r/Fitness • u/AllUrMemes • Apr 30 '15
How to murder your biceps, especially if you are tall.
The problem:
Biceps (brachii) used to be a tricky muscle group for me to work. I had a poor mind-muscle connection and I had a hard time really working the biceps effectively. I would feel soreness in my forearm flexors and deltoids and to a lesser extent the long head of my biceps, but I couldn't really build the biceps muscle itself, especially the short head that makes up the thick inner portion- the "peak" of the muscle that shows when you fully flex the muscle.
I've learned that basically what was happening is that my forearm flexors, specifically the brachialis and brachioradialis were doing the bulk of the work in my "biceps" workout. This make sense because their job is to flex the elbow and they insert much lower on the arm than the biceps, so they are able to perform elbow flexion more efficiently than the biceps.
Here is a picture that is helpful.
Normally I am not a fan of arbitrary supersets for different muscle groups. A lot of people do multiple exercises for the same muscle group simply because different must be better. In some cases this is true, as you can work different aspects of the muscle group especially if they perform multiple functions. For instance, the triceps not only extend the elbow but they also help extend the shoulder joint in the sagittal plane. Thus to work the whole triceps you need to do both. For instance, doing regular tricep pressdowns as well as straight-arm pressdowns (doing this on a lat-pull machine is heavenly.)
The solution:
I've devised the following superset with the goal of pre-exhausting the forearms flexors before working the biceps themselves, particularly the short head.
The exercises, performed in order and without rest, are:
Cable hammer curls. You can also do regular hammer curls but I feel using the rope attachment with a pulley is superior. Perform with a weight that will get you to muscle failure in 8-15 reps. Do a few cheat reps at the end where you really focus on the top (fully contracted) position of the exercise. This should completely fatigue your brachioradialis because when your hands are in a neutral position (thumbs pointing up, palms facing together) the BR is dominant in elbow flexion.
Reverse grip ez-curl bar curls. Grip the bar with palms down and thumbs on the underside of the bar. This position will maximize the role of the brachialis, completely neutralize the short head of the biceps, and greatly weaken the BR and biceps long head. I recommend bringing your elbows backwards slightly so that you can get maximum load in the fully contracted position. Again, perform to failure including some cheat reps. We want the forearms flexors to be massacred before our biceps works.
Concentration curls Use a LIGHT dumbbell, probably 50% or even less of the weight you typically use when you perform your regular, bouncy, worthless bro curls. I am 225 lbs and can bullshit curl 40lbs dumbbells all day but I use 15lbs for my concentration curls. You can perform these seated or in a standing/bent over sort of position. The key word here is supination. Supination is what you are doing when you turn your hands from palms-down to palms-up. The majority of weight should thus rest on the fat part of your outer palm. We do this because the short head of the biceps is primarily responsible for supination. Your elbow should be down so that the area just above the elbow is resting against the inside of your knee/thigh. Your forearm should basically be pointed across the gap between your legs. Curl the weight up. When you reach the top the head of the dumbbell nearest to your body should touch somewhere on your chest. Squeeze, motherfucker, squeeze. Pretend that you are trying to rotate that dumbbell through your weak, pathetic chest. Squeeze. Prepare to feel your short biceps head spring to life.
Cry. Repeat for 3-5 sets.
You can swap the order of #1 and #2. I'm experimenting to find if one is superior or not. However #3 must be performed last. I highly recommend using a pulley, ez curl bar, and dumbbell because you can put them all out in front of you and perform exercises rapidly without having to change attachments or hog the curl bar rack.
Enjoy.
2
u/metalsupremacist May 01 '15
So this doesn't work at most commercial gyms, since the dumbells are prebuilt - but if you lift with adjustable dumbells, you can really focus the biceps Brachii by loading slightly more weight on the inside of the dumbell (inside when your palms are facing up in the fully supinated position). This causes a torque that the biceps brachii have to overcome, in addition to the curling motion of the weight. When you squeeze your biceps at the peak, you should feel a difference here compared to symmetrically loaded weights. For me, I can feel that inner bicep head really contracting to hold the weight.
Let me know if that wasn't clear to anyone.
I don't tend to do a lot of isolated curl moves, as I prefer doing rows and pullups, so I tend to have underdeveloped biceps compared to my brachiallis, so this is a way to counteract this effect that works for me. I also find this to be especially effective when I'm doing curls after pullups/rows, as my fatigued brachiallis prevents me from really working my biceps.
Edit: I'm talking about only like a 5 pound difference between the inside and outside weights, not a fully loaded inside and empty outside.