[bouncer]

"Hey Bounce, why don't you re-post this to: EF Exclusive: Most Muscle/Strength Gained In A Program

Looks like a good one. Scare your muscles into growing!"
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OK, here ya go...

I had the same problem. Had, not anymore. I resumed training when I was 30, after two carpel tunnel surgeries and an elbow surgery. Even without those setbacks, my bi's lagged behind everything else. Big back, chest, legs, and skinny-in-comparison arms. Now, people compliment me on them. I decided to throw caution to the wind, analize it and fix it.

I always start with a basic movement, but I switched to an olympic bar and started to see how much I could do. I wanted to curl with what alot of people bench press. (Brought my ego into play.)

For lower biceps I did preachers.
For stretching I did incline dumbells
For peak I did curls off the flat side of the preacher bench.
Then it was hammer time. Hammer curls for the brachialis muscle that lays under the bicep.

Here's some of the stuff I did with this.

I overtrained on purpose. I trained them nearly every day, at least 5-6 times a week. This was deliberate. I followed that up with 4 days of rest and then waited till they weren't sore, and made them sore again. That was about three times a week. After a month of that, I trained them twice a week.

I sometimes supersetted that routine with a tri routine for an overall pump.

I spent a month choosing one exercise and doing a 100 rep set at the end of the workout. This will increase blood capacity in a muscle and some even believe that the body responds by growing more capilaries.

I would finish off other times with 21's on either preacher curls or ez bar curls ( I like the inside grip for this one.)

I did drop set preacher curls with two spotters to strip weight and give me a forced rep or two at the end.

I did down-the-rack dumbell curls untill I could't get up the 15's.

Then I took two weeks off, deliberatly from direct bicep work. After those two weeks, I still used some of the techniques but was carefull not to overtrain.

My upper arms went from 161/2 inches to 18 in a couple of months. They continued to grow to 19 1/2.

This was in a mass phase I allowed myself after nearly a year of dieting. I had a peak for the first time, and my big shirts were tight around my arms. I want to remake a point here: I'm lifetime natural. I earned this.

My point for all of this was to shock the hell out of the muscle. I was sore all the time. I worked like there was a gun to my head, and I finally got the kind of results I was after. You can't work out like this all the time but for pre-determined lenths, It can work.

I hope this helps.

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I think in part what that growth was from, was the fact that I had been following a low-fat low calorie diet and doing lots of cardio for about a year. I started eating beef, and more chicken, eggs, ect...along with protien powder and cottage cheese. I was also squatting some pretty respectable weight, which I really think promotes growth hormone.

During that phase, I just decided to go for the outer limits, and my previously starved body really responded to the work and the nutrition"

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So much for the previous posts. Anyone reading this might get it that after dieting for over a year and being jealous of the guys trying to get big and strong, I decided to see what I could do with fuel in my bloodstream.

I ate 4-6 times per day, drank Met Rx, Metabolol, ect, whatever was on sale (yeah, I'm cheap) cut the cardio back to two times per week. I also pre conditioned every bodypart with a couple of weeks of 100's to help blood flow and strenghthen tendons

For all the compound movements like incline bench presses, squats, deadlifts, leg presses, I pyramided.

For legs, my mainstays were squats and leg presses. One week I would do moderate weight with the leg press to warm up for gut-busting squats. At the end of the phase I was doing 5 plates per side for a triple. The next week, I would reverse it.

I really was amazed how strong I got. One workout, on the 45 degree leg press I warmed up with 5 plates per side, and it felt good so I decided to see how much I could do. The last set was with 13 plates per side. I was pretty psyched and I had guys yelling in my ears, but I got 9 reps. That was all the machine could hold.

I wasn't able to move for a minute, then I needed help to get to a bench to sit. I waddled into the locker room and tore off my old ugly workout shirt and discovered I had busted little sub-dermal cappilaries all over my upper torso. Must have been from the compression. Damn, I was sore for a week. I really thought about installing a pull rope to the ceiling of my bathroom so I could get off the john.

I was doing behind the neck seated barbell presses pyramiding up to 275, and then would do up and down the rack seated dumbell presses. Followed by cable work.

Beside the bicep gains, here are the measurements at the end of the phase.

Neck-19, same

Chest -59, 3 inch gain

Waist 36, same

Thighs-30, 3 inch gain

Calves -21, 1 1/2 inch gain

5'11" tall. 260 lbs. 33 yrs old.

I had been studying bodybuilding and strength training since I was a teen. I literally used everything I knew. When I finish dieting this time, I plan on working on the big three lifts. Right now, I'm doing full body circuits to burn fat.