Layer System and Arm Size

Hey CT,

A little background before going into the question. 16 days ago started Muscle Gaining Phase, and started using PLAZMA along with your Layer System layout. I was fairly carb depleted as I was coming off a leaning down phase. I was 183lbs at the beginning. Currently I’m at 198-199 after ~16 days or so.

Had a question regarding arm work. Only tricep work I am getting is during the pin presses for incline and decline tilt days. Then I do 3-4 sets of bi’s once a week. Is this enough for arms to grow? After adding 16lbs, I expected some change in arm size, but I sit at 16" since 2 weeks now lol. Everything else has increased quite a bit, but not arms.

So do you think perhaps 2 weeks is too short of a time to assess whether I am getting enough arm stimulation from the pin presses? And keep going as is with no direct tricep work? Thanks for any advice. 16" arms with 14" forearms! Haha the proportions are way off for a 6 foot guy.

@Bassip: Good question, maybe CT will paste a 4 week Arm Spec into The Layers for the arm growth taskforce team and lower the volume of the normal Layer week.

[quote]brandon76 wrote:
@Bassip: Good question, your maybe CT will paste a 4 week Arm Spec into The Layers for the arm growth taskforce team and lower the volume of the normal Layer week. [/quote]

No I wont. I think that it is dumb to reduce the amount of the overall most effective work to focus on something that is about 5% of your muscle mass.

Keep in mind that the biceps are a small muscle group… biceps are about 1/3rd of the upper arm muscle size, and bone take up some space too. So if you have 16" arms the biceps itself might contribute for 5 inches or so… if you gain 10% in your biceps size it means about 1/4 to 1/6 of an inch… not something that is really measurable. So you might have improved your biceps to the same relative extent as other muscle groups, but it is just not as easily measurable.

Aloha bassip,

I posted in the spill a few weeks back about an athlete I have in my gym who was stuck on his Bench. I put him on CT’s layering system for his bench. Because of his schedule he was unable to train his arms for about a month. The one day he did his Triceps he realized he had added 30lbs to his Skull Crushers.

Also, the other day he mentioned he did some Bicep work and was adding weight to those lifts when he had not been directly training them.

It seems that doing the Layering System indirectly works those smaller muscle groups. :slight_smile:

A hui ho.

Thanks CT. What you say makes sense. I will keep up with pin presses and as I get stronger, hopefully tris will improve.