The Complete Guide to Training Your Biceps

This article covers Basic Anatomy, The Bicep Exercises, some Good Articles and worthwhile Videos.

Page two covers the Key Rules of Bicep Training and Sample Workouts.

Anatomy

“The “biceps brachii” is the muscle crossing the shoulder and elbow joint. It has two “heads” (“bi-ceps” means “two-heads”), the long head and the short head.

The short- head (inner) of the bicep is where you will find most of the mass/bulk of the muscle and the long-head (outer) is what actually creates the ”bicep peak”. When flexing the bicep muscle the long-head (outer) actually rises up and sits on top/above of the short-head (inner). So achieving muscle hypertrophy (increase in muscle size) in the bicep long-head will create a bigger bicep peak.
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The Brachialis is a third muscle of the upper arm, and is deeper and less visible. It assists the biceps in elbow flexion, and shouldn’t be neglected in training.

New Lifters

If you are new to lifting I recommend quickly visiting this page to understand the basic terminology of words like barbell, reps, and supersets.

Articles

The following are links to Articles on Chest Training that could be of interest. The main points of each article are below in Bullet Points.

Article 1 – The 5 Best Biceps Exercises For Size! @ Bodybuilding.com

• The best five are Barbell Curl, Incline Dumbbell Curl, Standing Cable Curl – Rope
• Reverse Grip Bent-Over Rows and Concentration Curls
• The article contains sample programs including these exercises

Article 2 – Best Workout For Big Arms @Bodybuilding.com

• Biceps are partly worked when doing other exercises e.g. back work, so don’t need direct training too often
• If you go heavy, 8 to 10 sets of direct work is enough
• Depending on your own body, you could respond best to high rep, low rep or a blend. Experiment with each.
• Use longer recovery (3 mins) if you are training low rep ranges
• Use a 102 or 203 tempo. (102 = 1 second up, 0 second pause, 2 seconds to lower it)

Article 3 – The Complete Guide To Biceps Training @ T-Nation

• Elbow flexion with a neutral or hammer grip
• Slow down rep speed for brachialis, faster for biceps brachii (1-2 second eccentric)
• Barbell curls with a wide grip (short head) or narrow grip (long head)
• Curl the bar to your nose for peak contraction
• Train them three non-consecutive days per week
• Target Brachialis with DB Hammer Curl, Neutral Grip BB Curl, Standing Cable Curl (Rope), Reverse Curl
• Target Long Head with Narrow Grip EZ-Bar Curl, Incline DB Curl
• Train biceps directly every 5-7 days, initially though try 3x a week for six weeks
• Example reps/rest: 5 x 5 (2 mins), 3 x 8-12 (75 secs), 4 x 12-15 (30 secs)

Article 4 – The 4 Best Bicep Exercises @ T-Nation

• Incline DB Curl
• Incline Hammer Curl
• Standing Cable Curl (Rope)
• One Arm Preacher Curl

Article 5 – Five Insane Biceps Workouts @ T-Nation

• Arm “finisher” exercises
• 10 reps of one exercise super-set with 20 reps of another. 10 total sets.
• 5 reps DB curl, 5 reps hammer curl, 5 reps cross-body curls, then drop set again.
• 10 reps DB curl on one arm while holding the other at 90 degrees
• Bicep-tricep superset, 20 reps of each exercise, 7 sets.

Article 6 – Moves For All The Heads Of Your Biceps by Justin Caba

• Long head – Alternating Incline DB Curl
• Short head – Preacher Curl
• Brachialis – Hammer Curl

Video 1 – Top 5 Bicep Peak Exercises by Rob Riches

(Seated DB Curl, One Arm Preacher Curl, Prone Incline BB Curl, Concentration Curl, High Cable Curl)

Video 2 – Two Reasons Why Your Biceps Won’t Grow!

Video 3 – Phil Heath’s EZ Bar Bicep Curl “21’s”

 Video 4 – Natural Teen Bodybuilder Bicep Workout

Video 5 – Killer Mass Building Bicep Workout

Go to the Key Rules of Bicep Training and Sample Workouts.