Do you feel that either pull-ups or push-ups are a significant exercise to enhance muscle size in the arms?

-- Boolean

To a point, Boolean. Push-ups and pull-ups are all someone needs to work the major upper body muscle groups. Members of the US Armed Forces, especially the Army and the Marines, still depend on these two exercises, along with crunches and running, to stay in shape when they're stationed in a locale without a training facility. If you've seen or tried a Gravitron in a gym, you know that it's based on the same concept, but substitutes dips for push-ups.

The problem with using just push-ups and pull-ups for upper body training will arise as your strength plateaus. With any exercise, whether you're using your own body weight, free weights or machines, if the resistance doesn't increase, your muscles won't be overloaded and the stimulus these fibers need to grow in size will be missing. Think about it: if you work up to three or four sets of 25 push-ups and three or four sets of 15 pull- ups, how hard can each repetition be? You'd build local muscular endurance, but you wouldn't be any stronger. Say a person doing bicep curls can do three sets of 20 reps with 15 pounds: wouldn't you think they could probably do one set of 10 reps with 20 pounds? That's what they would need to do to make their biceps grow stronger and bigger. However, there are a few ways you can increase the resistance of your pull-ups and push-ups.

One way is to elevate your feet while doing push-ups. Start with your feet on a step at the bottom of a stair or a low step stool. Raising your feet higher will make you work against gravity, thereby increasing the resistance. Work up to the point where you can do your push-ups with your feet on a chair. Note: The higher your feet, the more you'll work your shoulders, so mix in some flat push-ups to make sure your chest gets a workout, too.

There's a belt/harness that you can wear around your waist and attach barbell plates to. This will add resistance while doing pull-ups and dips. It's an old fashioned he-man device that you might be able to find from one of those mail order firms that advertise in weightlifting and body building magazines if your local sporting goods stores only sell sissy stuff like weightlifting gloves.

A weighted vest will allow you to add resistance for both pull-ups and push-ups. A decent one will let you remove and add poundage as you see fit.

So, I think you can get stronger and add a little bit of size with these two exercises. They're exercises that can be done anywhere and that's obviously a plus. But if big gains in size and strength are what you're after, I think you're still gonna have to pump some iron, Boo!

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