Best Bicep Workout Routine

Archive for April, 2010

It is a beautiful thing in life when the needs of smart people and the needs of lazy people can be met with the same minimal effort. And when it comes to fitness training, more often than not, more is not better. Our bodies respond best to short and intense workouts. Long and taxing workouts can be detrimental to progress for anyone trying to build muscle the natural way, without the use of steroids. When it comes to building biceps, lazy people, busy people, and smart people should all be pleased to read the following bicep workout routines.

In order for your biceps to adapt to a workout, that is, to grow larger in response to certain exercises, a few conditions must be met. The first is that that muscle (and perhaps the entire body) must be pushed past previous intensity levels, that is, work output per unit of time. The second condition is that in order for a muscle to grow you need to force yourself to exhaust a maximum number of motor units within a muscle in a given exercise. This requires two things, heavy weight in order to recruit maximum motor units, and time in order to exhaust those motor units. The following three bicep workouts meet these criteria in the most efficient and time saving way possible.

The Static Contraction Bicep Workout Routine

An essential principle in weightlifting for size is the notion of leverage. Because of the way our biceps are attached via tendons to the bones in the shoulder and forearm, we are actually stronger at different stages of a bicep curl. We are strongest when our arms are bent at about a 90% angle. Therefore, we are capable of lifting, and/or holding more weight at the top of a curl than we are at the starting position. Therefore most bicep workouts have the trainee lift weights that they are capable of lifting in the weakest range of motion, which may not be sufficient to recruit maximum motor units in the strongest range of motion. Isolating your movement to the strongest range of motion with heavy weights ensures maximum motor recruitment and muscle fatigue.

The static contraction bicep workout routine will be overlooked by most gym goers as too simple to be effective. Everyone at the gym pumps iron. Very few, if any, simply hold it. But as we know from above, the combination of heavy weight lifted in the strongest range of motion is sufficient to recruit maximum motor units and push them to exhaustion. Holding weight in a curled position for 10 to 30 seconds is enough to sufficiently stimulate bicep growth. This is as easy as it gets, and as short as it gets. Busy, lazy, and smart people should all appreciate the simplicity and practicality of the following bicep workout:

Select a heavier weight than you are capable of curling through a full range motion. Contract your biceps and hold the weight so that your forearm is at approximately a 90% angle to your torso. Hold for 10 to 30 seconds (at least 10, at most 30, until you are incapable of stabilizing the weight). Rest for 1 to 2 minutes and repeat 3 to 5 times, according to your level. Perform one or two times per week. Total time required? Less than 15 minutes per week. A more advanced version is to walk with the weight which stresses your cardiovascular system as well.

The Slow Lift Bicep Workout Routine

The slow lift is another unorthodox method of weight training. This type of training is not ideal for sports related strength training, but it will sufficiently and quickly push your biceps to failure, and cause significant hypertrophy and size increase. A slow lift is exactly what it sounds like. You move slowly. The concentric movement (curling the weight) takes about 5 seconds and the eccentric movement (lowering the weight) takes about 5 seconds. In your typical workout, weight is initially lifted, but then momentum removes the force on your muscles, and reduces the strength of muscular contraction at the peak…at the exact point you stand to recruit the greatest number of motor units. In a slow lift bicep workout all momentum is removed from the exercise thereby forcing muscular contraction 100 percent of the time. This will burn like hell and push your biceps to fatigue very quickly.

The slow lift bicep workout routine looks like this:

Select any major biceps exercise, and simply perform it with a slow cadence, using a weight that will push you to complete failure in 8 to 10 reps (approximately a minute and a half to two minutes). This bicep workout is much more intense than it sounds, and generally 1 to 3 sets are more than enough to destroy your arms, if performed once or twice per week. This bicep workout, like the static contraction bicep workout, should take less than 15 minutes per week.

The Compound Lift Bicep Workout Routine

Leaving the obscure for a moment and returning to what should be familiar to even the most infrequent gym goers, let’s move on to compound lifts that work the biceps. As discussed in the last post, isolation exercises will rarely result in maximum muscle gain. Our bodies work as coordinated system, and the way to maximize growth in any part of the body is to stimulate growth in every part of the body. Compound lifts that require many muscle groups to complete will tend to raise the overall intensity of the workout and cause hormonal changes that force your body to grow bigger and burn more body fat. The bicep workout routines above can certainly be applied to any compound lift as well. That is, rather than statically contracting your biceps via a bicep curl, you can hold a pull-up position or a row with maximum weight.

That said, size gains may not be your only priority. You may also want to be able to perform better. In this case you’ll perform one or both of the two big compound pulling exercises, pull-ups or rows. Use a weight that you can perform 6 to 10 times, and shoot for 4 sets or more, depending on your level. This bicep workout routine has the advantage of not only working the biceps, but also the lats and traps as well. It’s efficient and effective and should be a core exercise in any fitness regime.

A compound lift bicep workout looks like this:

Beginner: 4 sets of 6 to 10 pull-ups

Intermediate: 4 sets of 6 to 10 pull-ups, and 4 sets of 6 to 10 rows

Rest a minute between each set. Perform no more than 2 times per week.

One can increase the intensity of this workout further by supersetting it with another exercises like bench press or dips. In such a case you’re biceps will grow along with the rest of your body without a need for an isolated bicep workout routine.