Hey guys. I am kina imbalanced. I have 35" unflexed thighs, 12" unflexed arms. basically my lower body is much better developed than my upper body. The difference is less apparent than 1 year ago, but it is still clearly noticable.
So I got a nutty idea this morning. Maybe I can use lower body power to correct the imbalance. Any ideas? The only things I thought of so far:
Push Press
Clean
Olympic Lifts
I already do a little bit of each of the above, but perhaps I should focus more on the above exercises? Or Maybe I am just being silly.
BTW. Currently I perform 2 upper body sessions for every lower body session. And my lower body training is in the 1-4 range, while my upper body training is all over the place (undulation periodization), but never lower than 5 reps.
That is an extreme imbalance, but I bet a good portion of your leg mass is fat. And as for your idea of using your legs to strengthen your upper body, mmm dont think it will really work too well. What you would be talking about is explosive squat press type exercises and the like. Well any weight that you would use that would be heavy in those type of movements would have to be sufficiently accelerated (speed of light), to allow your comparitively im guessing (weak) arms to press the weight, which would result in them getting the same workload if not less than would be placed on your arms during military presses.
Your arms basically have to apply the force to either A) keep the weight moving at the same rate (or moving period) as your legs accelerated it or B) move it faster. Well with your arms you would be lucky to keep a heavy weight moving until lockout. Not saying it couldnt help at all, but I dont see leg driven movements that incorporate the upper body helping you or your physique more than anyone else, with any other type of physique…
That was a typo. I have 25" thighs. Sorry fo the confusion.[/quote]
Damn it. I was hoping to see a genuine freak.
As for your arms… go heavy on upper body exercises. Push press isn’t a bad idea, just make sure to take advantage of the negative by exerting full control there. Gives you the best of both worlds; power it up, take it slow on the way down. That should hit your shoulders and tris in an impressive manner.
For developing decent arm thickness, I’ve found that old-fashioned chin-ups do the trick. Palms facing you. Add weight either from a dipping belt or by clutching a dumbbell between your ankles. The dipping belt is preferred… that way when you start to wear down, you can just give a little jump to ‘cheat’ it, and then hang on as long as you can for that extra murderous burn.
Arms are like anything else: hit them hard to make them grow. (Taking it with a grain of salt: before I injured my shoulders, my arms weren’t that far over 17". I’m sure the real big guns have better advice.)