Now that I remember
 

In high school, (and even these days in the gym), I have seen people with pretty impressive biceps. I generally ask them what has worked for them, and what hasn't, to help formulate my own program, and the responses have always been encouraging, and helpful, but pretty much everyone (in person) recommends that I do concentration curls, and other types of Iso. exercises, but they don't know they are Iso's. I read 0311's thread on The Death of Bodybuilding, and it makes perfect sense. I wonder though: how have these other people built up their arms using senseless iso. lifts? Roids?

Everybody's different. And not matter how many curls they recommend you don't need to assume that there aren't many other factors that contribute to their arm growth. They just aren't really aware of them. It's really important to realize that people can and do get results despite not really understanding what they are doing and what may be more efficient. Just because a guy has big arms are is really big in general does not mean that they can really give you good info...even if they DID do it naturally.

Also I think it is important to think about the difference between immediate gratification and long term results. I don't think it is really true that most people will bring their arms in particular up to their true size limit by JUST using compound movements. Although you can grow them quite a lot. But those iso's early on have much less impact than the big movements. And those iso's later on will be able to be done with much more weight and they simply will do more than they would when you are a beginner and using tiny little weights for curls and such.

There is a big difference between starting out and doing some curls with, say 10 pounds in each hand for high reps rather than paying your dues with the big movements, building up your strength (including core strength) and then when you decide to specialize with biceps (or whatever) you are rocking 70 pounds or even more barbell curls for reps.

It really depends on the person how big their arms get without a lot of isolations. For some it may be the difference between 16 inches and 18 inches and for others it could be 18 inches and above.

It's not like most people do NO isolations. There are actual reasons to do an isolation other than size, for instance. If you do a lot of tricep isolation for bench assistance, for instance it can help do do some curls to balance things at the elbow.

Eric really hit the nail on the head with this one. For myself, I used a lot of heavy compound movements which not only built overall strength, but gave me size as well.

I do use some isolations (curls, etc) but that is used as an accessory to the compounds and mainly to ensure I do not develop imbalances.

Good luck.

just to add some personal experience in here. I used to blast my arms with isolations when i was younger. Even through college my arms didnt grow much, went from 16.25" to around 17" or so in 4 years.

It wasnt until I dropped most of the isolations that they got bigger. They are now slightly over 18".

Well, I take part of it back. Iso. exercises aren't senseless. They are just MUCH better suited to pro/advanced lifters/BBers.

I don't think anything is ever completely senseless. It's just either overused, underused, or misused depending on the person, there level of training, and their particular goals.

Yeah, there you go.