best way to improve arms and shoulders?

This mentality of "oh if you train biceps in isolation, you're a bicep monkey" or "just train arms on a heavy back day, if you have to do biceps for anymore than 2 sets on their own separately, you're doing too much" really annoys me

Everyone is different. And besides that, it works. It's not overtraining, it's not only what bicep monkeys do, and it's not a waste of time

If you can get away with only getting biceps work done through doing bent over rows and chins, fair play to you, excellent, but not everyone is like that and that certainly isn't enough for me.

AMEN BROTHER
 
Wrote a long reply, lost it :(

Basically...

There are more important things for him to be doing than isolating a small cosmetic muscle group, doing this does his long term development no favours. I would class emphasising arms at this stage as over specialising. I'm not saying "don't do them :mad::mad::mad: you're a **** if you do them :mad::mad::mad:", I'm saying they should be a long way down his list of things to do.

Aiming for aesthetic improvement by increasing the size of his chest, shoulders, back and legs will cause his arms to hypertrophy as much as they need to to keep up with the training stimulus. Bearing in mind that he is basically completely untrained, his arms will grow.

If they are lagging after a few months then the situation can be re-assessed, but provided he's going a good routine he should grow in balance. Besides, 5% of gym time (as I mentioned initially) should be enough for a few sets.

It's all just advice fellas...

;)
 
Don't think people are saying focus on arms, just some of us are disagreeing with the latest trend of doing zero arm/bicep isolation. :)

Train as hard as you can on a routine that hits everything, and eat like a horse, and you shall put on the muscle.
 
I have no problem with that, but I'd much rather coach a certain degree of avoidance (in the appropriate circumstances) and have arm isolation drift in after a good base of body awareness and strength has been built.

If there's time at the end of a session doing a bit of structured arm work will be fine, but it isn't necessary for arm growth.
 
I have no problem with that, but I'd much rather coach a certain degree of avoidance (in the appropriate circumstances) and have arm isolation drift in after a good base of body awareness and strength has been built.

If there's time at the end of a session doing a bit of structured arm work will be fine, but it isn't necessary for arm growth.

This is pretty much how I view things.

Mind you, throwing a bicep curl or two at the end makes it looks like you worked out ;) Bicep pump init
 
I did some curls at the end of my back workout. My biceps were pretty much destroyed already from doing seated cable rows, wide pull ups and chin ups. Took 5 minutes to do 3 sets and then my biceps were exploding.

I'd rather do this than do a variety of different curls...
 
My whole-body swole from working out correctly makes it look like I've worked out...

:D

Mine doesn't sadly. I find it hard to get chest pump for some reason even though my chest has DOMs all over it today...Shoulders are getting there :p
 
Mine doesn't sadly. I find it hard to get chest pump for some reason even though my chest has DOMs all over it today...Shoulders are getting there :p

Supersets, tri-sets, drop up sets.

If you've done them properly then you will be pumped.
 
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