How I benched 315 by first time benching (it's not genetics)

The first time I ever benched properly a few months ago, I was messing around with 225lbs and a thought i may as well try doing 315, with a spotter of course. And I got the rep! It looked ugly as hell. My arch collapsed, no scapular retraction, no leg drive, who knows what I could have done if my technique and tension was on point.

But keep this in mind it wasn't the first time I had worked out. Before this, all my upper pushing work consisted of push up and dip variations. When it comes to calisthenics and gymnastics, I have barely entered the intermediate level relative to some of those monster gymnasts out there, who knows what they can do.

What I am trying to say is there it is possible to climb through the open window into the house of great pressing strength. If you want a big bench, benching is important, but here are a few reasons why I think you should add high volume calisthenics into your program:

• Most pressing exercises can be done anywhere, so when traveling or can't get to the gym, you can still work on your pressing strength
• It will build up your work capacity so you can train harder, for longer.
• If done smartly, it won't impede your recovery.
• If you pick your exercises correctly, it will make you hella strong. 

One program I recommend would be the 100 push up program for any level of strength, it teaches you to follow a program through and be patient which is so important if you want to get anywhere in life, it will improve elbow conditioning and give you great endurance and work capacity.

Here are a bunch of exercises that you can use to increase your bench:

Beginner exercises 

• Push ups and it's variations
• Tricep dips
• Straight bar dips
• Handstand holds against a wall
• Planche leans
• Plyometric push ups

'Advanced' exercises

• Planche variation holds
• Planche variation push ups
• Freestanding handstand holds
• Handstand push ups, freestanding and against a wall
• Handstand push ups with a close grip
• Handstand push ups with one hand elevated
• Full ROM handstand push ups
• Tricep blasters
• Ring dips
• One arm handstand holds against wall
• Weighted dips

Hope this helps
Enjoy the gains
Alex

How to get your first pull up

Pull ups are an awesome exercise, they work the arms, back, shoulders and core, as well as blasting your grip. But sometimes people can find it difficult to get that first pull up,  they are a difficult exercise. If you go through the following steps, you'll be doing pull ups before you know it, and you'll be able to see the difference in the mirror also.

For each of these progressions, I will be giving a progression level, once you get to this progression level, you are strong enough to move onto the next exercise. If you are having trouble increasing your repetitions have a look at this blog post for a simple way to increase your reps on an exercise.

Step 1 - High recline row.

Find something you can throw around a surface, rings are preferable, but you can use anything that can hold your weight will work, I am using a karate belt here. Stand with your feet directly underneath the anchor point with your feet shoulder width apart. Lean back, (bottom left) and pull your arms in until you are standing upright (bottom right). Lower down to the starting position and repeat.

Progression level: 3 sets of 25

 

Step 2 - Recline row.
Over time, slowly move your feet further forward (6 inches at a time works well, work up to 3 sets of 25 each time). Continue moving your feet forward until your shoulders are directly under the anchor point, row up until your hands are as close to your chest as your flexibility allows you to, lower down and repeat. At first, reach the progression level with your legs bent at 90 degrees, then straighten your legs out and work up to the progression level again.

Progression level: 3 sets of 25

Step 3 - Chin up hold

Jump up so that your chin is over the bar, and hold it.

Progression level:  3 sets of 20 seconds

Step 4 - Half pull up
Jump up so that your chin is over the bar, lower yourself down until your arms are at 90 degrees, come back up until your chin is still over the bar, repeat. If you cannot go down to half way, only go quarter way down, reach the progression level, then go to half pull ups.

Progression level: 3 sets of 10

Step 5 - full pull up
Hang from the bar, so that your arms are slightly bent, pull up until your chin is over the bar, lower down to the beginning position, repeat.

Target level: 1 set of 20

Hope this article helps
Enjoy the gains
Alex

A simple way to increase number of push ups

Here, I will cover a simple way you can use to increase your number of push ups. This works for pull ups, dips, squats and pretty much any other exercise you can think of. This can be split up into 4 steps.

Step 1 - find your max: Do as many push ups as you can with good form, this is your max

Step 2: Multiply your max by 4, then for the next 10 days, do a total of 4 times your max throughout each day, in multiple sets. Don't go anywhere near failure, stay at least 2-3 reps away from your max per set.

Step 3: Rest 3 days, do not do any push ups during this time, eat well, sleep loads and drink a lot of water.

Step 4: test your new max, and start from step 2 again.

Example:

Step 1: I test my max and can do 20 push ups

Step 2: 20 x 4 = 80. So throughout the day, I will do 80 total push ups. One day I might do 8 sets of 10, the next 16 sets of 5 etc. Stay creative, and listen to your body, if you are feeling weak, do more total sets and less reps per set.

Step 3: I take 3 days rest, eat well, drink milk and play Tekken.

Step 4:  I re-test my max and get 30 push ups, and start from step 2.

This is perfect for beginners, but will work for any level of strength. Remember, you have the whole day to complete the reps, don't be intimidated by the total number of reps, you can just do a set every hour, or 10 minutes, be creative and clever with it and you will find it a lot easier than it seems.

Hope this helps
Enjoy the gains.
Alex  

jumping pistols - effective exercise, easy to get wrong

I have a squat set up outside, but since it has been raining heavily, I cannot use it. So I have been looking for ways to maintain/ improve my explosive leg strength. I tried to use jumping pistols a while a go, but realized, when looking at videos online, people just did a pistol with a hop at the end, not very effective.

Although it may seem like an ineffective exercise, if you really try to explode up from the bottom of the pistol, for a set of 5, you will feel your legs working. I guess it's similar to speed training.

At first, you will push with all your strength, and still be really slow through the bottom half and explode on the top, but with practice, you will get better at it. The idea is, if your max squat is 400 lbs, you push up from the bottom, like you are squatting 400 lbs.

I am going to experiment with this and see how it effects my leg strength and my vertical jump.

Hope this helps,
enjoy the gains
Alex

Get a Freestanding Handstand

The handstand is an awesome exercise for anybody, it helps your jerk if you are a weightlifter, your bench if you are a power lifter. It also puts a lot of stress on the deltoids and the triceps. There are so many benefits to this exercise, so I will make an article soon on the full list of things it can help you out with, they also look really cool.

A lot of keyboard idiots will say that the wall assisted handstand (hs) and handstand push up (hspu) will give you just as much of a strength benefit as the freestanding variations, this could not be farther from the truth, if you have ever tried a freestanding hspu you will know what I am talking about, it will challenge the grip, core, back, as well as hit the arms and shoulders that much harder. Also, imagine having to find a wall every time you want to show off your sweet handstand, I've been there, it's not as cool.

If I am going to be completely honest, the hs is a grinding exercise, you will have to do 100s, and eventually it will click and you will have it. But there are some exercises that you can try out to monitor your progress, these are listed below. If you want you can work towards each progression in order until you can hold it for 10-20 seconds, then move onto the next. Alternatively, you can just use them to see how you are doing.

1. Frog stand
2. Chest to wall handstand
3. Kick up to handstand against wall
4. Back to wall handstand
5. Forearm stand against wall (make sure you have flexible lats)
6. Forearm handstand free standing
7. Handstand with one leg against wall
8. Kick off wall for 6, 5 second handstands (hands about 1ft away from the wall)
9. Kick up to freestanding handstand

The most important thing to learn when it comes to getting a hs is learning to kick up, I read a book that will explain it much better then I ever could, so I will put a screenshot down below,

The overall key points are:

• lean forward
• first leg goes up in an arc, second leg comes in to your body and straight up, it does not go in an arc like he first

After a long time of grinding, I have found some cues that will help you hold a handstand, the idea is to over do it on the kick up, then balance out with muscular effort. Important things to remember.

• Brace your abs
• Keep your fingers spread out and 'dig' them into the ground 
• put your lats in your front pockets/ round your shoulders forward and spread your lats (protract the scapular)
• keep feet together and legs straight
• Once you have found your balance, shift your shoulders forward slightly, as if you are about to drop into a planche. (this will give you more control).

Hope this helps,

Enjoy the gains

Alex

get bigger arms with no weights (poor mans arm blast)

A year ago, I tried an 8 hour arm workout I got from a video I saw on youtube. The whole video looked like a supplement ad, but I was sick of having 16 inch arms and wanted to get out of the plateau. I looked up reviews online and everyone said that it was rubbish and would not work. I now realize that these keyboard twerps had never tried it before because I gave it a go and added half an inch on my arms!! in one day! obviously I measured them after a couple of days of healing, crying and therapy sessions. One reason why you have to try something before you make a decision on whether it works or not. Our knowledge on hypertrophy and strength is a lot more limited than people think, we know nothing really.

This is all good if you have ~50kg of plates to be using, but what if you do not have a gym set up at home? or don't want to spend 8 hours in the gym? I am going to give you a few ideas on how to have this effect at home with little or no equipment.

Resistance bands

This is an obvious choice, resistance bands are cheap, cheaper than plates and can be used inside if needs be, or you can bring them out to a field somewhere and be one with nature while you blast your arms. I bought the bodylastics strongman set, which set me back £75. But that's only because I have issues saving up money. Before I bought them, I owned a cheaper set I got from eBay, and they worked fine. I would buy a couple of sets, so the total tension of all the bands is about 200 lbs, just so you can set up the triceps and biceps exercise and do not have to fiddle around with bands. You will have to adjust the exercises to make it work. I would recommend a standing band curl and tricep pushdown for both work out 1 and 2.

Body-weight variations
There are 2 body-weight arm exercises that I would recommend using for this workout. They are both illustrated below, to make the variation harder, for both exercises, just raise the feet up on something. It may take some experimentation to work out what heights are your 10 and 12 rep max before hand.

Tricep blaster:

From this position, push up a bit like a pushup, but keep the upper arm around the same angle as the starting position, it should feel like a reverse skull crusher.

Body-weight curl

 It should look a little bit like this, but you should be directly under the rings, so that the webbing is vertical, if you do not have a pair of rings or a TRX (don't get one, their a waste of money) just use a hanging rope or karate belt and do a hammer curl.

This work out is brutal, give it a go, and you will be rewarded.

Enjoy the gains,
Alex

 

Tips on how to increase arm size

This post will give you some ideas on how to increase arm size. If you want big arms, but it is still your dirty little secret and your scared people are going to disapprove of you, check this article out. It will give you some arguments that you can use to understanding your noble quest 

Arms under 15 inches?
This depends on height and over all skeletal size, but the general rule is, if your arms are under 15 inches, you will not benefit as much from isolation exercises as you will from the heavy compound lifts. I built 15 inch arms a couple of years a go using heavy chins and dips, I never did curls. So if your arms are under 15 inches, spend most of your time doing heavy rows, chins, dips, bench press and all those compound movements that you can put a lot of weight on. Just get crazy strong, and your arms will grow

Jed Johnson's August of arms
Click here to see Jed's video on his 'august of arms' experiment. Basically the idea is, you train arms specifically every day, for one month, towards the end you will feel terrible and tired, but if you push through it. After the month, Jed went from 18s to 19s, which is incredible! It doesn't have to be august, if you have the heart, and train hard, you will be rewarded for this crazy program.

Low intensity, high frequency
This is what I am currently doing to train arms. On top of my regular training, I am doing one set of biceps and one set of triceps when I wake up and before I go to bed. That equates to 14 sets a week, and it has no effect on my regular work outs. Remember to pick a weight that will still give you some stress on the muscle, but will allow you to recover easily from it.

8 hour arm workout
It works! Before I gave this a go I did a looked at reviews and everyone said it doesn't work. But after I realized that these where just keyboard bodybuilders that are afraid of trying something difficult. I tried it and added half an inch on my arm in a day!! Which is a lot when you have been training for a while. My opinion is that it will work best if you train heavy, the change in stimulus will help build hypertrophy and the fact that you are stronger means that you will be able to curl and french press more. Click here to see the work out I used. It may look like a supplement ad, but I didn't use them, just make sure your eating and drinking enough calories, have plenty of milk and lucozade. 

Adjusting your compound lifts
Another idea is to simply adjust your compound lifts, to add more stress on the arms, your lifts may go down a little, but if you work on it, you will soon be back to your normal weights. For example, change your bench press and military press to close grip, switch to underhand pull ups and pull downs. You will still be working your back and chest, I get annoyed by twerps on the internet that tell you under hand chin ups do not work your back, EXTENSION OF THE SHOULDER WORKS YOUR BACK no matter what your hand position is.

Thanks, hope this helps.
Enjoy the gains,
Alex

Challenge your grip and increase your pull up strength pt 2

This is part 2 of a selection of things I am using to change up my pull up training, if you haven't seen part 1, click here to check it out
Baseballs

Just put a bolt through a baseball and hook it to a chin up bar, you can also use hockey ball or anything strong enough to hold your weight. This requires a whole new level of grip strength. When training these with lock offs, it would give me a dead arm after every rep, this will kill your biceps as well.
Fat gripz

These are grips, that are fat. They will make the chin ups more difficult. Stick them on the bar and use them for the next 4 weeks, take them off and your chin ups will be stronger
Gymnastics rings

These are difficult as hell, but I am not really sure why, one arm chins on this are crazy difficult for me, but I'm working on it.
Rock rings

These are a cool tool by Metolius, normally used by rock climbers. They have 3 levels, each one gets more narrow and the ledge gets smaller, making it more challenging, you can also grab the top and just use it as a chin up handle. I am currently using them to try and get a door frame one arm chin. So I can do them Anywhere.

Thanks, hope this helps,
Enjoy the gains
Alex

progress from the advanced tuck planche to the half lay straddle planche

Progressing from the advanced tuck planche to the straddle seems like an impossible task for anyone, especially if you are built a little heavier than the rest. I was stuck in the adv. tuck planche for what felt like a lifetime, and there were no articles on how to progress between these two progressions that differ so much in difficulty and load on the muscles and joints.

This article will show you the progression that I used to get to the half lay straddle, once I got that for ~5 seconds, I got a full planche (a low/banana planche), so I actually skipped the straddle when using this progression.

Once you can do each of these holds for 5-10 seconds, start doing push ups, when you can do 5 push ups, go onto the next progression. Don't do these progressions until you can do an adv. tuck planche with your knees behind your elbows for at least 5 seconds

1: start doing your tuck planche like this:

If you can't see the image very well, basically, do the tuck planche with your legs straddled, but your thighs still vertical, Make sure not to rest your knees on your arms.

2: Frog planche:

As you can see in the image, lean forward a little more, and push your thighs back, so the are at a 45 degree angle. Almost there.

2:half lay/crooked planche:

Lean forward even more, and push your legs back until they are in line with your torso. It will feel like you almost lock into place. You will find that you will be a lot lower and your back will be a bit arched, this is fine, I actually think it looks cool this way. But as you get stronger try spreading your lats and get into that hollow back position.

Hope this helps.
Enjoy the gains,
Alex (Don't forget to stretch your glutes) Heath

Challenge your grip and increase your pull up strength pt 1

In this post, I will be going over the different grips I am using and the grips I am trying to use in order to keep my one arm chin training. Even though I will be speaking about them in regards to one arm chins, you can also use these variations with 2 arms, rows, front levers or even deadlifts if you are a freak.

1: Towels

I know a few of this may find this weird or stupid, but this, in my opinion, is the best place to start. I remember buying 6 tea towels when i was 16, and just doing one arm hangs, and one arm lock-offs on them, and my forearms grew and my grip got stronger, they are also great because the twist, so you can supinate your hands at the top of the pull up and get a great contraction on the short head of the bicep, this free rotation can also help avoid elbow and shoulder pain.

2:Rotating handles

I'm too poor to buy a 'rolling thunder', so I just brought a pair of those cable attachments that rotate, and strapped them to the pull up bar. When you try and hang of them with just one arm it will try and tear your hand off your arm, and may succeed. But when I got a one arm chin on it for the first time, I knew I had reached a milestone in my strength. You could add a fatgrip on it and make it as thick as a 'rolling thunder', I am yet to get a one arm chin off that. But when I am able to do that, I will go out and tear someones arm off just because I can.

3: Eagle loops

These were a little bit cheaper than the 'rolling thunder' so I got them. Normally. Whats cool, is that you can slowly reduce the number of fingers you use until you you get down to one finger, my current best is a one arm chin on 2 fingers.

4: Homemade chin up handle

I just made this from chain and a pole my mate found in the woods, all we had to do was wash the blood off it and lay low for a while (that was a joke). This is good because it allows you to be able to do one arm chins anywhere, just strap it to something overhead. You can also put fatgripz on them. They also allow you to do neutral grip one arm chins on a regular chin up bar. I found the neutral grip the easiest to learn when first doing the one arm chin.

This post is already pretty long, so I will be back with more ways to switch up your chin ups.

Enjoy your gains
Alex

Me and 'ladies man' my local paper boy

Around the world - more interesting than cardio

Around the worlds are a training method developed by bar hitters in New York. The original idea consisted of push ups, pull ups and dips, 10 reps per exercise with up to and beyond 40 sets.

Sounds a lot like metabolic conditioning. So if we take this idea and put our own exercises in, but making sure that we hit the whole body, you have a work out that will make you stronger, improve GPP and burn a hell of a lot of calories depending on the exercises and the volume that you do it.

For example, today I did a circuit of one arm chins (2 reps), pistol squats(3-5 reps) and press to handstands (1 rep) for 6 rounds, and i got an effective work out in 20 minutes, and it hit my conditioning as well, jsut doing each exercise one after the other with as little rest as possible.

You can pick any 3 exercises: calisthenics, barbell work, strongman, even some isolation exercises if you want to bring up a lagging body part.

If you are training strength movements, as I am, and still want to train like this, I would recommend adding in a 'spacer exercise' or 2 to help you rest between sets, for example, I was training around the worlds yesterday, with handstand presses (1 rep) and one arm chins (2 reps). I added in a set of bulgarian split squats to help me rest more between sets. A 'spacer exercise' should be relatively easy and can be done for high reps, push ups or skipping are also good exercises



I hope this helps if you are stuck for a workout, remember, be creative, and enjoy the time away from the world, this work out can also really help clear your head.

Enjoy the gains
Alex

One arm lock offs for big dudes

Why the one arm lock off? It puts a tremendous amount of tension on the biceps, it will help improve endurance and work capacity, and it also looks cool as hell to see a big guy pull one of these off. I spent the majority of my first year in college training these. Hopped on to the preacher curl bench and got a 66lb preacher curl with one arm for 30 reps within the next few weeks.

What is a one arm lock off? It is when you hold the top of a one arm chin for time. I know its sounds easy, but just give it a go.you'll find that you get up with 2 arms, let go of one of them and you will drop like a 200 lb man trying to do a one arm lock off. Think about how strong your back and arms are now, now think about how much stronger they will be if you could do a one arm lock off for 10 seconds.

It is also a stepping stone to the one arm chin, which is also an awesome exercise. One of my goals as a personal trainer is to get as many people over 190lb doing one arm chins for reps.

The progression level:

1. Hold each lock off for 5 seconds, at the top (chin over the bar), middle and 3/4 of the chin, this is one rep.
2. To set up, do an archer pull up, with the main arm under hand, and with the other hand is going to hold onto the bar with just the 4 fingers, work your way down to a single finger, then down to just your pinky finger.
3. When you can do each progression level until you can get 5-10 sets of 2 reps, then progress onto the next level.

Once you get down to the pinky it may not be so easy to progress onto the one arm lock off: here are a few ideas to make the final step.

1. Add weight to the lock offs
2. Hang a loop off the bar at shoulder height and use your pinky on the loop to assist the one arm lock off
3. Increase number of reps and sets
4. Only assist yourself on the top of the one arm lock off, only use one arm on the middle and/or bottom holds.

Before you start one arm lock offs, become a monster at 2 arms. see if you can get 100 in 10 mins, at least 12 chins with your chin clearing the bar and 5 sets of 3 frenchies.

Don't forget to train both arms.

Enjoy the gains
Alex

Farmers physique myth (increasing work capacity)

You'll hear a lot of people saying "you don't need to go to the gym, you want a 'natural physique' like people that do manual labour or farmers" or something along those lines. For some reason, people think that if you farm or work on a construction site, you're going to get huge pecs and ripped abs. Unfortunately this is not true, if you look at the majority of people that work in manual labour are not in shape, not knocking that. But what I have seen from my experience from working with manual labour occasionally is that the people that have been doing it for a while have thick forearms and rough, wide hands. You will also find that they can be lifting and moving things around consistently for up to 8 hours without it killing them, when a lot of gym rats will not. Their job has built up their work capacity.

Some one i know, told me that when he was a child, he had to move hay bales. He told me that him and his friends worked out that they walked the equivalent of going from England to Scotland and back carrying hay bales throughout the summer.

To put this in other words, if you get a farmer, who works 8 hours a day carrying things into a gym, he will be able to lift harder, at higher % for a longer period of time than the average person.

Why is this important for the average gym rat? If you can workout with relatively heavier weights for a higher volume, it means that you will be able to practice the move more often, get stronger, and therefore get bigger. Louis Simmons explains why GPP is important for athletes in a much better way i ever could in his barbell shrugged podcast.

Sergio Oliva would do 10 sets of 20 pull ups before every workout. What does this mean? His lats where supercharged and could do pretty much anything he could throw at it, he could train harder, and not be as affected by it.
Sergio Oliva

How can you improve your work capacity in an ordinary gym? One idea is to have a pre-workout routine. For an example, before every work out, do 100 push ups and 100 pull ups in 10 minutes. For a while your work out will not improve, while your body adapts to the pre-workout routine. But as you adapt, you will have up to 1400 reps on your upper body per week. That has to make a difference, doesn't it?

Currently I am trying to increase the work capacity in my arms by doing an arm routine in the morning and the evening, to make sure that they don't burn out when going into the higher rep ranges of my one arm chins and planche push ups. It is simply 1 set of 25 tricep blasters and curls with bands, I will increase the intensity and reps as my training cycles progress.

When Jay 'ursus' Pateman was a child, he would do 500 push ups in the morning and the evening, and says that it is probably a contributor to why he is such a good bencher today. 

Guys out in New York, who work out in parks, do 40+ sets of 10 on the pull ups, push ups and dips, and seen DOC of Wingate warriors do pull ups with an extra 100lbs!!! I have also heard of Lord Vital, a monster in the calisthenics game being able to bench 400 lbs without ever benching. 

DOC (right)


Lord Vital (right)


To conclude Improve your work capacity and you'll get bigger.

Enjoy the gains
Alex

GETTING BIG ARMS: 5 reasons you can use to convince yourself it's important

Lets be honest, having big arms is awesome, but unfortunately with the current fitness climate, and things like Crossfit being such an influence on what people see as 'cool' or 'healthy' (I'll get back to that in another post) your noble quest for big guns is sometimes frowned upon. In this post I will give you 10 arguments you can use when another 'functional training' twerp gets up in your grill about 'being too focused on your aesthetic goals' or telling you "it's not useful for everyday life". Some of these arguments make sense, and a few are a little out there, but if you say anything with the right tone of voice people will believe you, I'm sure.

Reason 1: Decreased risk of injury. For example during mixed grip deadlifts, if you have bigger, stronger biceps, you are much less likely to tear them when you go for a heavy max. To paraphrase Mark Bell, if you can handle a 70 lb dumbbell when doing preacher curls, your bicep is anchored in more than someone who can't, therefore, you are less likely to pop a bicep. What's the point of being strong enough in the lower body to pull the house when your arms can't handle the strain. You will also find that if you have spent a decent amount of time training arms at a high volume, you tendons will also be a lot better conditioned, so when benching or working heavy chins, the chance of an elbow pain restricting your strength gains is reduced. I have heard of people doing what is known as 'Poundstone curl' style training, which involves rep ranges up to and beyond 100 reps, which help condition the bicep as well as the tendons in the arm.

Better lockout strength on bench-press. This movement sometimes also falls into disrepute among new school fitness wangs, but lets be honest, a strong bench-press = a strong upper body. In the top half of the bench press, the triceps are heavily recruited for the lockout. So if you have big, strong triceps, the lock out of the movement will never be an issue. Another thing that people won't know, is that if you have big biceps, they act as a cushion and help you spring out of the bench-press. However insignificant this may seem, it's that small difference that decides 1st and second in a power-lifting meet. 

Stronger, more effective choke hold. Whether you're in a cage, a bar or in the woods fighting a bear, bigger, stronger biceps will make your choke hold much more powerful and intimidating. When dabbling in MMA, I found choke holds to be my favourite submission, because of the force I could apply to it. Choke holds is an elbow flexion, so the more powerful your biceps, the more force you can apply, and faster you are able to make the new age fitness dong pass out.

Higher work capacity. If you are used to doing 100s of curls and tricep extensions at a high frequency, guess what? they are going to be able to go harder for longer when it comes to training heavy compound movements. So if you choose to train heavy overhead press or rows, your arms will be able to go for longer, and you can train longer and have a more effective training session.

Makes you look more aesthetic at a healthier body fat %. If you enjoy being strong, cutting down to the single figures and staying there is not going to be a place you want to be. I remember hearing somewhere that if 2x your arm size is bigger then your waist measurement, then you will look lean and muscular. Much like the ladies have massive clutch purses in order to make there waists look smaller, having big arms will dwarf your waist and give the impression of having a lean and muscular physique (which you will have if your arms are that big in comparison to your waist).

Hope you found this helpful.
Enjoy the gains
Alex