Three sessions a week, rings and a bar, everything logged. Strength has genuinely moved — dips with 10kg added, first clean chin-up hold — but the tape measure says 33cm on my upper arm the same as it did in November. I eat roughly at maintenance because I didn't want to gain fat. How long did visible size actually take for you, and did it need something I'm not doing?
My numbers, for calibration. I ran a slow surplus for fourteen months: roughly 250 calories over, gained about 0.25kg a month, went from 71kg to 75kg. Upper arm went 32.5cm to 34.5cm over that whole period, and about a third of that was fat I later lost.
So the honest timeline for visible arm size on bodyweight training, eating properly, is measured in years, not months. Nine months at maintenance is not a plateau, it's not having started yet.
It's slower than the internet says and faster than doing it twice. Ask me how I know.
0.25kg a month is far slower than anything I'd read, and that's probably why I've been treating maintenance as the safe option. Two years for two centimetres of arm is a very different plan to the one I had.
I did the other version wrong: went into a 700 calorie surplus because I wanted the nine-month timeline to be three. Gained 8kg in four months, maybe 2kg of it useful, and then spent five months dieting it off while my pull-ups got worse because I was heavier.
Net result after a year: same arms as if I'd done it slowly, plus ten months of being annoyed. Go slow. It's not a slogan, it's just cheaper.
Partly disagreeing with the surplus-only answer. Volume matters too and most bodyweight programmes are quietly low-volume for the arms specifically.
Count your weekly hard sets that hit the biceps and triceps directly. Mine was five. Five sets a week is a maintenance dose. Once I added ring curls and straight-bar dips as accessory work and got to twelve to fifteen sets, my sleeves changed within a few months at roughly the same bodyweight. Pull-ups alone are a back exercise that your arms attend.
No argument from me, both things are true. Volume with no surplus gets you a little; surplus with no volume gets you a softer version of the same arm. He's short on both.
Counted mine and it's four direct sets a week. That's embarrassing given how much I've been complaining. Adding ring curls twice a week and eating slightly more.
Strength precedes size by a long way. You are eating for the body you have. Add food or accept the trade, but don't blame the training style.
Also: stop measuring with a tape monthly. Real change is roughly a centimetre a year for most people not on their first six months, and daily variation in pump and hydration is bigger than that.
Photos in the same light every eight weeks tell you more, and they don't tempt you to re-measure on a Tuesday because the first number looked bad.
@boring_portfolio · 3mo ago
You answered your own question in the middle of the post. Eating at maintenance is a decision to keep your current amount of tissue, and it works — you kept it.
Strength went up because your nervous system got better at the movements, which is most of what happens in the first year regardless of training style. Size needs a surplus, and it doesn't need a big one. This isn't a bodyweight-versus-weights thing at all; a barbell trainee at maintenance would be sitting here with the same tape measure.
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