to hurt your deadlifting, but any exercise that truly does so isn’t going to add enough strength to make any difference for anything approaching heavy deadlifting. The whole chain will equalize fairly quickly with some intelligent progression in my opinion.
[/quote]
I thiniking more about the wisdom of “if you cant flex it, don’t isolate it”
Sees like a good time to isolate it to get the fucker contracting properly. The glutes are a good example as they often don’t fire properly and hammys do all the work instead.