Arms not increasing in size?

[Eternal_water]

I go to the gym regularly and go on the machines for pusing and pulling weights etc. And I do that stuff untill my arms are too weak to continue before leaving.

Now my arms did get stronger when I began, but now its just keeping the strength rather than gaining it.

I'm at the point where my arms are strong, stronger than quite a lot of guys I know, but they are super thin. Most (and by most I literally do mean above half) of the girls I know have thicker arms than I do, even if they are hell of a lot weaker, they actually look more muscular.

People are actually surprised by my strength considering how thin I am.

Now I know the diet required for bulking up (Biochem student) but what can I do in the gym to solve this issue?

 

[Cavedude]

There's not much you can do differently in the gym. Personally from my experience you can try new bicep workouts such as incline isolation curls and focusing on going slow when doing them and flexing hard at the top. Hammer curls help with size as well.

If you do back workouts, including doing pullups, your arms would get hit better and the compound workout is smarter for overall size/strength gains.

Getting bigger is all about diet my friend.

 

[Krueg]

What lifts are you doing and how many reps/sets?

 

[Cavedude]

Well the way my arm's are getting bigger in my opinion is because of my back workout.

I do dead lifts 4 sets, start light, then medium, medium-heavy, heavy set of 8-12. The last set I try to do as much as I can which usually is around 4-8.

Next T-bar row, or you can do barbell row. Similar thing, start light, work your way to heavy. Also 8-12 reps.

Pull-ups, same thing as well. If you can't do a full pull up use an assisted machine and lower the amount of help weight each set. If you can do pull-ups fine, use a belt to add weight to pull-ups.

I do those 3 main workouts, then I throw in Hammer curls, then incline isolation bicep curls super setted with wrist curls.

That's pretty much my back/arms workout, which i try to finish in 50 minutes. The focus of all my routines are mainly compound lifts. Form is the MOST IMPORTANT THING. If you're not engaging your muscle correctly, your muscle won't grow potentially as fast/proportionally.

Once again, diet and sleep are just as important as lifting.

Make your own routine up and experiment with different compound workouts. Everyone's body responds differently to workouts, this just happens to work well for me.

 

[Alle_Gory]

Stop using machines. Do some nice deep dips and rows and some chins and pullups. If that doesn't put meat on your arms, I don't know what will.

Also, you said your arms are thin. What about the rest of the body? If you're thin and lanky you might have a fast metabolism and therefore require more sitting on your ass and food to compensate.

 

[user43770]

Assuming that you're eating enough, do what Cavedude said and add in some chin-ups and rows. Personally, I don't even do curls anymore - weighted chin-ups are enough to make my biceps grow.

Another thought is you may be over-training; more doesn't always mean better.

 

[Eternal_water]

Yeah the rest of me is pretty skinny as well, and I have been mostly using machines.

I've been doing machines and pull ups, I don't know why the machines wouldn't work but the other night I switched to using the gyms dumbbells. And I;ve been feeling it a lot more since so that might start to have an effect.

I've also just ordered some protein bars for the first time form myprotein

 

[SoldMySoul]

Might I suggest you do this w/a barbell: Look up 21s.

Will absolutely explode those arms. Alle Gory gave good advice too.

 

[Alle_Gory]

Eeehhh, barbells are allright for certain exercises but tend to be very uncomfortable for the joints usually.

I like barbell decline, but barbell bench press is hard on the shoulders.

 

[Eternal_water]

Yeah I've been mainly using machines up till now, gonna stop that now.

why don't the machines work though, that doesn't really make much sense to me

 

[Alle_Gory]

It's meant to be.

No I mean it's uncomfortable, on the wrists as well. The joints mostly.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

why don't the machines work though, that doesn't really make much sense to me

Machines have a fixed movement, thus you don't use your stabilizer muscles. I don't think this results in smaller arms, but rather you plateauing, thus not increasing size further.

 

[Who Dares Win]

Remember that most of the mass of your arm is due to triceps and not biceps, so if you are doing endless barbell curls thinking that would make your arms explode you're wrong.

Hit the tricep in all his heads, different position of your hand will hit different parts of the triceps, biceps give mass as well but not as much as people think.
Biceps reach a good quality of pump and make your arm seems bigger in that moment, but that pump goes away few hours later while the big triceps remains.

When training the biceps give them variety in the stimulation, for this purpose I suggest you zottman curl which stimulate the biceps in any possible section, the upper section and the lower section close to the elbow while at the same time giving your bicep a good degree of girth and width.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvM_JUl9pEA

Now the triceps needs to be stimulated in their 3 portions so I suggest you as main exercise the french press or the skull crusher, you can do both with cable and ez barbell, I had better result with ez barbell:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLXOsR8AUgg

When you'll get more advanced you can introduce other exercises that hit singularly all the particular heads of the triceps.

And dont forget that biceps are stimulated any time you use your back just like triceps work on your pecs and shoulder workout, keep in mind that the b1tch known as overtraining unlike the other b1tches we deal with everyday, doesnt play hard to get and comes out of nowhere in your life.