Thread: Arms not growing!!!

Dude I think that's mostly genetics. I know a lot of guys who are big and ripped but don't have that "ball". Your training is great, so is not that.

Hmmm, maybe Insulin pre workout (when you train arms) with pre, during and post shake with EAA, BCAA, Leucine... and IGF-1 into bicep/tricep trained that day. That would do it for sure heheh

Arms can be a bitch.

Make sure you are working your legs enough. Legs lead the way for your entire body to grow. People with big wheels tend to have big arms. My arms were stuck at 17" for a year. I started adding more squats/deads and in the next 6 months I had them to 18".

Saszeke

How tall are you bro? Because if you have long arms, it's much harder to get a "ball". what worked for a couple of my freakishly huge buddies is a simple but hard program. You do 3 exercises 5 sets each for a lagging body part. you start with a heavy exercise where the last two sets you can't go above 3-4 reps. second exercise is a medium one where the last three sets you can't do more than 7-8 reps. Last exercise is a light one where you flood the muscle with blood, all 5 sets you dont go below 15 reps. if you can, try doing it twice a week. What's great about this routine is that you can always vary up the exercises on which you heavy, medium, light.

Oh, and moar gearz

It's easy to overtrain the arms and not necessary to go nuts with a ridiculous # of sets. Be sure to incorporate a pronated grip bicep exercise and also be sure to add close-grip bench press to you tri workouts. Do this and your arms WILL grow. Tris will get fuller and meatier and peak of bicep will improve and may in fact become quite pronounced. Once I added a pronated bicep grip, my bicep peaks got sickly. Follow up close grip bench with weighted dips. Burnout with rope pulldown and flex/squeeze that tri for many reps using the rope. And remember, 2/3 (aka 67%) of your arm is your tricep so I've always done more sets on tris as opposed to biceps. Think 8-9 sets for triceps and 6-7 sets for bis.

A lot of the time, people don't focus enough on contractions and really squeezing at the top of the motion. Are you making sure to concentrate heavily during your set and to hold the contraction for a second or two? Really focus on shuttling blood into your bicep/brachiallis and it makes a world of difference.

For some reason, i got the most bicep growth when I did heavy pull-ups, narrow grip. Belt up with 25-55lbs and shoot for 6-10. Made a huge difference.

Biceps peak is often a genetic thing. One of the all time best arms were those of Sergio Oliva an he didn't have a bicep peak either. You seem to have tried so many things to no avail, have you ever tried FST-7 by Haney Rambod. Not every workout but off and on I try this technique and it really helps bring up a lagging bodypart. Do a normal bicep workout say 3 movements 3 sets 8-12 reps. Then pic an isolation exersize,machines are good for this. Do 8-12 reps hard contraction not to total faliure but to move as much blood as possible into the muscle. Rest 30 sec and do another set. adjust the weight down as necessary to stay in the 8-12 range. rest 30 sec and so on , 7 sets in all. Srtetch and squeeze the muscle in between sets. also sip water. If your carbs are up and you are on gear especially the pump will be skin splitting ! you are trying to stretch the muscle fascia will blood volume with this. I too have very long ams . I'm 6'1'' but recently poped the 19'' mark on biceps. Good luck bro. A great set of arms- nothing beats them !

Originally Posted by pieguy

A lot of the time, people don't focus enough on contractions and really squeezing at the top of the motion. Are you making sure to concentrate heavily during your set and to hold the contraction for a second or two? Really focus on shuttling blood into your bicep/brachiallis and it makes a world of difference.

For some reason, i got the most bicep growth when I did heavy pull-ups, narrow grip. Belt up with 25-55lbs and shoot for 6-10. Made a huge difference.

^^^This

...and yes unfortunately we are all limited somewhat by our genetics.

Originally Posted by GMO

^^^This

...and yes unfortunately we are all limited somewhat by our genetics.

IM members all say fuck genetics they say I'm gonna be a beast

Add some heavy negatives.

Ive done pretty much everything has said and know the facts stated. Im starting to just accept its genetics. Im 6 ft and have fairly long arms. I love doing close grip bnech and always squeeze and hold before releasing on ropes and such. I dont think increasing my sets will help. I do usually 3-4 exercises per muscle without warm up.

GymRat4Life

Check my crazy advice in second post

Subbed. My arms suck, they grew 2inches in first 6wks of my first test e cycle then stopped growin after that

Originally Posted by pieguy

A lot of the time, people don't focus enough on contractions and really squeezing at the top of the motion. Are you making sure to concentrate heavily during your set and to hold the contraction for a second or two? Really focus on shuttling blood into your bicep/brachiallis and it makes a world of difference.

For some reason, i got the most bicep growth when I did heavy pull-ups, narrow grip. Belt up with 25-55lbs and shoot for 6-10. Made a huge difference.

I second that notion. I hit my squats low and slow and leg presses fairly slow. I also pump through arms and wonder why Im a walking tree stump. started adding concentration curls and holy geeze, i have to cut my weight WAY down. Half the reps and im feeling HUGE.

my one most important piece of advice....when your arms aren't growing from training them....STOP TRAINING THEM!!! 2 weeks should be plenty of no training arms before jumping back on any arm specialization program....they won't shrink during those two weeks and will most likely get slightly bigger....during this time you can totally focus on your other big lifts which will trigger new growth overall

As I said, we all have our genetic gifts and shortcomings. My arms are freaking huge, so I under-train them. I work the rest of my body to death, and sure as shit everyone who meets me still comments on how big my arms are.

Some people's brachiallis is located perfectly underneath their biceps so that minor preacher work and a little bit of bicep training causes huge changes in size. Some people have long arms (like myself) and bicep increases are on the difficult side. I just work my triceps heavily and deal with the average looking biceps

Preachers and Pronated grips for Bis works wonders for me. As a short person - standing only 5'8" - it is a luxury in the sense that my 18" arms appear even bigger due to the simple fact that I'm not tall. My arms appear bigger than a close friend who stands at 6'3" despite his arms being a shade under 19".

Originally Posted by irish_2003

my one most important piece of advice....when your arms aren't growing from training them....STOP TRAINING THEM!!! 2 weeks should be plenty of no training arms before jumping back on any arm specialization program....they won't shrink during those two weeks and will most likely get slightly bigger....during this time you can totally focus on your other big lifts which will trigger new growth overall

I have, I took a break from arms completely. Like i've said... I've tried a lot of things.

Originally Posted by GMO

As I said, we all have our genetic gifts and shortcomings. My arms are freaking huge, so I under-train them. I work the rest of my body to death, and sure as shit everyone who meets me still comments on how big my arms are.

Stop bragging gmo

I've read somewhere that if you gain about 10lbs evenly through out your body, you'll gain about 1.5 cm to your arms. Don't know if it's true, but it sounds pretty reasonable.

switch up to an exercise you've never done before

Originally Posted by saszeke

Arms can be a bitch.

Make sure you are working your legs enough. Legs lead the way for your entire body to grow. People with big wheels tend to have big arms. My arms were stuck at 17" for a year. I started adding more squats/deads and in the next 6 months I had them to 18".

Saszeke

^ This....reps!

My arms are nearly 21" and one of the easiest things for me to increase, that and shoulders. Some weeks I hit my arms every work out day alternating from light to heavy, some weeks I don't hit them at all. And some I'll work them once or twice per week. Genetics has alot to do with it I honestly think. I've seen alot of people in the gym bitch about forearms not growing over the years. I don't even train forearms and mine grow just from the weights I pull.

How are people measuring their arms? I hope they're doing it cold and unflexed otherwise there's huge variation. Only Sergio oliva broke that circumference in his prime using those measurement standards.

try cutting out all separate arm work. I was stuck at 17 for a year and moved up half an inch in just a couple weeks by dropping my arm day completely. I just work them as part of my compounds.

I'm the opposite, I did nothing but compounds the first 2 years of lifting and my chest/back were wayy overpowering my arms

I've had more success with an isolation day every other week. I love skullcrushers and tricep pushdowns, front/side/rear delt raises and just plain old curls.

Originally Posted by irish_2003

my one most important piece of advice....when your arms aren't growing from training them....STOP TRAINING THEM!!! 2 weeks should be plenty of no training arms before jumping back on any arm specialization program....they won't shrink during those two weeks and will most likely get slightly bigger....during this time you can totally focus on your other big lifts which will trigger new growth overall

I've been told this before, is there any science behind it? I've read up on it, but i'm just curious as to why this may help growth again after a break. I was doing a bi/tri day and then throwing in 1 exercises for each muscle (bi with back) (tri with chest). I saw a .25" growth (5 weeks in) but i'm on cycle and compared to the result it isn't really noticeable at all and this is normal considering my arms shrank off cycle. I think i'll just not directly train them for 2 weeks, although this will be hard as I've done it before and didn't see much results... My arms haven't grown much over the past cycles, which has been annoying.The one muscle group I want to be big is of course the slowest and hardest to make grow.

After these 2 weeks are up, what would be something I would want to jump back into for arms? Should I try splitting them up and just hitting biceps on back days and triceps on chest days? I've literally tried everything (although I know there has to be things I haven't), and nothing seems to work. Genetics is for sure f-ing me over here, but I know I can make them grow. So after these 2 weeks off of arms, what do I jump into?

I'm 110% sure that the gains I've made up to this point has been from the tricep, and I do know the tricep makes 2/3 the arm (I believe).

Anyway, my arm size literally haven't changed much in a year and now it's really pissing me off, while the rest of my muscle groups have either grown a lot, or gotten very defined.

In these 2 weeks i'm taking off, can I continue to do weighted dips? I love doing them.

completely agree with pieguy. i didnt read anything about your nutrition though. How is your diet? is it on key?

Originally Posted by smdplzsmd

completely agree with pieguy. i didnt read anything about your nutrition though. How is your diet? is it on key?

Yes, diet is not the issue here. I know it's within my training.