Training question

[His Divine Shadow]

With regards to lifting weights and stuff like that do any of you know what kind of results one ought to be seeing on a monthly basis or so, I'm reffering to things like how much the circumference of the arms have increased and such.

I've probably increased the size of my lower arm by a centimeter or so in less than a month and a centimeter or so in a bit more than a month for my upper arms.
Is this a good or bad result? Should I be working out harder? Or keep going at the same rate, or slow down?

Oh and 1cm = 0.4 inches

[BoredShirtless]

With regards to lifting weights and stuff like that do any of you know what kind of results one ought to be seeing on a monthly basis or so, I'm reffering to things like how much the circumference of the arms have increased and such.

You should be increasing the circumference of your arms at about 5 inches a week. Anything less, and you're not being serious.

I've probably increased the size of my lower arm by a centimeter or so in less than a month and a centimeter or so in a bit more than a month for my upper arms.

Are you under 8? Cause this is acceptable for children only.

Is this a good or bad result?

Bad.

Should I be working out harder?

Yes much harder.

[His Divine Shadow]

You should be increasing the circumference of your arms at about 5 inches a week. Anything less, and you're not being serious.

5 inches?
How much in say biceps curls per day are you talking about? Several hundred?

Are you under 8? Cause this is acceptable for children only.

I don't grow anymore.

[His Divine Shadow]

Do you realize that if you increase 5inches per week in upper arm circumference then in 3 months you would have 30inch biceps! Ahnuld at his peak had 22 inches.
I'm thinking there's something fishy here.

[BoredShirtless]

Do you realize that if you increase 5inches per week in upper arm circumference then in 3 months you would have 30inch biceps! Ahnuld at his peak had 22 inches.
I'm thinking there's something fishy here.

Come on HDS. Who are we to judge whether you're doing good or bad. It's totally up to you.

[His Divine Shadow]

Come on HDS. Who are we to judge whether you're doing good or bad. It's totally up to you.

OK, I gather you are joking, I am not laughing, I have no sense of humor when it comes to shit like this.

I was hoping someone who does work out could have shared some of his experiences, like how much lifting they do, with what weights and what the general results where, as some guidelines.

[BoredShirtless]

Come on HDS. Who are we to judge whether you're doing good or bad. It's totally up to you.

OK, I gather you are joking, I am not laughing, I have no sense of humor when it comes to shit like this.

Sorry.

I was hoping someone who does work out could have shared some of his experiences, like how much lifting they do, with what weights and what the general results where, as some guidelines.

I can give you some useful feedback if you tell me the following:

1. How many days a week you lift
2. Weight you lift
3. Reps
4. Sets
5. Rate in which you're adding weight
6. What you eat

[His Divine Shadow]

1. How many days a week you lift

No real check there but it's usually once a day.

2. Weight you lift

Only got two 11lbs weights.

3. Reps
4. Sets

Dunno what you mean here, but in addition to ordinary bicep/tricep training I also do alot of situps, maybe 50-60 per day, and those inversed ones, where you train your back muscles, maybe 10-20 push-ups and such also.
I also train all the other muscles around my chest shoulder area through various movements.

Yes, I improvise alot as I got no real equipment.

5. Rate in which you're adding weight

Ain't got no weight to add so I'm just doing more of them instead.
I'm probably doing 50 for each arm.

6. What you eat

I usually eat alot, thats all I know.

[BoredShirtless]

snip

The key to strength and muscle development is progressive resistance. In other words, your arms have already adjusted to 11 pounds and will not grow any further.

[His Divine Shadow]

snip

The key to strength and muscle development is progressive resistance. In other words, your arms have already adjusted to 11 pounds and will not grow any further.

fuck

[NeoGoomba]

Since you have no way to add an appreciable amount of weight to what your lifting, very soon (maybe even already) any sort of muscle gains will drop off. As long as you continue lifting, you won't lose size, but you won't gain any either. The trick is to vary workouts ever month or two, allowing different exercises to stimulate the muscle groups in different ways, while increasing the weight steadily.

Diet is another important factor, maybe the most important. You want a lot of protien, little carbohydrate intake. Lowering sodium also gives your body a more ripped look as your water retention will drop in your muscles. But since you eat a lot, you'll have to examine what youre eating, cutting out breads and cheeses (which as an Italian, drives me insane on almost a daily basis ), and focus on egg whites, chicken, beans, crap like that.

If you can, try to find a cheap dumbell set that you can adjust the weight load. Only by doing that will you make significant gains. Since you're just starting out, at first you will see marked improvement after five or six weeks of steady lifting, but after that you'll need to up your intensity to keep stimulating muscle growth.

[His Divine Shadow]

Lowering sodium also gives your body a more ripped look as your water retention will drop in your muscles.

What sort of food has sodium in it then?

But since you eat a lot, you'll have to examine what youre eating, cutting out breads and cheeses (which as an Italian, drives me insane on almost a daily basis ), and focus on egg whites, chicken, beans, crap like that.

This suck as I love italian food, spaghetti, lasagna, you name it... Oh and garlic bread *drools*

I think I'll get myself bigger weights really, i got 5kg wights now, or 11lbs, any reccomendations on what I ought to use now? They're not very heavy anymore to tell you the truth, ofcourse they seem fine for working out my triceps, as they have not gotten nearly enough training compared to my biceps, also I think my shoulders and such and other muscle groups still seem to get benefits from them.

[seanrobertson]

Since my e-mail was rather long and somewhat rambling (who would've thought that?! ), I'll take a stab at this here too Maybe I can say something new...

I'm with Bored and Neo. You'll need progressive resistance, Dennis. Try picking up a barbell and selectorized DBs. You could find them really cheap in classified ads or at a yard sale, assuming Finns have yard sales like we do in Hickville, North Carolina USA

As is, I'm pretty impressed that you eeked out .4" of growth by doing upwards of 50 repetitions (how many times you can do that weight). I didn't ask you earlier, is that measured with your muscles contracted, or are they straight out to your sides?

I wonder because the contracted measurement, if measured in a consistent manner, is what you should really be watching (if at all...the mirror's really the best indicator, IMO).

I'll also echo what I said earlier and note that it's real tough to compare your results to anyone else's. I don't still have that website I sent you at my fingertips, but in Arthur Jones' rather extensive experience, a 4" gain in upper arm musculature is doing pretty well for the first 18 months of very hard training.

I think 4" is roughly in line w/ what he said. I might be off by an inch, but he said something to the effect that his subjects went from 13" to 17" arms. But then, that was an average that included guys about Darth Garden Gnome's size* to young men around 270. Some gained a lot; others, very little.

As I noted, I added about 3" and 35 lbs. in my first 4-6 months of lifting, but I started from an artificially low weight. I might've seen 2" of upper arm growth, or up to .5"/month, if I hadn't been Mr. Anorexic Boy when I started. I have no idea what sort of poundage progression I saw, though, certainly not with curls. All I know is that, over 10 years ago, I started doing barbell curls with probably 50 lbs. maybe 8-10 times, with 12" arms. Today I can do 140 for 5-6 strict these days...rather crappy, really, given my arms' size (19", at a somewhat fattened up bodyweight by BBing standards).

You can't really decide upon a reasonable monthly expectation, though, because I know plenty of people who'll never add that much size to their arms yet STILL look really good.

My training partner and best friend is such a person. I'm not sure where he started exactly, but his arms are 14" after lifting for a decade. They're musuclar, but he's simply never added tons of size to his limbs--probably never will.

So, I'd really have to tell you to not sweat the measurement shindig. Once you have some additional weight to work with, so long as you're getting stronger from week to week you'd be okay. Strength and size gains aren't directly correlated, but they're at least very closely related, enough such that training to get stronger should yield size gains.

Sorry about writing you another tome. I did want to shift gears and say something else real quick before I stop, however:

Whatever you do, don't ever be discouraged when you read about Hulk Hogan's supposed 24" arms or any of that bullshit. 99.99% of all bodybuilding measurements are outright lies. People in the gym constantly tell me they've got 20" arms, but when the measuring tape comes out, they magically lose 2". Whoops

For example, that Arthur Jones guy I mentioned was very keen on taking very precise measurements in everything he did. His talk was all the rage in the early 70's because his so-called protege, a 19 year-old named Casey Viator, was the youngest Mr. America winner ever, and perhaps the best. He was a reasonable match for Arnold in some respects, and that was King Arnie's heydey.

Anyway, Arthur invited Arnold and pal Franco Columbu (Mr. Olympia and Universe winning seen in T1 and Conan the Barbarian, among other Arnie flicks) down to Deland to try the new Nautilus equipment.

Arthur, who was a real no-bullshit kind of guy, later wrote that Arnold's upper-arm, or biceps, measured 19.75" with a slight pump. Arnold wasn't quite at his peak in '72, but it is likely that he never exceded a flexed 20" arm by much, sans pump.

Of course, all the Weider publications at the time said Arnold's arms were 23" (weighing about 235-240), which is absurd. Once you get to a certain arm size, adding another full inch is a tremendous volume of muscle. That's simple geometry; a 14" arm won't look absolutely tremendous next to a 12" arm, but a 20" arm will dwarf an 18" one.

Ignore those kinds of liars and sycophants who run the magazines. So long as you're satisfied, you're good to go!

*Just kiddin' DGG!

[His Divine Shadow]

I have one question, when doing weight lifting and such, should i go fast or slow, or is there any diference?

[seanrobertson]

I have one question, when doing weight lifting and such, should i go fast or slow, or is there any diference?

Now, THIS is pretty straight-forward

Do everything under strict control. That entails moving relatively slow.

Speaking only for myself, I move the weight upwards--the concentric, or "positive" phase--with a good deal of force. Still, the movement takes about 1.5 to 2 seconds, and I'm never heaving or jerking anything. Even in compound exercises which involve lots of muscles (deadlifts, chin-ups, squats, military presses), you want to minimize momentum and focus on the bodyparts involved.

For the lifting of a weight, such as curling a dumbbell toward your shoulder, I recommend you try taking about 3-4 seconds to reach the top.

The lowering phase, also called eccentric or negative stroke, should be even slower. There are studies which assert that the lowering of a weight is actually responsible for most muscle growth. (I tend to believe that, even if there are people who really only "lift" a weight and experience tremendous growth, like many Olympic lifters.)

I take 3-4 seconds to lower the weight on most exercises--more on exercises with a very large range of motion, less on really short-range stuff (like wrist curls). Try something similar on your stuff.

This is all only really relevant if you can get enough weight to limit you to a certain no. of reps, however. I think for just starting out, ideally, you'd want to use a weight which allowed 12-15 reps before you became very fatigued.

With the exception of guys who're training for power and quickness, a good general rule of thumb is to move slower when you're in doubt. You needn't meticulously time yourself or anything, just think "one thousand one, one thousand two" to be sure you're keeping the movement really smooth.

[NeoGoomba]

I have one question, when doing weight lifting and such, should i go fast or slow, or is there any diference?

As seanrobertson said, going slow is the best way to do it. But for certain curling excercises for biceps and triceps, when you reach the point of full contraction (the peak or top of the curl), hold it for a one count, then slowly finish the exercise. You'll get much more benefit out of it. You can also apply that to crunches and leg workouts too.