Aragorn wrote:
Maiden3.16 wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
Maiden3.16 wrote:
Well we have all seen the recent trend here lately. Direct arm training is out, rings holds are in.
What are your thoughts? have you tried them?
Would anyone give up direct arm training and do you think it's reasonable to believe someone can go from 11 to 18+ inch arms by doing the performace lifts comined with ring work and avoiding the typical direct arm training altogether?
EDIT: Open for discussion on how anything else that is not the norm or might seem radical compares to the typical bodybuilding training.
Great idea for a thread! Love the idea.
I think Thib's opinion on "no direct arm training" is taken to a bit of an extreme. Really all he's said is he doesn't like an "arm day". He's said more than a few times on here that he does do arm training, for a pump, in between pressing sets. Also staggered through other exercises. For instance--the point at which he has said "no direct arm training" is in relation to involving the Olympic lift variations: direct arm training makes proper patterning almost impossible on the lifts for a variety of reasons, but most of which (as he's said) is that if your arms are sore you'll be inclined to pull with them on the lifts, which is a huge no no. So, he doesn't do arm training in a traditionally fatiguing way because his goal--and the one he has espoused for a bit now--is to meld athleticism with big muscle. Therefore his arm training has to be fitted into the overall pattern of his training. He was doing the Oly lifts like 6 times a week a little bit ago. Patterning in biceps into technique accidentally is a big no no.
If there's one thing I've noticed about Thib's training protocols, it's that they are extremely finely tuned in details and that many people (although not all, as there are a bunch on here and in my personal life that seem to be able to fit the puzzle together) are going to get the pieces wrong, not fit them right, or try to shotgun everything. Or take only one part of his whole picture and advocate or criticize it.
Not a run at you mate, just my observations through the past few months, even a year or more as this has all evolved.
I think the other thing is that --and Thib has said this himself a few times-- when he finds something new he drops everything to play with and immerse himself in the new toy before trying to integrate it. But the emphasis is that he DOES tend to integrate things back in a whole picture. People tend to forget that he doesn't just have one training style--just one that he talks about non-stop :). It's his enthusiasm. But I'll bet you my life savings he still uses old school iso holds and other "older" evolutions of his training for some clients. I'll also bet you my life savings that if he was training a bodybuilder they'd do direct arm training. He's said as much in recent past spills.
At any rate, I love a lot of the stuff he's doing now, and as long as the person using his style is cognizant of the reasons he does what he does, I think it works. It has for people I know anyways.
FWIW, the back lever is fucking brutal, and a great exercise. stlthx, who I know in person, can do a perfect back lever now and his lats have noticeably built themselves up a bit. His lat "feel"/recruitment is also better.
I have very limited experience with CT's methods so it's great that you and ashy are chiming in with as much experience tha you have with them. I definitely haven'y been able to put the peices together, hard without access to the spills and the training programs. So I guess it's easy for guys like me that aren't involved in the spills daily to take a few peices of information to an extreme, especially when he the title of the mini article is "How to get BIGGER arms with NO direct arm training." (I added the caps). This is far from just not having an arm day or saying don't do arm training when focusing on olympic lifts imo. But again, I may have missed where he clarified this in the spills. He did say to do isolation work for arms if they are a weak point though. My guess is by weak point he means weak arms are negatively affecting the performance lifts, not weak point from a bb perspective.
I'm not doubting rings can be effective. But can they build bigger arms than isolation work can? I do agree that CT's methods are effective, looking at the progress of some that have used them.
How do you incorporate arm training into your workouts, if you do?
Haha. No worries brother. Actually, you can definitely have access to the spills--I'm just not sure if you can post in them. I think you might be able to actually. But I definitely understand that feeling of losing track of what's being said in the spills--they move so damned fast that it's hard to keep up from day to day. I actually have a text file where I cut and paste questions and answers on my computer as well as mini-articles or blurbs from CT on his principles. Helps a lot, but it is STILL woefully uncomprehensive.
As an aside, I think there's a fair bit of marketing on Biotest's side with some of those titles. Hard to blame them, but it might be annoying and frustrating. CT definitely makes a case for arm training with bodybuilders, having said a few times they need what most people would consider "over-built" arms to be proportionate on stage and judging. Again, definitely hard to find in the sea of livespills if you only occasionally pop in to the thread!
At any rate, I think rings best qualities are probably 1) back/lat activation 2) stability control (look up what CT says about "micro-oscillations". it makes sense and from experience it's hard as fuck--dips on rings are a shit-ton harder than dips on a stand. Also, i have noticed the effect he talks about dramatically, for years now, while tightrope/slacklining. There is a big effect there) and 3) whole body stabilization/coordination. These are three qualities that I believe bodybuilders and strength athletes can definitely benefit in big ways from, especially #1 and #3. The concept of "movement vocabulary" from sport training applies indirectly here too, I think.
Regarding my arm training, I really don't do much. To be honest I do not notice any drop in my triceps. I am completely in agreement with CT on the lack of need for tricep isolation unless you have problems feeling certain heads. The increased volume of pressing does so many great things for your upper body that I feel I would be losing out if I were to do significant tricep isolation. From a certain standpoint, if you know which variations of pressing patterns and grips to use to emphasize the area of the tricep you want (reverse band, reverse grip, narrow, wide, hammer, scrape-the-rack press, etc. etc.), then you get better systemic stimulation and better strength benefits--not to mention better work capacity benefits--from just doing more pressing work on your weak areas rather than isolation work such as push-downs, etc.
For the record I consider dips not an isolation movement for triceps. They are definitely a compound press variation.
As an example, this week I have pressed all 6 days, 4-6 work sets every day. that's 30 sets of bench press at 275-315 lbs, and 30 sets of push press between 150-175 lbs (It hurts my shoulder so I need to limit weight). I don't need or want any isolation work.
Regarding biceps--well here I tend to disagree with the "no isolation work" crowd. I also tend to believe that CT does as well, he just is not good at expressing it--if you read his current training he is doing pump work for the biceps with isolation exercises and bands between sets of presses and other exercises.
Look--to get good back stimulation, you need biceps that are not going to be recruited first/to the detriment or your back musculature when rowing or chinning. This is a no-brainer. If you're getting huge biceps from chins and rows, your back sucks and your posture does too. That being said, you can definitely INTENTIONALLY target the biceps in chin-up variations, but I don't think it's the same as the triceps' involvement in pressing patterns at all. You need work on them...if you care about them. Me, I find them boring and as a result they pretty much suck, but I am too tired to care and everything else is moving.
That being said, I definitely understand the approach CT takes--it's hard to take an entire arm day to blitz the biceps when your entire system of training is built around being able to do lots of work, very frequently. I mean, fuck if I want to go to the gym just to do bicep curls after having: snatched and overhead squatted 6 days in a row, squatted 4 days so far, deadlifted 2 days so far, and chinned/benched/military pressed 6 days in a row. Fuck that. That, for the record, was my week of workouts. Tomorrow is all easy shit, then I start again on monday.
So I believe to solve the problem of maintaining a very high weekly work load and also getting bicep training in, CT has included them as "staggered active rest" similar to what he was talking about back in Boot Camp 1. Only this time he is using specific methods to maximize the pump without creating tons of soreness.
