Gaining Arm Muscle: Routine for Big, Strong Biceps

Powerful biceps are an indication of hard work in the gym and hard muscle discipline.

In addition to giving you an appearance of strength and harmony (if you have developed the rest of your body evenly) they look great on a muscular body. Here we offer you all the details so that your biceps session will perform to the maximum.

We must remember that the biceps is a small muscle; this implies that it is not necessary to subject it to excessive loads to make it grow, but that the strict form and the correct combination of exercises will be more than enough to make your biceps stand out.

It is common to train the biceps between one and two times a week. If you are already an advanced concurrent to the gym, you can train it twice, but taking care not to fall into over training.

It is usual to combine biceps training with triceps on arms day in the gym, and also give it a little push combining it with either pecs or adding them to back day (if you have not decided to combine lats with trapeziums) .

BASIC biceps routine on arms day

• Dumbbell Biceps Curl: 3 sets of 10 reps each. Or more intense (10,8,8,6)
• EZ Bar Biceps Curl (Outer Bar Grip): 3 sets of 10 reps each. Or also (10,8,8)
• Concentrated curl: 3 sets of 10 repetitions each. Or also (10,8,8,6)
• Hammer Curl: 3 sets of 10 repetitions each. Or also (10,8,8) (10,10,8)

Remember to moderate the weights, in addition to resting properly between exercises, since then you must do your triceps or other muscle session, for which you should not feel too tired.

Biceps muscle composition

It is important to analyze that the biceps is composed, as its name implies, of two muscular heads: a long one and a short one.

They are activated at the same time during the exercises, but with a slight detail that you can use to your advantage: when the biceps exercise is performed with the palms of the hands slightly inclined towards you, the internal head is activated more than the external one, and When the palms are parallel to or perpendicular to the floor, the outer head is activated to a greater degree than the inner one.

That detail can help you develop truly impressive biceps. Here is a list of exercises to activate the inner and outer heads:

Activation exercises of the internal head of the biceps

• Dumbbell curl.
• Curl with EZ bar taking the innermost grip of the bar.
• Concentrated curls.
• One-arm dumbbell preacher curl.

External biceps head activation exercises

• Straight bar curls.
• EZ bar curls taking the outermost grip of the bar.
• Curls with short straight bar on low pulley.
• Hammer curls.
• Incline bench curls

Routine for biceps on another muscle group day

If you want to combine your bicep training with a muscle group considered to be large (pecs, back, shoulders), it is advisable not to do more than two or three exercises per session, since you will be quite tired after subjecting another muscle group to hard work.

The best thing is that you combine external and internal head exercises (one and one, for example), and also that you vary between bars and dumbbells so that the stimulus is as diverse as possible.

Recommendations before starting

It is essential that we avoid extra help, and for this we will control the movements to the maximum, concentrating on the muscle group to train.

To isolate the biceps it is important to perform exercises in which the rest of the body does not act, an example is training on the bicep bank.

It is important that we support the whole arm on it and not just the elbows. In this way we will isolate to the maximum.

When lifting the weight, it is not advisable to completely lower it until the arm is straight, but it is better to leave the elbow a little flexed to avoid unnecessary jerks that in the end can end in injury and slow down our development.

To this we must add the importance of performing the exercise on the bench for biceps slowly, emphasizing the lifts, the resistance of the weight for two seconds when we reach the top, and the slow descent to take advantage of the return phase.

Another point to keep in mind is not to bend your back. This is usually done when the weight is very strong and our arms don”t give up.

Ideally, keep your back straight and have your biceps hold the thrust.

To do this we must stand upright, with the legs parallel, slightly apart and the knees bent. It is important that our body remains as anchored to the ground.

If we perform seated biceps exercises we have to follow the same instructions as if we do them standing, although in this case we must try to keep our back against the back of the bench. In addition, we can increase the intensity of the exercise if we incline the bench backwards, since the route will be greater and therefore the biceps will have to overcome more resistance.