This Article Will Take Your Bicep Training To The Next Level.

How to build huge arms

Everybody wants big biceps, but almost nobody is willing to put in the time and effort to learn their anatomy, correct technique, and other best practices for optimal bicep training. This article will summarize all the science and useful information you need to have if you want to grow massive arms.

Bicep anatomy

There are actually two muscle groups that make up the bulk of the front-upper arm volume.

Biceps Brachii

This is the muscle group that most people refer to as the biceps. It consists of short and long heads, which differ in their attachment. The long head crosses the humerus (upper arm bone) and attaches to the top of the scapula bone, while the short head originates from the front of the scapula (shoulder blade).

Brachialis

This muscle only crosses the elbow joint and lies underneath the bicep closer to the bone. It won't be directly visible even if it's well-trained, but it will push up on the bicep heads from beneath giving them a fuller look.

Function

The biceps actually is not the most powerful flexor of the forearm. Even though it is the most prominent muscle of the upper arm, it supports and stabilizes the deeper (and stronger) brachialis muscle whenever lifting or lowering the forearm.

The main functions of the biceps are elbow flexion and supination (outward rotation) of the forearm.

Programming tips.

The main goal with any muscle group should be to maximize the stimulus to fatigue ratio, SFR for short. It's used to describe how much stimulus an exercise provides for a unit of fatigue. If you are training for muscle growth, you want to limit fatigue and maximize the stimulus. As an example, conventional deadlifts have a higher fatigue debt than RDLs and provide less stretch-mediated stimulus for the hamstrings and glutes so switching them out is a no-brainer. They provide less stimulus while being more fatiguing for the whole body.

Bicep training follows the same rules, you want to find the exercises that leave your muscle feeling trained and weaker (but not overtrained), give you the best pump and don't trash your joints or the central nervous system.

Following these rules, a cheat curl would be an awful exercise for bicep growth. It doesn't place much tension on the target muscle and provides almost no pump while being extra fatiguing due to large weight requirements and stress on muscles that were not meant to perform the exercise.

Rep ranges.

We've all heard of the mythical best hypertrophy rep range, 8-12 reps. But it's certainly not the only one that works. Your best bet for finding a truly amazing rep range is just to explore and see what works best.

Let's say you always trained in the 8-12 rep range, but it started giving you some elbow pain, and the 16+ range just didn't allow you to get close to failure because of the pain from metabolites. But when you begin to explore the 12-16rep range, suddenly your elbow pain disappears, you can feel every inch of your bicep burning and you get an amazing pump.

Great, you just found your golden rep range. The majority of your bicep training should be done here. From my experience, I can say that the 12-16 rep range will, in fact, be the best for most people. 8-12 might give you unwanted elbow pain because of the sheer forces acting on the elbow from heavier loads. But if you feel a great SFR and no achy joints in lower ranges, it's perfectly fine to train with them.

The range you train in will also depend on the exercise, but if you just follow the SFR model you'll find what works best. Start in the 12-16 range and experiment.

Volume.

Volume will need to be highly individual, however here are the guidelines you can start from:

MEV (minimum effective volume) is on average around 8 sets/week. This is the minimum amount of bicep training you should aim for if you want to grow your biceps as opposed to maintaining them.

MAV, maximum adaptive volume 14-20 sets/week. This is the most amount of volume your biceps can successfully recover from and adapt to. The word "adapt" is important here because you can recover from even more work but it won't have the same effect.

If you don't want to prioritize biceps, then training around your MEV will be a good idea. You'll still have a lot of recovery potential and effort to redistribute over other muscle groups. However, if you want the best bicep gains possible you should take it up to the MAV, to ensure that your arms will grow at a maximal pace.

You can also find your best volume through trial and error. If you never feel sore in the bicep department then it's safe to say you can up your bicep volume and/or intensity.

Frequency.

Biceps are a small muscle group, so they can recover fast in comparison to other muscles like quads. They also don't accrue much mechanical damage, which speeds up the recovery.

1x/ week frequency for biceps just isn't going to work. Any gains you stimulate will be washed away before you train again. 2x/ week is a minimum for growth, but if you really want to focus on bringing up your biceps, the optimal range for most people will be 3-4x/ week. Remember that if you increase your frequency, you'll have to decrease the session volume to avoid overtraining.

Lastly, a mistake that can be seen way too often is putting too much effort into bicep training. I know it's counterintuitive when in a post about bicep training I tell you to put less effort into it. But this mistake can be detrimental to your progress in other areas of training and even in growing your arms. It can come in three different shapes:

An important caveat, even if you want to prioritize your biceps, don't forget about other muscle groups which are even more important to how you look (yes, biceps aren't everything). Try to distribute your efforts more evenly across all important muscle groups.

Exercise selection

Because the long head crosses the shoulder joint, it's best targeted with exercises that put your upper arm in extension and the elbow behind the body. For example incline dumbell curls. The long head will also be involved in stabilizing the shoulder (e.g in a bench press), which might make it more important for powerlifters.

The short head will be more active in exercises that place the elbow in front of the body, as well as in those that require active supination (inward forearm rotation). Solid short head exercises are e.g. spider curls or preacher curls.

Good bicep training should aim to train both heads, so combining exercises where the elbow is behind and in front of the body is a good idea. You can also throw in exercises with elbows at the body level, they will develop both heads and use the greater loads, which means they are a good choice as a first bicep exercise.

Don't forget to add some work for the brachialis, traditional underhand-grip movements do little to target it, however, neutral-grip movements like hammer curls are effective in isolating the brachialis. Hammer curls will also target your forearm musculature (e.g brachioradialis), which is important for keeping a good, balanced look.

In the next part, I'll show you a few example bicep workouts, and the most optimal exercises with technique cues and instructions. If you liked this article, send it to a friend with small arms. And if this was sent to you by a friend, well, now you at least know why.