Tip Train for Systemic Growth Search Skip to content Menu Menu follow us Store Articles Community Loyal-T Club Loyal-T Points Rewards Subscribe to Save Search Search The World s Trusted Source & Community for Elite Fitness Training Tip Train for Systemic Growth Don' t try to isolate every little muscle Prioritize big compound lifts especially if you' re natural Here' s why by TC Luoma April 15, 2016April 19, 2022 Tags Tips, Training For those not using buckets of steroids, hypertrophy (muscle growth) is not a localized process. It's systemic. For the most part, given sufficient stimulus, muscle growth happens all over your body instead of in one teeny location. As such, doing work that stresses the whole body – putting a big load on the spine that the entire body must support – will cause more growth in your biceps than working the biceps directly. To put it another way, doing heavy trap-bar deadlifts will do more to make your arms bigger than doing curls. A popular rule of thumb in the lifting world states that in order to gain an inch of circumference on your arms, you need to gain about 15 pounds of muscle, and that's pretty much right. Otherwise you'd see guys walking around who trained nothing but biceps and, as a result, were inverse T-Rex types with huge arms and tiny little bodies. But you don't. So Curls Don t Work Of course they do. A biceps-specific program will surely add some arm size as long as you're doing everything else right, but the results would generally pale in comparison to what you'd get if you did a program that was biased towards the deadlift or some other big, total body movement. Likewise, a biceps-specific program would help if you've been doing the big movements all along but need an area-specific catalyst. Steroids, however, make your whole body ultra-responsive to any kind of mechanical stress. If you're using sufficient quantities of steroids, anything works. All those body part-specific routines issued through countless bodybuilding mags "written" by bodybuilders did us all a huge disservice. They convinced many of us to concentrate on curls, kickbacks, shrugs, anterior delt raises, and leg extensions when we should have spent a lot of that time putting big systemic loads on our spine with compound movements. Get The T Nation Newsletters Don' t Miss Out Expert Insights To Get Stronger, Gain Muscle Faster, And Take Your Lifting To The Next Level related posts Training The Best Damn Cortisol Article Ever It's been called the stress hormone, the belly fat hormone, and the thief of gains. But it doesn't have to be any of those. Here's how to control it. Training Christian Thibaudeau November 22 Training Bench Press 600 Pounds Want to break records on the bench press? Ignore stupid rules and follow these twelve steps instead. Bench Press, Powerlifting & Strength, Training Dave Tate July 28 Training Bodybuilding vs Powerlifting Squat Which is better, the bodybuilding squat or the powerlifting squat? The ten differences you need to know to maximize results. Bodybuilding, Powerlifting & Strength, Squat, Training Rob King September 1 Training Tip Trap Bar Deadlift 1 5 s Murder your legs with this variation. Do 1-2 sets of 8-10 reps at the end of leg day. Deadlift, Exercise Coaching, Powerlifting & Strength, Tips Ben Bruno August 1