Need tips for your bicep workout?
Struggling to find a way to illicit more change in the bicep while working out? I have exactly what you need. The best bicep workouts. I don’t want to talk too long before jumping into it but it is not always the isometric lifts that are what you should be focusing on. The bicep is an agonist muscle (works together) in many back movements giving us many ways of hitting the muscle. Let us see what you can implement into your bicep or arm day to get impressive gains.
1. Supinated (palms towards you) or (ANY) Grip Pullup
This is by far the best gainer for the bicep. This grip focuses more on the short head of the bicep but both heads are stressed here. I would say any form of pullup is going to be a go to workout if you want some mass on the front of your arm. Gymnasts are a perfect model to prove this is effective. These guys have massive biceps and strong backs. This workout can be loaded with a vest or waist chain plate holder if it ever gets too be easy. Too hard, and you can add a band to the pull up bar and use your knee to put on the band for assistance.
2. Preacher Curl
This one may not be agreed upon, but I find there are many people who like to bring the shoulders into a bicep curl. This method brings the entire body out of the equation and focuses on the bicep. I prefer the barbell or even EZ bar approach. This allows for more weight when using both arms as the bicep usually responds best to heavy loads. Make sure to avoid rolling your shoulders forward while sitting down on a preacher curl setup. Pinch the shoulders and use a grip that puts your elbows and wrists in-line with one another. You can always switch the grip up if you have a lot of similar bicep lifts with the same width for grip. Change it up and really get all the angles if that is the case.
3. Supinated (palms towards you) Barbell Row
I love to start out a day that has biceps in it with this amazing compound movement. You can take these lifts and accentuate the bicep by squeezing at the top of the reps and maintaining this squeeze and tension on the eccentric (extension in this case) movement. Loading the biceps with heavy weight is a great way to make gains if you have not been doing this in your normal workouts for biceps. Barbell rows are perfect because when it comes to the bicep, you can cheat the harder end reps and pump out these extra reps to really finish the sets.
4. Rotating Grip Dumbbell Curl
Think of your regular dumbbell curls except we are going to make them more effective here. What you are going to want to do is begin with a pronated or neutral grip (knuckles forward or knuckles outward to the side). From here you will rotate, as you curl, into a supinated grip at the top. Squeeze at the top and during the eccentric, focus on this tension. I would also add a slight forward lean into this lift. While sitting or standing, lean forward and pinch shoulders. This will get ride of the rest point at the top when you are holding directly against gravity. Many people use the bottom and top of reps to lose tension. With this method we avoid the top rest. Towards the bottom of the rep, pause before you get to full extension and, without momentum, contract again. A nasty pump is waiting for you with this one.
5. Rope Cable Curls
Finally on the list is the rope curl. I threw this in because it is always good to implement a constant tensioned lift with the cable machine. As mentioned above, tension can easily be lost. With a cable curl, such as the cable rope curl, there is no resting or loss of tension when properly executed. Set up your rope and take one step back from the machine with the rope in hand. Lean back a little and pinch the shoulder blades once more. This eliminates the possibility of resting at the top and bottom for the most part. Last thing to do is just, again, focus on the squeeze on the top of the rep and as you extend. Depending on your bicep lifts for that day you can actually extend to the end of your range of motion and then squeeze your triceps to know you are properly extended. Without momentum, repeat reps for your set. I like to do this with some of my biceps lifts just to make sure you are hitting the full range of motion once and a while. If you have never done this, you will find that there is a bit of the bicep that may appear and swell as result of the extension and full range movement that wasn’t being hit before.
Overall
The key to growing the bicep, or any muscle group for that matter, is changing things up when your body adapts. This does not mean do something different every time. After a program or a few months it is good to change the angles and ways you workout these muscles. Biceps respond well to heavy lefts and therefore I included some in my top list.
You can take aspects I mentioned above in any of the top 5 and interchange them with any bicep lift. Angles and load can be applied to any lift for that matter. The bicep makes up the lesser percentage of the arm so if you are looking to increase overall mass, it may be the triceps you want to focus. Check out my blog for that post as well.
In general thought, I hope this was helpful and you can use this information to go kickstart your workouts to increase mass and strength.