1 month of arms, no rest days. Am I stupid?

[bobgunn]

Context: I’m 18. 5’8 115-120lbs? (skinny)
After not lifting for 6 months, I began exercising again. It’s been a month of bicep curls, hammer curls, pull ups, and chin ups. I work out everyday until failure. I work out at home, don’t go to gym.

In the beginning, I had to do concentration curls since I couldn’t lift the dumbbell (20lbs) standing up. I was also unable to do a pull up or a chin up.

I’m at the point where I can do 4 sets of curls, hammer and bicep, until failure (around 10 reps) and I can do 5 chin ups and 2 pull ups.

My problem is, I haven’t taken any rest days at all, and I do arms everyday I kinda forgot that you’re not supposed to do the same exercises everyday but I’ve been doing it for a month.

I have gotten stronger, my arms are bigger and more veiny. I feel good, but I fear that I’m hurting my progress. It would be stupid if I continue my current routine right?

TL;DR : I’ve been working arms for a month without rest days. Is it stupid if I continue?

Edit: Thanks everyone for all the advice! Y’all sure did scare me, I had never even heard of tendinitis before. I’m going to rest for a few days and research a routine that I like. I’m also definitely going to up my calorie and protein intake. Thanks again!

 

[db9]

@bobgunn “Push, pull, hinge, squat” not “pull pull pull pull,” homie. It’s resistance training, not jelqing. Triceps is like 3 fifths of your arm so even if your goal is Johnny Bravo mirror muscles you gotta do some pushing too.

 

[redhead11]

@db9 Love it when I see jelqing references in the wild.

 

[ianf19]

@redhead11 lmao I had to Google this. Now that's in search history. And I've totally never done that. Nope.

 

[bobgunn]

@db9 thanks for this man

 

[ramlatus]

@db9 What's the hinge?

 

[moorelake7]

@ramlatus Movement pattern that mimics bending over to pick something up off the ground. Knees bend a little bit, butt sticks out. Dead lifting, kettlebell swing, etc.

 

[ramlatus]

@moorelake7 Ah, gotcha, thanks!

 

[jharekcarnelian]

@db9 AYOOOO

 

[richardblank]

@bobgunn Yes you are. You are on a fast track to developing tendinitis in your fingers, shoulders and especially elbows.

You must understand this - tendons do not feel painful until significant damage has occurred. You will not know until it is too late to easily heal. Many health scares in the fitness community are overblown (knees over toes, "perfect" form, etc), but overuse injuries are not one of those things.

Drop your frequency to 3x a week at most.

Not to mention that you should be training other muscles not just back and biceps.

It's good that you are motivated though!

 

[pirocks]

@richardblank Bruh I pray he don’t get elbow tendinitis. Took me 9-12 months to get rid of mine.

 

[shanegorry]

@pirocks How did you get rid of it ?

 

[pirocks]

@shanegorry I think strengthening all the supportive muscles helped a lot, I predominantly boulder so I do a lot of compression which is know to aggravate elbows so I worked on my back, shoulders and biceps more as those all support the tendons in the elbows and over time it went away though I still flare up once in a while if I don’t keep up with strength training

 

[unknownartist]

@pirocks Checks out. I had knee tendinitis for around 3 months. What my pt showed me were exercises to strengthen feet, ankles, and side glutes.

If the joint is weak, usually it is just compensating different weak links along the chain.

My elbows got better with better technique and more grip strength, if I look back at it.

 

[shanegorry]

@pirocks I ask cause I never suffered with it before but I used a pair of shitty bolt cutters and felt the tendons of my inner elbow strain a little
That was 9 years ago. Never felt it after. I was also boxing at the time. Never any issues

Fast forward to couple months back, started back down the gym and feel the same strain after hit the bags. Its quite a deep numbing pain.

I wanna get back into it but, its bit of a hindrance

 

[maxxfuture]

@shanegorry Bro, I've been dealing with tendonitis in both elbows, on both sides of each elbow, on and off for 20+ years. I even got surgery on one elbow which fixed it but started hurting on the other side of the elbow. I also used to wake up at night from the pain after a back/biceps day... brother, on god, I got some relatively cheap BPC-157, TB500 and GHK-CU from a Chinese lab and in about 3 weeks the pain went from 3 excruciatingly painful pull ups to 10 pull ups with almost no discomfort at all. I still feel it a little in some situations but the overall pain went down by solid 90-95%.

The first week pain got slightly worse because I injected very close the main source of the pain and the TB500 injection causes a slight swelling and tenderness to the touch but by week 3 I think my body got used to it and doesn't produce the same immune response to it. I continued for about a total of 6 weeks.

 

[dvdprkns]

@shanegorry When I stopped lifting free weights and went straight-up body weight, mine went away. Same with my back pain.

 

[khensu9]

@pirocks Yeah, I was a solid 5-6 months of recovery last year for elbow/tricep damage. All my fault, but still sucked.

 

[tatiana92]

@khensu9 Can you elaborate where it pained exactly in your elbows?

 

[khensu9]

@tatiana92 It was the distal tricep tendon on my left arm. Didn't impact my quality of life much but it totally destroyed my training for the year. Had to stop completely for 4 months, then slowly got back into things. I was training hard again by month 6-7. Now at month 12 and I don't need to be careful anymore.

I did the damage mostly by overtraining. Too high frequency and volume. Then I made the cardinal mistake I've done so many times by trying to continue training even when I knew I had a serious strain. The strain became a tear.