Almost every male who goes to the gym is going to be concerned with building better biceps. It’s a muscle group that is coveted by many as it’s one of the more significant aesthetic muscles on the body.
When you have larger biceps you may feel stronger, simply because they will make your arms look bigger and fuller. Truth be told however, in all reality your triceps makes up the larger portion of your arm so if you really wanted to improve size wise, that is what you should focus on.
Going back to the biceps though, they are also helper muscles in a variety of exercises therefore ensuring you do some strength training work on them is going to be important.
The bicep muscle itself is composed of the long and short head and is located on the inner side of the arm, between the elbow and the shoulder joint. Its main action is elbow flexion, however it is also used to help with forearm supination and shoulder flexion.
Generally you do not need to dedicate a whole day’s workout to your arm muscles since they are smaller and will be worked on many of the more major compound upper body lifts. For example, when you perform a bent over row your bicep muscles are going to assist the action, with your back muscles predominately performing the movement.
Throwing in a few isolated bicep exercises at the end of one of your upper body workouts would be a perfect way to ensure they get some undivided attention without risking overtraining them.
Exercises that you could perform would be simple straight dumbbell or barbell curls, hammer curls (where the dumbbells are turned and palms are facing inward), incline curls or a one arm curl (working each arm individually).
Choose one or two of these exercises to perform a workout for a total of 1-3 sets of 8-12 reps to get started. More advanced lifters may want to use a different protocol in terms of set number and rep ranges depending on what their individual goals are.
One important thing to mention is that you must try to remain in a neutral spine alignment position while performing this exercise. The most common mistake a weight lifter will make doing this movement is using their upper body momentum to help them hoist the weights up. Not only does this not utilize their bicep muscle in the manner it should, but it also puts them at a high risk of developing back pain.
So if you are looking to improve your bicep muscles, look at your training and make sure you are doing enough, but not too much isolated work for this muscle group. Remember that muscles grow while at rest so going to the gym and annihilating them with sets upon sets until they are so tired a one pound weight looks heavy, is likely not your best option.