sebastianmaclean

Here is another question that was sent to me recently:
I'm not quite sure what I'm either doing wrong or not doing at all. I work biceps with back once a week and work triceps with chest once a week, but my arms don't really seem to get any bigger.
I do 60-80 percent of my max on all lifts 4-8 times. During the week I'll occasionally do push ups and pull ups outside the gym just form fun. I also do 30 minutes of cardio before each workout. Not to mention I ate a clean diet with a reasonable amount of calories in 4 meals a day.

What I want to know is why my arms aren't really growing. Am I leaving something out or do you think I'm at a minor natural disadvantage when it comes to those muscle groups?

Response:
The answer to your question isn't as easy as one might think. The arms can look bigger just by getting more cut. However, cut arms can be smaller than their off season counter parts.

On the other hand, stronger arms is one way to measure progress and development, but even this is not always reflected in the size.

I would say one of the best ways to boost size in a muscle is to ensure you exhaust the muscle through varioations in high volume and high intensity training, meaning don't always push for high rep pumping style exercises, neither always push for low rep and heavy weight. Shift the style up a bit.

The next issue is diet and fluid intake/uptake. If your calorie level is not high enough in number or quality, then you can have a hard time boosting gains in any area. As for fluids, you need to make sure your muscle cells can stay fully flushed with intracellular fluid in order to get more out of the enrgy exchange that occurs with muscle contraction. More fluid uptake mean you stretch the fascia tissue around muscle fiber and make it easeir for your muscles to grow. That is a complicated way of saying stay hydrated and eat adaquate amounts of good quality food.

Your current program may involve not enough meals at 4 per day. Also, with all the cardio you are doing, you may be making it harder for your muscle cells to keep intracellular fluid levels high. I'm not saying to stop cardio, but you may want to go two weeks on and two weeks off with it for a while to see if that will boost your muscles fluid retention rate.

All this miay give those arms a boost.

Cheers,
Sebastian