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AAP's Muscle Building Thread

ximor said:
For that matter do you have seperation techniques for other muscles say inner and outer biceps for instance?

If by seperation you mean the "split" that you see some people have like Darrem Charles, Ronnie, Al Beckles, that sort of splits their peaks in two... well that is genetically determine. No amount of drugs or training is going to change that. A surgeon with a scalple might, but nothing else. Diet of course is key to first determine if you have any seperation at all.

If by training each bicep head seperately is what you meant, you can do that to ensure overall growth (but still will not lead to a seperation and split, just a bit more size.)

My idea of bicep training is to based on the principle of pumping blood into the area. This doesn't mean use light weight and do 100s of reps. But hold your arm up and look at the bicep. Now make a fist with your other hand and hold it next to your bicep. Which is bigger? If you were to peel the skin back and actually look directly at the bicep muscle it will be rather small. (no pun) When you take into consideration the small nature of bicep size, you will see that it makes no sense to attempt to hammer it with heavy weights and low reps. Which nearly always turn into an exercise for your tendons to help see-saw the weight back and forth more than your muscle is actually lifting it.

Now to directly contradict myself, I am not saying that low reps are useless. But people make them useless. They turn a low rep principle into a "lets see how much weight I can use for only 4-5 reps" kind of thing. If you were to stand with your back flat against the wall and do curls with proper form and full range of motion, you would be surprised at how "strong" you really are. Or rather are not.

Ok, that concludes my view on overall bicep training. Now to specifically answer your question about the seperate heads and stimulation of each... almost every exercise stimulates the inner bicep (facing the body when your arms are down) to a various degree. To directly stimulate it more specifically the best thing to do is Wide Grip Barbell Curls. Which is just as it sounds. You take a wide grip on the barbell, wide enough so that at the top of the curl, your pinkies will be out further than your shoulders. Then using a LIGHT weight, you simply curl the weight smoothly all the way up and then all the way down. You really do not want to jerk or sway in this exercise. Trust me on that one.
Or you can simulate the movement with seated dumbell curls. Do them seated to eliminate cheating and keeping your elbows pressed into your sides like you do when (or like you SHOULD do) when you do tricep pressdowns, you curl the d'bells up and supinate them while keeping your pinkies out further than your shoulders.

Outer biceps - the part facing away from the body - the very best exercise I have found has been narrow grip EZ bar curls supersetted with hammer curls. Use an EZ bar - which I hate but it is necessary for keeping your wrists safe and injury free in this position - simply place your hand in the same groove that you would use for tricep presses - but of course your palms facing the other direction in a curl position. Elbows in close to the body, curl it up and down from crotch to upper chest. 10 reps and then immediately do a set of hammer curls. I do mine with arms by side going up and down, none of this across the body curl shit. Why complicate things? Just up and down. This will target the brach and really compound the stimulation it already received indirectly from the narrow grip curls. 10 reps here too.

Keep in mind for reps that quality of reps is always better than quantity of weight used.

An alternative exercise to target the outer section of the bicep is narrow grip underhand pullups. With a grip that has your pinkies touching each other, simply raise and lower yourself on bicep strength alone. Use a lot of caution with this one and dont try forced reps or negatives because of the ackward position and flexion of the bicep you don't want unnecessary injury risks.
 
Wow, awesome post. +K You answered my question perfectly. At the moment I am having trouble adding size to my arms and since your bicep info is so valuable... Im currently on my fifth week of a cycle but my basic question is this: When conventional methods have only gotten my tricep development so far which new routine would you recommend to shock them into growth? I hope that was easy to understand :P
 
Tricep training is tricky and mine (along with my hamstrings) were my two weakest bodyparts.

First, don't train triceps like I do. Because everyone usually does it wrong. I do anywhere from 18-30 sets just for triceps. Sounds like a lot doesn't it. You know that guy you see training triceps in the gym? Drenched in sweat, straining to push past failure, who would rather die than not get that final rep??????.... you know "that guy"? Well that ain't me. I train high volume, moderate intensity. For instance, I keep my reps 10-15. If I am doing a set and I am on the 11th rep and I *KNOW* the 12th rep will be my finally one where I have to strain and inch the weight down little by little, well I just stop. Sounds like pussying out, but I have found that once you do that balls to the wall type training.. it is usually your tendons that are leverage the weight (with body sway) the last few reps. Why cheat yourself. So I just do an set or two, push the blood into that muscle over and over again. It will be forced to expand or burst eventually.

So basically you have to expirement with your sets and intensity to see what you respond to. Since I really can't predict that for you, I will instead give you my three favorite tricep exercises. Not very conventional, not very popular, but really very effective.

Pull over presses - load up an EZ curl bar with LESS weight than you normally use for close grip benches. Start with about 50% of the weight you normally use. Arms extended in the starting position, you lower the weight until your hands/bar come in contact with your spot between lower pec and upper ab. Then keeping your ARMS bent at the 90 degree angle they are in, you push up about one inch and then rotate/lower the bar behind your head down past the bench like a pullover. The only difference is that your arms stay bent 90 degrees and at the bottom stretch position your upper arms are parallel with the floor. Then you smoothly pull the weight back over head, touch that spot between lower pec / upper ab and push it straight back up in close grip press style.
Lower
Touch
Rotate/Stretch behind head/bench
pull back over
Touch
press up

NOTHING will wear your triceps out faster than this.


The next exercise mimics both dumbells tricep extensions and close grip presses. Sitting upright on a bench under a smith machine. With the bar directly overhead you grip it in a close grip position with your thumbs no more than 2 inchs apart. You unrack the weight and lower it smoothly all the way down to the top of your head (you are still looking forward, not at the weight). Your elbows will natuarlly be bent out to the sides. Then you press back up. Top Of The Head Presses is about the only thing I can call them. Use a LIGHT weight and reps again in the 10-15 range. You are using all tricep strength to move the weight. Don't go heavy or fast because you are lowering the bar to the top of your skull and you don't want to bang it.

The last is favorite superset of mine : Close grip bench presses 10 reps supersetted with wide grip pressdowns 10 reps.

I do 10 perfect reps on the close grip and then gripping a lat pulldown bar, I do pressdowns with an overhand wide grip. Making sure at the bottom of the movement my grip is so wide that at all times, raising or lowering the weight, my thumbs are always further out to the sides than my shoulders. Keep your upper arms and elbows pushed into your sides during this to isolate the tricep muscle and force it to do all the work. You will feel a strong cramping at the bottom when you complete each rep.

Other than this, the other exercises I do are common ones. Pushdown with various grips, machines, etc..

Just make sure you train triceps as the first muscle on that day so you will have the most strength to hit them like they need to be. You can pair them up with something like hamstrings or traps/abs/calves to make a complete training day.

Let me know if this works.
 
*bump*
 
I love your trap work suggestions - Snatches are a superior movement to most for total strength.

The delt routine seems fluffy IMO. Why not just do overhead work till you can't anymore. I don't do ANY lateral raises, front raises, etc. Just Oly work fromt he floor and overhead, and my medial delt heads are about the sive of grapefruits.

I think heavy pressing makes big shoulders. I think fluff work is a waste of time, and I disagree that the delts need all that direct work. he idea that the delts get enough work on a pressing day is scientific, not theroy.

It's different for everyone I guess. My shoulders grow if I look a them wrong.

Great thread bro. I love the shrugs ont he calf machine. Don't do them personally, but to me trap development is all about load.
 
Mind sharing your chest work out? Do anything in particular for lower pecs (e.g. decline press)?
 
Hmmm . . . well, if I can't get your chest workout, can you just bring your chest over here and let me bury my face in it? :p
 
Thanks AAP

I lift heavy on the compounds . But often get strange looks by novice gym rats
when I do isolation work.Becuase your right when your trying to hit the biceps or a deltoid they are very small muscles when you look at the anatomically.You can not lift much weight when done correctly.

I see guys swinging 60lb dumbells doing " curls " and they prob are not even working any of their biceps at all when it comes down to it. It looks more like a upper cut then anything else.

Thanks for the re enforcement that it's fine to train properly and not have to worry about lifting more weight then the guy next to you.
 
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