Biceps Curls: Gain An Inch On Each Arm In 30 Days
Biceps Curls – Background
Biceps Curls
All over the UK, there are people in the local gyms doing biceps curls. How many of these people do them right… probably less than 1 in 10! The majority of people in the gym, when doing weights, only train their arms and chest, i.e. curls and bench press. These routines are doomed to failure for two reasons:
- Such unbalanced routines will only give results for the first couple of weeks, then your body will stop further muscle growth, to stop you getting out of balance (unless you are on steroids and then you will just look weird); and
- People who do these sort of routines don’t know what they are doing and usually try to lift far too heavy weights, meaning their form is ridiculous. You will see people initiating the standing curls with their back and shoulders, by swaying back and forth, swinging their arms and by arching their backs.
I don’t want to say too much bad about these people, cos this is how I started training myself! I just want to let people know you can do much better.
Biceps Curls – What Is Required For Big Defined Arms and Biceps?
The biceps are a small group of muscles, but are the best by far for posing. They can look very impressive when you:
- Develop the whole arm
- Reduce bodyfat below 12%
Biceps Curls – Train Smart
The best biceps exercise for the biceps, when performed correctly is standing barbell biceps curls. See below:
- Basic advice
- Start light
- Increase weight by 2.5% per week
- Perform slow controlled, smooth reps, taking 2 seconds to lift and 3-4 seconds to lower the weight
- Perform no more than 3-4 sets on the biceps, no more than twice per week
- Intermediate Advice
- Either train biceps at the beginning of your routine, when they are fresh, or train them at the end of your lower body workout. All back exercises require biceps involvement and all chest exercises require involvement of the delts, which will reduce your ability to lift as heavy weights on your curls afterwards.
- Advanced Advice
- Initiate the movement with your biceps, not your back or any other muscle in your body. Be totally relaxed, but tight and focus on your biceps doing all of the work. Do not pull your chin down, it leads to neck injuries.
- Pause very slightly, i.e. 0.1 seconds at the top and bottom of the movement, whilst maintaining the tension. Time under tension (tut) for each set should be about 40 seconds – pausing between reps makes things easier and is a big no-no, it’s meant to be difficult!
- Super Advanced Advice
- Superset: Get a barbell with 75% of your normal curling weight and place it next to the pull up bar. Do a 1 minute underhand, close grip pullup, taking 30 seconds to lift to the top and 30 seconds to lower back down, focusing on your biceps and constant tension. As soon as you finish the 1 minute pullup, pickup the barbell as fast as you can and do as many standing barbell curls as you can, with 2-3 assisted reps if you have a spotter, maintaining good form, but a slightly faster rep cadence of 1 second up and 1 second down. Be as smooth as you can on the pullups and get your training partner to call out every 5 seconds, so you can time the movement correctly. Perform this superset at the beginning of your next 3 workouts, over a period of not less than 7 days and watch your biceps grow!
Biceps: Develop the Whole Arm For Bigger Arms
As well as standing barbell curls, there are other good exercise, such as incline seated dumbbell curls, concentration curls and preacher curls. The idea is to do as little sets as possible, to avoid over training the arms (which can result in reduced muscle size and strength), but to train at extremely high intensity – that doesn’t mean fast, it means controlled and slow, going past failure and doing half reps and forced reps.
As well as the exercises above, you should do 1-2 sets of standing reverse EZ curls, to target your forearms and your side biceps, aka biceps brachialis. Developing this muscle results in a large orange shaped muscle on the outside of your arm, between your biceps and your triceps and can increase the size of your arms by between 1/2 and 1 inch.
The biggest muscle in your arms is your triceps, so for better shaped, bigger arms, you need to work this muscle in the same way as your biceps. Train heavy, high intensity with good form. Personally, my favourite overall triceps exercise is the weighted dips, as you can do as many forced negative only reps as you want, by simply standing on the bar and controlling the negative phase. Mix skull crushers and close grip presses into your routine and altogether, followed 100%, this advice will give you big strength gains, as well as size and definition.
Biceps Curls, Big Arms and Your Diet
Your progress when following all of the above will be severely limited if you aren’t giving your body the raw materials needed for muscular development, i.e. sufficient calories and protein every 2 to 3 hours during the day, every day, along with 8-10 glasses of water per day and 8-9 hours sleep per night. There are many articles about diets in our blog, so please check them out. Your diet will also allow you to reduce body fat, to make those new muscles visible.
Follow all of the advice here, use protein shakes 3 times per day and be consistent for 30 days. You should gain an inch on each arm… remember take your measurements before and after, first thing on a morning and let me know your results.
Regards,
Martin
