Bicep Training

 

Last week I spoke about back training, and how you can optimize your sessions with respect to your back. Today I’ll be following this theme but instead with biceps.

 

Like the other muscle groups we’ve spoken about, it’s important to bear in mind the makeup of the given muscle. For biceps, they’re primarily fast twitch, meaning they won’t require large amounts of training volume.

 

Bicep training is interesting because it’s a muscle that’s used secondarily in our back training. This is because the primary purpose of the bicep is to perform elbow flexion. Or, to move your wrist closer to your shoulder.  This means that whenever we do something like a row, our biceps will be recruited.

 

This is important to keep in mind because it further reduces the amount of training volume an individual will need.

 

Given this information our training volume goals are as follows:

 

Maintenance Volume:

Four sets per week

 

Minimum Effective Volume:

At least eight sets of direct bicep work per week

                This means not including any back exercises that may use our biceps.

 

Maximum Adaptive Volume:

Somewhere between four and 12 sets

 

Maximum Recoverable Volume:

This is going to depend on how many times per week you train biceps, but I’d avoid going over 20 sets per week unless you aren’t getting sore.

 

I’m now going to include some exercises that I use in my own training.

Seated Dumbbell Curl

                I like doing these seated because I feel that I can focus on my biceps more, be sure to make sure you’re now moving your torso, and that you’re controlling the eccentric portion of the repetition.

 

Incline Dumbbell Curl

                Preformed on an incline bench, this exercise does a great job of stretching the bicep for large amounts of muscle stimulus.

 

Barbell Curl

                This is a tried-and-true bicep exercise that’s great for beginners. Make sure to limit any sort of swinging and control the eccentric portion of the movement.