What am i doing wrong?

[qbkilla]

Another option if he wants to increase volume, poundstone curls. But I agree with Elvia, if all he has ever done is increase volume and hasn't done shit, he may be someone who needs to decrease volume and focus on intensity. No one doing 10+ sets of arms in a session or 20+ a week is going balls out on each set.

 

[Elvia1023]

Another option if he wants to increase volume, poundstone curls. But I agree with Elvia, if all he has ever done is increase volume and hasn't done shit, he may be someone who needs to decrease volume and focus on intensity. No one doing 10+ sets of arms in a session or 20+ a week is going balls out on each set.

You definitely can go balls out on every set for 10+ easily. You could for 20+ but that would be quite a lot. I recall seeing a guy in the gym and in the 60+ mins I done about 8 movements for upper body he was training his bi-ceps the entire time. Set after set and very hard. That to me is completely pointless but some people do that and their best body part is usually their arms. Going off on a rant a bit but just trying to highlight training high volume doesn't make your gains disappear. I am nothing special but I used to train all out for 2+ hours 5 days per week. That would include loads of warm ups but approx 15 working sets many days. Again unneeded and might even go against you but as I have stated in the past I don't just train for gains (I like to push myself and I enjoy the gym). I have done 10+ failure sets for arms for years in the past. I would do stuff unilaterally so I could past failure for some sets. These days my bi-cep and tri-cep workouts are literally 2-5 failure sets twice weekly so much lower volume. I probably train my arms 30 mins per week now.

 

[qbkilla]

You definitely can go balls out on every set for 10+ easily. You could for 20+ but that would be quite a lot. I recall seeing a guy in the gym and in the 60+ mins I done about 8 movements for upper body he was training his bi-ceps the entire time. Set after set and very hard. That to me is completely pointless but some people do that and their best body part is usually their arms. Going off on a rant a bit but just trying to highlight training high volume doesn't make your gains disappear. I am nothing special but I used to train all out for 2+ hours 5 days per week. That would include loads of warm ups but approx 15 working sets many days. Again unneeded and might even go against you but as I have stated in the past I don't just train for gains (I like to push myself and I enjoy the gym). I have done 10+ failure sets for arms for years in the past. I would do stuff unilaterally so I could past failure for some sets. These days my bi-cep and tri-cep workouts are literally 2-5 failure sets twice weekly so much lower volume. I probably train my arms 30 mins per week now.

True good points. Some things to consider..
If someone is really going balls out, many sets to failure, I'd assume they are taking 3 minute plus rest periods. Sure someone can do sets to failure at 30 seconds, but imo they won't be recovered from that first balls out set, so their training is starting to look more like Myo reps or rest pause then new sets with those short rest periods.

If they are doing actuall straight sets, balls out, taking ample rest time, 3+ minutes, doing warm-ups, that workout is going to take quite a bit of time

Just in my experience it's hard mentally to focus for over 1.5 hour. In the first 15 minutes of a workout the intensity is there, but by the 90 minute mark no matter how tough we are it's hard to keep that same intensity and focus.

I'm actually trying to bring arms up I plan to do a regular bro split. The arm day will be 6 tri 6 bi, heavy focus on moving weight. Then on chest day and legs day (2 parts I'm not too worried about) I'll probably just do 6 sets of the main body part and then spend 10 minutes at the end just hitting arms with volume. So something like this..

Chest 6 sets + extra arms high rep
Back traps 6/3
Legs 6 sets + extra arms high rep
Off
Arms 6bi 6 tri sets, heavy progressive overload
Delts - mix of heavy and high rep
Off

Really focus on arms, chest and legs do less so Total gym time isn't crazy. Have a delts day in there by themselves as I want to hit them good. Thoughts?

 

[flex22]

elivias post at the end of page 3 was spot on! There is no mistakes, it’s called experimentation and it’s what trading is all about. There is no right way or wrong way. It’s finding YOUR WAY! The only thing I really want to emphasize is what he said at the end of his posts. “After a few months” . This means you can’t get something new and expect to see gains or results in a few weeks, it’s a process and it takes time. Make sure whatever method your trying out you really give it some time and a chance to see if it worksp

 

[Elvia1023]

True good points. Some things to consider..
If someone is really going balls out, many sets to failure, I'd assume they are taking 3 minute plus rest periods. Sure someone can do sets to failure at 30 seconds, but imo they won't be recovered from that first balls out set, so their training is starting to look more like Myo reps or rest pause then new sets with those short rest periods.

If they are doing actuall straight sets, balls out, taking ample rest time, 3+ minutes, doing warm-ups, that workout is going to take quite a bit of time

Just in my experience it's hard mentally to focus for over 1.5 hour. In the first 15 minutes of a workout the intensity is there, but by the 90 minute mark no matter how tough we are it's hard to keep that same intensity and focus.

I'm actually trying to bring arms up I plan to do a regular bro split. The arm day will be 6 tri 6 bi, heavy focus on moving weight. Then on chest day and legs day (2 parts I'm not too worried about) I'll probably just do 6 sets of the main body part and then spend 10 minutes at the end just hitting arms with volume. So something like this..

Chest 6 sets + extra arms high rep
Back traps 6/3
Legs 6 sets + extra arms high rep
Off
Arms 6bi 6 tri sets, heavy progressive overload
Delts - mix of heavy and high rep
Off

Really focus on arms, chest and legs do less so Total gym time isn't crazy. Have a delts day in there by themselves as I want to hit them good. Thoughts?

If those are your exact goals then it fits fine. Do what you think suits you best. Although if I had your exact goals (arms and shoulders etc) and wanted to train that frequently I would lower the arm frequency (so overall volume) slightly and make minor changes.

I would do chest and tri-ceps then back and bi-ceps then legs with everything else the same. So arms are trained 3 times but bi-ceps and tri-ceps only twice each. It's also better for your legs just having your lower body to train that day so you can hit them hard because you have to fit everything (quads, hams, calves etc) into 1 day.

 

[Zarati]

Playing basketball when you were young made your arms longer?

There actually are sayings if you play basketball during growing phase when growth plates are still open, all the strech and jump will make whatever the stuff is before it becomes bone get stretched out, and later becomes bone and you'll get taller.

They also say that swimming at a young age will result in broader shoulders.


That's if done constantly like everyday or something, not like two weeks a year.

It's not scientifically proven. If it does, it's not much, maybe 1-2 inches.

 

[qbkilla]

If those are your exact goals then it fits fine. Do what you think suits you best. Although if I had your exact goals (arms and shoulders etc) and wanted to train that frequently I would lower the arm frequency (so overall volume) slightly and make minor changes.

I would do chest and tri-ceps then back and bi-ceps then legs with everything else the same. So arms are trained 3 times but bi-ceps and tri-ceps only twice each. It's also better for your legs just having your lower body to train that day so you can hit them hard because you have to fit everything (quads, hams, calves etc) into 1 day.

Good feedback. I did for a while try exactly as you suggested. It was the DC 5 way split, but rather than biceps with rear delts, it was the split above with a rest pause set of biceps at the end of back and same with Tris at chest. So this next blast going to up the frequency to 3, see what happens. But what you said makes perfect sense usually when I do want to bring something up, as a bro split guy, step one is to incredible frequency to 2x per week before 3.

Imo the key to brining up a lagging part is to focus on one at a time. I have tried to design splits to bring up delts and arms, shit gets to complicated.

That is one mistake I have learned from. Sometime down the road I plan to try JP EOD full body as well. So many great routines. The only thing I've tried lately where looking back I felt it was suboptimal was sort of what Israetel recommends where you just keep adding sets to your base workouts until you need to deload. Sounds smart on paper, but looking back I think it's silly to just add volume each week so you hit a wall. Periodization is great but imo for most of us it should be kept simple. Loading phase, back off, repeat. The enemy of proper training is overcomplicating it lol.

 

[Chembody]

Your thinking is off. You didn't screw anything up by doing too much volume. How do you know what too much volume is unless you experiment with it. There isn't one size fits all and there are many different paths up the same mountain. Many get great results with high volume training and many don't but at least try it and see for yourself and never think you screwed up. Often people do higher volume and gain more because of the increased volume. Then may end up doing too much but they come back down and gain again. As long as you aren't doing a ridiculous amount of volume if you pick the right movements, execute them well and train intensely you will improve.

Another thing yes overtraining is very real and you most likely have been doing too much and will benefit from less volume but harder sets. I don't want to confuse you anymore but sometimes people overcomplicate the crap out of training. An example I have known people to excessively over train a certain body part and in any literature or a scientific mind (or even a regular gym rats mind) it would be overtraining but they still got good results. I have known a few people to do set after set of arms (30+) and train them frequently and their arms grew. If someone wants to make their legs grow and they start training them for 2 hours 3 times weekly and become obsessed with growing their legs I bet their legs would grow. It doesn't make it needed or even correct and they could get the results doing less work but don't worry too much because you don't a few extra sets. If that's the case make sure your nutrition and rest are on point.

Now if something isn't working after months and months then obviously you need to change it to get results. You are not happy with your arm growth so follow the advice in this thread. Lot's of people over train and they are ruining potential growth but a lot of that is due to CNS fatigue and not recovering properly. I have known so many people to get great results in the gym and if they posted what they did most of the people on forums would state they train too much. My point isn't that you should do that and it probably would against you but at the same time don't be worried about pushing the limits at times.

Well said!!!
Thank you!