The biceps is a muscle consisting of two heads: long and short. All basic biceps exercises involve curling your elbow under load: with free weights or on a machine. This changes the range of motion, body position and rotation of the forearm, which provides a different effect on the muscle.
Choose 1-2 exercises and add them to your workouts. But don't always use the same ones: alternating different options will help load both heads and stimulate muscle growth.
Concentrated biceps curls
The American Council on Exercise (ACE) ACE Study Reveals Best Biceps Exercises found that the concentrated curl activated the biceps by 97%, better than all other exercises.
Sit on a bench, take a dumbbell in your right hand, and rest your left hand on your left knee. Press the triceps of your right hand against your inner thigh. Bend your elbow to lift the dumbbell, then lower it back down and repeat.
Try to press the working part of the body closer to the pelvis, and not to the knee. When you move your arm in this way, at the extreme point it automatically turns outward, which puts even more stress on the biceps.
Choose an appropriate weight for 8-10 reps: you should feel heavy at the end of the set. Do 3-5 approaches.
Tips and common mistakes
- Install the equipment. Don't be afraid to ask your coach for advice or help. Watch yourself in the mirror. If you train at home, watch the video training.
- When lifting barbells or dumbbells, do not use other muscles to help yourself. Shoulders should be motionless. Cheating is only possible with extreme repetitions.
- Breathe correctly, exhale forcefully.
- Don't chase the scales, don't injure yourself beyond measure. Learn to do the exercise correctly before adding weight.
- The main thing for training your biceps is the ability to feel it and contract it correctly. Learn to do this and you will be able to process it better.
- Sign up for a gym now or buy a barbell. Take care of yourself. You can’t make 40 cm biceps at home.
- Prefer working with free weights to working on machines.
- Rest well after training, sleep 9-10 hours. While you sleep, the mass grows.
Crossover biceps curls
Attach the handle to the lower block, grab it with a direct grip. Bend your elbow and lift your forearm while turning your palm toward you. Return to starting position and repeat.
You can attach a straight handle and perform the exercise with both hands at the same time. However, the work of only one of them allows you not only to bend the forearm, but also to turn the arm outward, which increases the load on the biceps.
Perform 3-5 sets of 8-12 reps for each arm.
Triceps: structure, training features
Let's start with the triceps, because it is more important than the biceps in terms of size and number of bundles (heads).
The triceps is a “horseshoe-shaped” muscle consisting of three heads. All three heads narrow and pass into a common ligament, which is attached in the elbow area, so in any exercises that involve the triceps, ALL HEADS work at once! But the degree of this work will depend on the mechanics of the exercise, because the other edge of each of the three heads is attached in different places. Triceps:
- Lateral head (external);
- The long head (inner head) attaches to the back of the scapula and therefore requires the arm to be pulled back to be fully activated;
- The medial head (middle head or small ulnar head) is located next to the elbow and therefore does most of the work during slight extensions. Located between the outer (most part) and inner heads (hence the name - middle or medial). Very wide and very short therefore has a longer tendon, which we perceive as a cavity in the U-shape of the triceps.
The triceps “ligament” (which unites all the bundles) can be short or long. These are features of genetics. If such a ligament is short, then the triceps is longer and more massive. If the ligament is long, then the triceps is short and peaked.
Mesomorphs and endomorphs often have long and massive triceps, while ectomorphs often have short and peaked triceps. In the first case, the mass grows faster, and in the second case, the muscles look more aesthetically pleasing.
SECRET: with light loads (weights), most of the work is done by the middle (medial) head and to a small extent by the outer (lateral head), because the location of the middle head is most convenient - it is located closest to the elbow joint. In such a situation, the internal (long) head almost does not work.
But the greater the load you use in the exercise, the more the others, in addition to the middle head, are forced to engage: the outer and long (inner) heads.
I repeat once again: during arm extensions, all heads of the triceps work simultaneously! If you see very juicy “peak” triceps in one person, then this is largely due to his parents and not a specialized program. But how to develop existing muscles so that there are no failures? To do this, it is important to understand some nuances.
The degree of ease of engaging the triceps heads in the work:
- the middle (medial) head steals most of the load, especially in light movements;
- the external (lateral) head helps the middle one if the load increases;
- the internal (long) head turns on reluctantly and last of all if the load is large and you move your arm correctly (more on this below).
What does it mean to “retract your arm correctly”? The fact is that the long head is attached differently (to the blade) than the other two, so for its active operation several features are required. Failure to do so will lead to the lag of this part of the triceps. So…
Secret: to engage the long head of the triceps you need to:
- abduction of the arm upward (above the head). Exercises: French overhead presses;
- During extensions, engage the shoulder joint in the work. Exercise: for example, the French bench press of a barbell from behind the head, and not from the nose, i.e. our shoulder is under load;
- pressing the elbows to the body - shifts the load on the long head, spreading the elbows to the sides shifts the load on the outer head;
- Supination of the hand - shifts the load to the long head of the triceps, and pronation of the hand shifts the load to the outer head.
We recommend Underground 168. How long should you train in the gym
? While doing isolated exercises for any pushing muscle groups (triceps, chest, deltoids, quadriceps), you CANNOT CHEAT! Those. You can’t do jerks and pushes using other muscles to throw the weight.
Why? Because the work occurs in one joint at a fracture. Jerking in such a situation is 100% an injury sooner or later. By the way, this is why it is important to do isolated exercises after the basic ones (you are more warmed up and your joints are better prepared to work without injury). In general, I will tell you this, 50% of the injuries that I often see are variations of French presses with heavy weights! Those. any triceps exercises that involve work in only one joint (the elbow joint) are very dangerous.
RECOMMENDATION: load your triceps well with basic exercises (close-grip presses and parallel bars, first of all) and only after that you can do isolated exercises, because your triceps will already be tired and you will need lighter, and therefore less traumatic, weights to complete the workout.
The best exercises to train your triceps:
- Bench press with a narrow grip (upside down is even better);
- dips;
- French bench press (upside down);
- standing French barbell press (from behind the head);
- extension on a vertical block.
Reverse grip pull-ups
This exercise is not isolated: it loads not only the biceps, but also other muscles of the shoulders and back. Despite this, these pull-ups are very effective: according to ACE, they activate the biceps by 80%.
Grab the bar with a reverse grip, lower your shoulders, squeeze your shoulder blades together - this is the starting position. Pull yourself up so that your head is below the level of the horizontal bar, and then lower yourself to the starting position. Don't pull your chin up trying to reach the bar: your neck should remain straight.
Do 3-5 sets of 10 reps without weight. If you can't finish the last sets, then do them point-blank. If you can do 10 repetitions, then try weighting - a belt with a chain and a 5 kilogram weight plate. Perform 3-5 sets of weights at point-blank range.
How to train properly
Having mastered the technique of performing each exercise, we will learn what to do next with these options - what and how much to do, depending on the goals.
How many repetitions to perform and what weight to choose?
- In order to gain weight, preference should be given to exercises with free weights - barbells and dumbbells. Optimal number of repetitions: 8-12. It is important to perform each approach to failure, that is, until the muscles feel a burning sensation and are completely tired by the end of the approach. The weight of the weight in this case will be 60-80% of 1 RM. That is, if you can lift a biceps barbell with a weight of about 50 kg at one time, then the work on the mass will be 60-80% of this weight. But the weight is also selected experimentally.
- To increase strength, a set of 4-6 repetitions is suitable. Free weight exercises are also needed here, but not those in which the biceps are completely isolated, but those where cheating can be used. Such strength exercises will be safer. For strength, a weight of 80 to 90% of 1RM is used.
- For relief and sharpening the peak of the biceps, as well as for weight loss, you need to perform 14-20 repetitions. In this case, both heavy and isolation techniques are suitable, including: concentrated curls, variations on the Scott bench and crossover. This weight can be selected experimentally so that at the end of a multi-repetition approach you feel a burning sensation and fatigue in the muscles. But at the same time, the weight for such a load will be approximately 30-50% of 1 RM.
How many approaches should I do?
- To increase mass, 3-4 approaches will be enough.
- For strength – 5-6 approaches.
- For weight loss and relief, the same – 3 or 4. But depending on the training style and the number of exercises, for example in CrossFit or circuit complexes, you can use from 5 to 10 sets.
Incline Dumbbell Raises
In this exercise, the hands with dumbbells are located behind the line of the body, so biceps curls are performed with greater amplitude.
Sit on an incline bench, grab dumbbells and lower your arms freely to your sides. From this position, bend your elbows and lift the dumbbells to shoulder level. Lower them back down and repeat.
Do 3-5 sets of 8-10 reps each.
Newbie problems
All novice athletes ask the question: “how to pump up biceps, what are the most effective basic exercises?” But if you do it quickly, it leads to troubles and injuries. It takes time to achieve results.
For a quick effect, someone injects special drugs into the muscles to get relief forms, but for a while. As a result, the pharmacological substance will be present under the skin, but not the muscle. If sterility is broken during the administration of the drug, instead of a beautiful biceps you will get an abscess, which can only be eliminated surgically.
It is impossible to quickly pump up your biceps, except in cases of serious artificial stimulation. It is carried out precisely by medications on which you need to constantly sit, crippling the body. Therefore, when looking for information on how to pump up your biceps, you should not pay attention to “magic” remedies. It’s better to start going to the gym and accustom your body to physical activity. Accept that the results will come gradually, but will stay with you forever if you keep in shape and don’t let your body go to waste.
To get a sculpted figure, there is one way - we pump up the biceps on our own, using the body's potential to 100%. The data below will help you make your biceps grow naturally. The advantages of this include:
· no harm to the body;
· volumes remain for a long time, even if you temporarily stop training.
Don't cheat constantly
Thinking about how to train the biceps muscles well, everyone wants to take as much weight as possible so that the muscles feel the load and work well, and many succumb to this weakness, forgetting about the technique of movement. They picked up decent weights and lifted them, puffing like a locomotive and not noticing that many muscles of the body are involved in the lifting.
If, after hanging weights or taking dumbbells, you can’t do 1-2 repetitions purely on technique, using cheating right away, definitely reduce the weight, otherwise you won’t pump up your biceps well, more so your back and deltoids.
Always use the weight at which you can perform at least 6 repetitions with perfect technique, and then 2-3 repetitions using cheating, so you can pump up your arms well with additional load at the end.
