Muscle growth

[sumdawgtwigg]

I've been hitting my weights hard again for almost two months and I've not really seen a whole lot of growth. Others around me have been saying I'm getting bigger but the measurements arent changing that much. For example my biceps started at 13 1/2 two months ago. Now they are 13 3/4. Is that resonable growth? Should it be faster or slower? May be a dumb question but just curious.

[Guest Carjack]

Do you train biceps?

[sumdawgtwigg]

Well, of course, lol.

[ETFnerd]

Well, when you measure the biceps, the way to get the measurement up is to train triceps. Makes sense right? :-p

The reason is that the triceps end up being 2/3 of your upper arm. So if you want your guns massive, you have to work the triceps really hard. Extensions, pull downs, dips, etc. When working arms I spent 75% of the time doing triceps heavy. I used to do lying tricep extensions with the curl bar loaded with 155lbsx20x6. Tricep cable pull downs with 140x8x4. Most people load the 25s on the curl bar and think it's enough. It isn't. The triceps are really strong and you should really push them like you would your quads on leg day. I'm not saying you'll do these loads on day 1, but your goals have to be high enough to convince your body that it has to add muscle to handle the loads you are throwing at it.

The other thing is to eat a lot. If you want to grow and be lean, you need to eat 2-3g of protein/lb of bodyweight AND do enough work with your lifts to burn all of it 3x a week. Repeat for 6 months and if you are not considerably bigger (measurements increasing 20-40% you are doing something wrong and need to review your plan.

[Guest Carjack]

So what you need to do:

Have some record of how you lift and how much.

Heavy weight, high volume, high calories. You know, every good old school bodybuilder routine?

[js290]

I've been hitting my weights hard again for almost two months and I've not really seen a whole lot of growth. Others around me have been saying I'm getting bigger but the measurements arent changing that much. For example my biceps started at 13 1/2 two months ago. Now they are 13 3/4. Is that resonable growth? Should it be faster or slower? May be a dumb question but just curious.

http://jap.physiology.org/content/110/2/309.abstract

http://skylertanner.com/2011/04/02/the-six-year-itch-or-was-it-all-a-waste-of-time/

[aj_rock]

Assuming your arms are circular, you increased their volume by about 7%. Did you get 7% stronger?

[andygates]

Does that apply to belly girth too?

[sumdawgtwigg]

I became 1000% stronger.

I wish it applied to belly girth as well, lol.

Thanks to everyone, the links were really useful.