[roberto]

(05-17-2014 02:03 PM)Hades Wrote:  

I disagree fundamentally with the notion that lower body gains lead to upper body gains, and have two pieces of evidence. Look at all the jagoffs on starting strength's forums. Blown up asses, quads, man-tits, and traps, practically nothing anywhere else - no shoulders, no biceps, everyone crying out for help "getting a V-taper" - all this on a diet of basically lower body exercises. With all that natural HGH they're getting from GOMAD and squatting every workout they should look like bodybuilders up top, but not a single one actually does. So what if they can squat 300 pounds? They all look like shit.

Exhibit B are all the wheelchair bodybuilders who basically have no legs but are fucking enormous. Their idea of a workout is doing twenty different iterations of rows, curls, pulldowns, and presses.

You have to work upper body to get gains and actually look good. There's just no way around it.

Gotta agree. I've put on a stone of muscle since starting to eat right and lift as heavy as I can for 5x5. From measurements, around three quarters of it has gone to my legs. I'm not complaining, I laugh at the 'wheelchair bodybuilders' who can't squat half what I do and look like their legs are about to fold up when they do it. But I'm starting to mix in some isolation exercise for my arms, as bench press and overhead press just isn't cutting it.

Having seen the increase in leg muscle from squatting 5x5, I'm going to lift as heavy as I can on the isolation for 5x5. I'll report back in three months. I keep records of measurements every couple of weeks so any increase will be noted.

Strength is what I really care about, but I'm not one to use that as an excuse to eat junk and look like crap.

Re the weight increase, I try to lift an extra half kilo each side of the bar every workout. This seems to have broken my cycle of 3 failures in a row followed by a deload. It's partly psychological, how can I fail to lift just that tiny weight extra? YMMV.