The Best Bicep Exercises
One thing that shines through in all of the over 2 decades that I’ve been an Austin personal trainer and gym owner, is that men want bigger arms. You always ask potential clients in their free consultation what it is they are looking to do health and fitness wise. Without a doubt, a literal 99% come back with “get bigger arms”. In order to get bigger arms, you have to analyze how the arms are constructed. For simplicity’s sake for this article, let’s focus on the muscles of the upper arm, though by no means does that imply that you should neglect the forearm muscles. You have tricep muscles, which are comprised of 3 muscles on the back of your arm, as well as the biceps, which are 2 muscles on the anterior, or front of your arm. If you want to get big arms, you must work both biceps and triceps, but since I’ve already divulged how to work the triceps, this article will focus solely on the biceps. So what are the best bicep exercises and how should they be performed?
The best bicep exercises, like as in any group of muscles, are going to be the ones that you personally, can perform safely and efficiently. That sounds like common sense dribble, but the actuality is that a lot of people are doing the seemingly innocuous things in the gym, such as a bicep curl, while exacerbating their imbalances. A good example of that would be a friend of mine named Chas who was doing concentration curls at my gym a couple of weeks back. Because he was so focused on the bicep contraction, the burning, as well as the muscle contractions, he was unaware that he was actually beginning each rep in his anterior deltoid. When I pointed this out and showed him the video clip of him doing it, he was astounded as he had not a clue that this was happening. It’s not limited to Chas, an experienced and strong lifter, who adheres to good form and techniques. Anyone, myself included, can breach good form unwittingly, so it is therefore a good idea to steer clear of exercises that you at least are aware may promote that loss of good technique.
The best bicep exercises are naturally going to vary from person to person because of their experience level, abilities, imbalances, equipment available at the time, and so on. Sometimes, you may have a great gym at your disposal, while at other times, you may have to get creative. For the sake of simplicity, let’s not envision a scenario wherein we’re out in the Peruvian Andes mountains and in need of a bicep routine. Let’s just pretend we’re at the usual gym where we go for the sake of simplicity, and leave high altitude, oxygen deprived bicep routines for another time.
Not just the best bicep exercises, but rather all bicep exercises, are simply mechanical curls that have the hand ascending up towards the anterior deltoid, palm facing down, up, or in between, and then a lowering of the aforementioned hand. Whether we use a barbell, a rope, handles attached to machines, dumbbells, etc, that will not change. It is therefore that the best bicep exercises will be the ones that I can not only perform efficiently, but ones that will give me the most benefit. When we are looking for potential benefit from an exercise, in this case, we are wanting to ascertain which exercise will recruit the most muscle fibers of the targeted area, which in this case, is the biceps. If you are wanting to get the most from your workout, you obviously must put in a good sustained effort throughout it’s duration. This means using the proper weights and using good techniques. While there are seemingly limitless ways to approach any workout, it’s impossible to tell you in this article what is best for you, sight unseen. We can, however, make some appropriate generalizations. I wholeheartedly recommend a thorough warm up, especially in men over 30, as we tend to be vulnerable to bicep tears and even ruptures as we age. From there I would start with the heaviest poundages, after having worked up to it in the warm up sets, of course, and get my set. I may use dumbbells, or I may use a barbell. If I’m feeling fancy, I may just use a traditional Olympic bar and curl it singlehandedly in order to get even more benefit, as a far greater amount of stability will be required from my working arm muscles. As you can see, there are any number of options. As far as sets and repetitions are concerned, the best bicep exercises, whatever they are for you, can’t be over or under done. Since they are a small muscle group, I tend to train 3 exercises and usually 3 or 4 sets per exercise. I’ve always been a proponent of fluctuating with poundages to focus on both fast as well as slow twitch muscle fibers, as well as to keep things fresh and interesting. It’s one thing to curl a set of 50 pound dumbbells 10 times, but it’s another to curl a set of 10 pounders 100 times! Whatever the best bicep exercises are for you is what you need to focus on consistently. If you want to branch out to other movements that are out of your reach currently, which I fully advocate doing for the aforementioned reasons of diversity, work on repairing the imbalances that are prohibiting you from doing them ahead of time, and then incorporate them into your regimen when it’s appropriate.
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Andy
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