Every day, before I start my day and before I go to sleep I do pushups. I also do pushups in my MA training during the day as well. I do not have any excercise equipment (nor do I have the room or money for any) and I do not have a pullup bar or the like. I want to get bigger arms, but like I said before, no equipment. Is there any particular excercise that will give me more muscular arms than just pushups? Mainly focusing on the bicep... Anyone got any ideas other than just more pushups? I am kinda at a loss here so I would be in your debt for any info you can give me. WG
Pushups do not work biceps. Your best bet without weights is to get a chinup bar - you can pick them up pretty cheap - A Gold's Gym one here in the UK is less than £10 ($15).
I got given a chin up bar which cost £7. Either that or £7 worth of doughnuts and a corset would prolly give you big arms. But man this isn't a health fitness or a martial issue... Wise man say: big muscles, easy targets. And anyway, I bet it'd be almost the same doing MA with your biceps removed! It's this whole unbendable arm thing where everyone automatically thinks biceps equals arm strength. Rgds, David
Get a sword and practice cuts, your right arm will get bigger and your back will get nice and defined. Thats only if you dont mind looking like a fidler crab
push-ups will work the triceps. If you want to work on your biceps, like what YODA said, do pull-ups instead. also try this: no exercise equipments? no problem. try to lift anything very heavy(a sack of rice, a big bucket of water, etc.) anything heavy enough that you can only lift it for about 2 to 4 repetitions in a slow bicep curl motion. remember this formula: heavy weights + low repetition = big muscles.
I thought heavy weights + low reps = strong muscles, but not big. That is why I keep my reps at no more than 8 anyway, I have seen gains in strength but no changes in size. You get powerlifters that can lift crazy amounts, but they're only small guys... why's that? I wouldn't know the scientific basis to this though if it's true..
I did grow a few inches in my biceps by using that formula. about the power lifters, yes, that's also the thing that's really confusing me. I know a guy who is only about half my size but can lift can lift crazy amounts. well i believe in the saying that "size doesn't matter" and "looks are decieving"
chin-ups do work great..."commando" style pull ups work your biceps pretty well. It's the sideways type of pullups; where you hold the bars facing sideways.
How small ppl can be strong Up to a point, the size of a muscle does not correlate to the power it can generate. By default, your muscles are inefficient and your strength is limited by this inefficiency. The critical factor in increasing the efficiency of a muscle is in building more neural pathways from the brain to the muscle fibres. This is done by training. As you train, the brain sends an impulse which recruits all the muscle fibres which are paying attenion and the muscle contracts. This is basically a learning process in that the capabilites of your brain are being expanded. This learning is achieved through repetition. Repeat an action and you will gain strength in performing that action. That's good as far as it goes... Please excuse me in advance for being puritanical but this is the latest science... :Angel: :Alien: The downside is that you only become stronger in the specific action you are repeating. This is where I depart from those who advocate gym training. Training a muscle is one thing but training it to do the right thing is another. Show me the martial art that uses curls, presses etc and then I'll agree that gyms have their place in MA. Every rep you do in a gym, except if you're too weak to do your art, is teaching your muscles to do a useless act. If you are very unfit then gym is ok as a remedial physio workout. If I can get style specific and talk about my own style, Grandmaster says the following. In the beginning of mantis training the muscles of the arm and shoulder increase but later they decrease whilst strength and stamina continue to increase. Big shoulders demonstrate poor training in mantis. Most ppl's response to that is - hey, I want big shoulders, "think of the chicks, man!" to which all I can do is shrug. Of course, there are many styles which demand big shoulder muscles etc. Or do they... Rgds, David
Weight training can be combined with specific strength training. The weight training increases muscle size and general power, while specific strength training teaches the brain to use those new muscle fibers for a specific task. Lifting alone will not help, but lifting and doing extra power kicks on a heavy bag is a whole other thing.
A muscle only utilises a certain number of its fibres. If you lift really heavy for only a few reps (i.e. lift something that you can only lift a few times) your body will respond by recruiting more fibres in the muscle. This will increase strength but not size (particularly). If you reduce the weight a bit and increase the reps to somewhere between 8 and 12, you will trigger hypertrophy, which is an increase in muscle size. The strength gain will be less than maximal strength training. For MA's a better regime is to train absolute functional strength. Things like tossing around a really heavy sack o'taters or something. This will improve your all aorund strength and your ability to manipulate loads without isolating muscles. If you're a gym-junkie, you can trigger similar results by doing non-isolation exercises like squats, clean & jerk, etc. And I also highly recommend the chinup bar! Great exercises for arms and back. Combined with pushups, handstand pushups, dips, pistols and a variety of core exercises (crunches, etc) you have a pretty solid workout with no equipment (other than the bar.)
researched something about muscle hypertrophy. If you want to grow bigger muscles, do your reps slowly.
Low reps + high weight = strength AND size, you can control size by MA and/or cardio training and more importantly - the kitchen If you want to get big you have to eat big and lift big, train 2-3 days a week [six days is only for pro bodybuilders and those who take steroids for a quicker recovery rate] got this info from - http://www.bodybuilding.com And http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=150447 There are some pretty good articles there and all encourage compound exercises for strength, doing curls will only get you ripped/defined but will not increase overall strength. Bring 6 packs of popcorn before going through the articles |Cain|
Yup, thats true. The body needs insame amounts of nutriotion, especially carbs and proteins, to grow. If you don't eat excess calories, chances are you'll get stronger without getting bigger. Of course, some methods of training trigger hyperthropy more then others, but most people can get bigger with any kind of ret/set scheme as long as they eat well. Also, people who have been doing 8-12 reps for a few years will see good increase in size by doing 1-5 reps maximal lifts, and people who have been doing 1-5 reps for some time will likewise see good gains in size on a 8-12, that is because the body adapts to certain exercises and thus the gains slow down. P.s. I'm not saying they both increase size equally, just that they both can. There are loads of variables involved.
