Bodybuilding.net - Bodybuilding Forum

How To Build Bigger Biceps In 3 Easy Steps
by Jeff Anderson


Clint Eastwood wouldn't have been a very intimidating Dirty Harry if all he pulled out was a little .22 caliber pistol to make his point. He knew that to really make the bad guy's knees shake and the lady's legs quiver, a .44 Magnum was the weapon of choice?!

So when it comes to bicep development, why should you settle for second rate pea-shooters when you can pack some really big guns?

Let's face it, all men want big biceps. They're the easiest muscle to show off without getting undressed, women love to wrap their arms around them when walking down the street, and they're small!

Whoa, hold up there sparky…I didn't mean YOURS were small. I simply mean that compared with other muscles of the body, like your chest, back, and legs, your biceps are a relatively small muscle.

That's good news for you and me because it means that it's much easier to target your biceps for growth than it is to take on larger, more complicated muscle groups.

So why aren't YOURS the size of softballs yet?

One quick look around any local sweatbox and the answer becomes clear…most guys have absolutely no clue how to effectively work their arms!

But these 3 EASY STEPS are guaranteed to make sure you don't end up on the "loser list".


STEP 1: DIAL THE RIGHT "FREQUENCY"

Because the biceps are a smaller muscle, and because they're used in compound exercises when working other muscle groups, your arms are more prone to overtraining than any other muscles of the body.

I'm sure you understand by now that your muscles grow when they're at REST, rather than work. So if you keep your biceps at work by targeting them more than once a week, you're setting yourself up for major disappointment!

This is where the "more is better" crowd will lose every time! Stick to only one targeted arms workout per week and you'll give them the much needed recovery time to pack on new muscle.


STEP 2: UPGRADE YOUR R.O.M.

No, I'm not talking about your computer…I'm referring to your muscle's range of motion.

If you ever want to grow your bi's to their full potential, you must concentrate on hitting all of the muscle fibers. The only way to do this is to take the muscle from full "pronation" (arm extended, palm facing body) to full "supination" (arm curled, pinky turned in toward body).

Look, you're not impressing anyone, especially that cute red head over by the water cooler, by stacking up the EZ curl bar with massive weight and flopping your body all over the place like a hooked bass, your arms barely lowering the weight to full extension.

You MUST start every single repetition with your arms fully extended. (Yes…I know this makes the exercise harder, now grab a tissue, wipe away the tears, and get back to work!)

A little trick to help you accomplish this is to first briefly (like a split-second) flex your triceps before raising the weight each rep.

Since the only way to do this is to fully extend your arm, you'll know you've begun each rep in the optimum starting position to stimulate new muscle growth.


STEP 3: RECRUIT YOUR "MAIN SQUEEZE"

To get your biceps to become bigger, you first have to show them what it's like to be bigger.

Here's how it's done…

At the very top of your curl, when your bicep has peaked, squeeze the muscle hard for approximately 1-2 seconds.

Your curl will make the muscle contract, effectively setting up a "road block" in your bicep. That final squeeze you add will literally force blood, water, and lactic acid into the contracted muscle, causing an intense "pump".

In response, the muscle cells themselves begin to thicken, the capillaries within the muscle grow in number and size to hold more fluid, and stem cells split off to form new muscle fibers, already pre-programmed for growth.


SUMMARY:

Well, there you have it…but now comes the hard part. And NO, I'm NOT talking about picking the weight up and starting your curls.

The hard part will be forcing yourself to actually DECREASE the weight you currently use because, chances are, you've been padding your ego by working too heavy, while sacrificing the most effective ego-booster…BIGGER BICEPS!

But trust me, the growth you'll get from incorporating these 3 principles will more than compensate for your initially bruised ego.

================================================== =  

Article Tools
Show Printable Version
Email this Page

Maybe train biceps 5 times a week for 2 weeks...then once a week for 2 weeks and then nothing for 2 weeks....You'll have hit your bi's 12 times in a month and a half...Way better than my routine, I only hit bi's 6 times in that period (excluding compounds of course) ;)

I should write for M&F lol...(sorry, couldn't resist posting my smart-ass comments )

ok..i get your point.... and i told him that if he wanted a routine and he couldnt find one, he could pm me because i'd probably have the one he wanted... and i think that doing heavy rows, etc - in general compound movements, stimulates arm growth as well, because although my arms havent grown in terms of inches on Mark's program, they're looking bigger and have become more "dense" if you know what i mean..... however, to be honest, i think that ignoring arms isnt a good idea.. i mean, when i started doing skull crushers my bench improved right...? the only thing to keep in mind is that curls are not more important than deadlifts or rows or etc...

also, i started this as a "bicep" thread in mind, and decided to throw in different articles regarding biceps.... and sometimes, overtraining on a bodypart might help.. lets take kane's example, he overtrained like mad on his biceps when he started out (or so he says) and now he can lift heavier... me, i never did excess arm work... yet, my arms are big but weak.... when i began lifting i overtraned on my chest and back therefore i have a good chest but a horrible bench...

my point is, i am not fence sitting... i put these articles to merely add to the bicep thread... i have already said which policy I believe in and hopefully, i've made myself clear....

have you noticed another thing...? when we do full body programs, we do biceps and triceps 3x a week for a total of 12x a month....

but i'll go over it once more..

1.) doing biceps and triceps is important
2.) however, it is not MORE important than squats, deads or bench press

thats so stupid... arms take a LONG time to recover as well.. ask kane.. he did OVT.. no chance in hell his arms recovered in one day..!

BUT, if i do 2-3 sets of bis + tris every alternate day, i'll be good to go...

i hope this has cleared up all the issues...

I did overtrain my biceps alot, multiple sets after failure. But I had pretty much no muscle, I started curling 15lb DB and I ate everything in sight. Although it worked for me, I wouldn't really recommend doing it. (I actually didn't know I was overtraining until after the fact because I still believed the more I workout the more I'll grow ;))

Yeah OVT arms took the next half of the day to recover...but if you compared the recover time of OVT Arms to the recovery time of OVT Legs, it seems alot shorter. Legs took me about a day and a half, maybe 2 days.

Yes. I expect you got some growth. You're dealing with geometry, remember, so sometimes you can see what seems like pretty good size gains before it registers on a tape.

You kinda lost me there, but you seem to be saying two different things. You said that Kane overtrained (whatever exactly that means, high volume with multiple sets past failure?) and therefore can "lift heavier". You overtrained on chest but have a weak bench. Overtraining, as you say, on chest and back probably led to your big arms, too. You didn't get a whole lot of strength because you didn't train for strength. Likewise from Kanes post it would seem he was using high volume on his arms which would have stimulated more size and not necessarily led to greatly stronger lifts. Unless you believe, as some do, that a bigger muscle is more able to gain pure strength, regardless of the type of hypertrophy.

Also, your weak arms are purely subjective.

You're contradicting yourself, buddy. You just said that you think overtraining arms is useful for whatever reason. But in anycase posting contradictory messages in the same thread without any explanation is not quite making yourself clear. It would seem more like you are trying to appeal to everyone.

You mean with islolations? If so:

1. Not necessarily. We can choose to skip arms one day, two days, or all days and still be doing "full body".

2. With substantially reduced volume.

You're really comparing apples and oranges when you compare these ultra high volume arm workouts to what someone should do on a full-body or even upper/lower.

As opposed to 16 sets like the Long article? :05:

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I'm just trying to make some sense. I'm sure you'll set me straight

i was one of those that thought working my arms to death would be good but have learned to 60 minutes cutting my arm workout to once a week sure makes a differents