Well...a couple of years of weight training in my early twenties, I am now ended up with huge muscular arms which I hate. As a road cyclist, I hate being my jersey so tight at biceps and not so comfortable.

Is there any type of exercise I could do/not do to make my arms smaller (well...to put it simply, I would like my arms to be like Michael Rasmussen's)? Any thoughts?

nothing is going to happen over night. when you do lift, lift for muscular endurance and not hypertrophy. i would say that is a good start.

are you new to road cycling?

yeah, high reps at low weight for your arms, pecs, delts, lats, and abs. Most of your upper body really.

or not lift at all for a few months and let your arm muscle atrophy then do the above a few times a week to keep everything toned.

hmmm. I would guess that by doing high reps on the arms it would not decrease muscle mass. High reps like in the range of 15-22 or so does hypertrophy the muscle. More than reps of under 5. In fact doing high weight of reps under 5 will pack on the strength and not the size.

If you gained your muscle through weightlifting, it is probably type 2 muscle fibers that make up most of your muscle. Which in your arms you don't really use for cycling. Type 2 is for quick bursts, like sprints, or clean and jerk type weightlifting. By doing high reps on your arms you will increase the amount of type 1 fibers in your muscle. Which is the type of muscle endurance athletes use. Which being said, they don't need much for the arms. I have never intentionally shrunk the size of my muscle. My advice would be put some plaster casts on your arms for a couple months. Or don't weight lift anymore... I would be interested if anyone has ever successfully gone out and lost muscle on one part of body successfully? like the arms...

i'll take 'em.

You say that you built up your arms in your middle 20's? I am guessing that was at least a few years ago.

From my experience (push-ups and arm curls sporatically) I find that if I stop exercising my arms, the built up muscles disappear after about 6 months.

If you have stopped lifting weights, you must be doing something else to maintain arm mass.

Are you a lumberjack? If so, get a job in an office!

Yep. 5 years to be exact. No..I am not a lumber jack...I am a lumber jackass :D ...

I do ocassional push-ups, when I feel like it...and carrying my dog when I gave him a bath..nothing much other than that. I will try not using my arms as much as I can and stop doing workouts that uses my bi and tri extensively...I 'll post how I am doing in about a couple of months. :) Thanks!

Go to a sleeveless jersey or a mountain bike jersey (they should be bagier). Better yet, I'll trade you my un-muscular arms for your muscular ones :D

What an odd wish? Do you race? As a weightlifter & biker I do not understand your desire unless you are getting paid to ride and the weight is really hurting your riding. I can't understand wanting little arms. I understand hating the extra weight while climbing (as I do) but there IS life off of the bike. I do not mean to offend you or those with little arms, so please don't take it that way.

Go to bodybuilding.com and post that. It'll be fun to see some responses you get. It'll be like me asking how I can get my heart and lungs to decrease in performance.

Continue doing heavy leg workouts (squats, hills, intervals), consume 500calories under your maintenance (1 pound a week weight loss average) and don't work your arms at all. Your body would love to get rid of all that calories expensive upper body muscle.

:roflmao:

then, a day or two later ask about cycling steroids and see if they remember you asking about arms

hehehe

Yeah, best bet is to not do any exercises on the arms at all. They will eventually wither away to be just the miminum size and strength needed for the minimal loads they endure. Then do a lot of endurance rides pushing the edge of the bonk to burn up muscle-tissue. Don't eat enough afterwards to have the body take apart muscle to replenish glycogen stores. However, do weight-workouts on the legs to keep those muscles built-up.