Small Arms

I have been lifting for about a year now, and so far I have seen great gains in my chest, back, quads, and hamstrings. However I still have not seen anychange in my arms, shoulders, and calfs. I do compound movements, and eat a healthy diet. I was wondering if you guys knew any programs to help balance my body.

[quote]BigWall wrote:
I have been lifting for about a year now, and so far I have seen great gains in my chest, back, quads, and hamstrings. However I still have not seen anychange in my arms, shoulders, and calfs. I do compound movements, and eat a healthy diet. I was wondering if you guys knew any programs to help balance my body.[/quote]

Up the calories, and maybe throw some direct arm work in after your big compound lifts. I find supersetting heavy dips with heavy pull-ups to be one killer upperbody workout, it does a number on the arms aswell.

A few ideas:

  1. Many people seem to get good bicep development from close grip chins (especially with a slow eccentric/lowering portion of the lift). Do a search for ZEB’s great thread “ZEB on Chin Ups”.

  2. The arm is 2/3 tricep so dont neglect them. They are not only important for big arms but also essential for overall strength. The tri-ceps respond well to maximal loading (1-3 reps) so close grips bench presses and even rack lockouts might do the trick.

  3. Some people seem to need some direct arm work whilst other do not. I suspect that many who do not need it, claim that they do. If you do direct arm work keep the volume fairly low.

Hope this helps.

i’d suggest upped protein, increased reps, increased carbs and some isometric workouts wouldn’t kill you.

i’m not sure if i’m burning my bicepts out when i do this but i usually do 15 reps per set and the last heavy set rep out until failure.

Check out The Guide To Massive Arms by Coach Staley. He developed Escalating Density Training (EDT), which is a great system. This should definately help you.

http://www.integratedsportsolutions.com/prod_cat.html

Get Charles Poliquin’s Book Winning The Arms Race. It took my arms from 16.5 inches cold to 18 inches cold. Also the EDT arms book is ausom.

I second “Winning the Arms Race,” it worked quite well for me too.