Originally posted by: scootermaster
Originally posted by: skace
I'm a little torn on how I should respond to this... Why do you care what everyone thinks constitutes "buffness"? Worrying about something like that is a good way to get sidetracked and lose focus. Why are you even worried about looks 1 month in? You've got a long, long way to go.
Most importantly, large arms may be a focal point for a lot of lifters, but that is not JUST biceps. Large biceps with small triceps looks retarded. Many different exercises are required to create the kind of large arms that actually look good.
Should you do bicep curls on a day dedicated to your upper body? Sure why not, just don't neglect the other upper body muscles.
First off, the triceps comment is dead on. Everyone knows the "arms" are a majority triceps and delts, and if you want "big" ones you need to work those, perhaps even more so than biceps.
But in reality, I'm really shocked at all of these responses...arguing over what type of curls to do.
Half of the Starting Strength post is the author making fun of "Curl Jockeys" and people who want "teh big gunnz". I mean, read the darn post! How many times does the author say something like this:
Q: "But I wanna add some..."
A: "Shut the fuck up and do the routine"
Q: "But maybe if I just did some extra..."
A: "Shut the fuck up and do the routine"
Q: "I know! But my friend has HUGE arms and he occasionally does..."
A: "Shut the fuck up and do the routine"
Et mother-effin' cetera.
So you want big guns, sure, do your curls. See if that works out for you. I know that if you're a month into working out, you've probably got more important things to do with your time. But if it makes you feel better, go right ahead.
For what it's worth, girls tell me I have great arms all the time. And I did/do curls (and a lot of iso tricep exercises). It also took me about 2 and a half years to get past curling anything above 30 pound dumbells. My guess is my time would have been better spent doing something else.
let me say outright that I'm 100% in favor of basing the entire workout around compound lifts - squat, deadlift, bench, military press, rows, etc. Virtually all of your time weight lifting should be focused on these lifts and ONLY these lifts. they are by far the most effective way to produce strength and size gains and you'll do damn well even if you drop everything else. moreover, as a general rule, beginners *especially* don't need to add any isolation exercises to their workout. if you are doing the workouts properly and with heavy weight, the compound exercise alone will provide more than enough work for your biceps/triceps/etc. you just don't have enough of a muscle base to benefit from isolation work and are likely to instead burn yourself out, hindering progress instead of helping it.
having said all that, you don't need to be fanatical about compound lifts to the extent that you exclude everything else from your workout. if done properly, you *CAN* achieve better results with some isolation exercises than without. there are a few scenarios where i could see isolation exercises being very beneficial:
1. You are an intermediate lifter (at *least* 2 years of proper lifting under your belt), you have built a very solid base of muscle from compound lifts and are now finding that those lifts are not hitting particular muscles enough. For example, after a while, you won't see much improvement in bicep strength/size from doing rows or pullups. In this case, at the very end of a workout, once a week, you can see great benefit from adding 2-3 sets of biceps exercises. Another example is bench press: after a few years, most of the stress of the exercise will be on your shoulders and chest and your triceps won't be improving much. Adding some skull crushers can really help out. you'll notice that the intermediate and advanced programs (bill star 5x5, madcow version) all advise adding "assistance" to the end of the workout
2. You've been lifting for at least 6 months and begin to stall in some of your lifts. Sometimes, this just means you need to reset or tweak your programming, but I would argue that sometimes, a lift can be limited by a particular muscle. For example, weak triceps can seriously reduce the weight you can handle on bench and therefore reduce the effectiveness of the exercise on your chest & shoulder. you can just keep benching from week to week to slowly build the triceps up and you will eventually break through your plateau. However, some isolated tricep work (e.g. skull crushers) can be an excellent way to seriously speed this along. Again, once a week, at the end of the workout (AFTER you've done all your compound lifts), toss in 2-3 sets of isolation exercises.
in summary, stick with compound lifts, lift heavy, and as a beginner, you should be fine. in a few circumstances, 2-3 isolation sets at the very end of the workout can be helpful.
EDIT -->
forgot to mention a couple of things:
1. if it took you 2 years to get to 30lb dumbbell curls... you were doing something very very wrong. i'd estimate the average male (~185lbs, moderately athletic) should be doing 30lb db curls in under a year. i was doing them in high school after just 6 months of working out and back then, i was dumb and did NO compound lifts whatsoever, so my progress was slow.
2. my favorite isolation exercises are:
* one armed preacher curls with dumbbells. do it with the FULL range of motion (don't stop short) and you'll see some quick results. Doing them preacher curl style completely prevents you from swinging the dumbbell, lifting your shoulder, bending your back, etc. As long as you go all the way down, you either do it right, or not at all.
* barbell curls. you can lift heavy with a barbell and as an added bonus, it shreds your forearms nicely too. get a spotter to make sure you DON'T swing or use your back at all.
* skull crushers. do them slowly.
* dips. more of a compound exercise, actually, bit it targets the triceps pretty well.
* crunches on an exercise ball. do crunches, not situps. hold small plates on your forehead for increased difficulty. do them to the sides to get the obliques.
* calf press on the leg press machine. lets you do a massive amount of weight and get a great range of motion.
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