How to grow your biceps
Nikola Man
I will not be repeating any of the introductory jazz, for that you should head over to the previous two articles which you can find here: back article & chest article. Today we will be talking about the muscle every man dreams of (along side chest probably) – the biceps.
Let’s jump straight into some anatomy:
Biceps brachii
This is what you normally think of when someone says biceps. It consists of two heads, the long head which is on the outside and the short head which is on the inside.
Biceps are technically triarticular meaning that they act on three joints. In other words, there are three main functions of the biceps: elbow flexion (curling), forearm supination (turning your palm up) and shoulder flexion (lifting your arm up). Obviously, elbow flexion comes into play with every single bicep exercise since you can’t avoid curling. Forearm supination can be utilized in some dumbbell curl options and shoulder flexion can be a part of the barbell curl (which I consider to be the best overall bicep-builder). I say it can be a part of it because you don’t necessarily have to curl that way, you can just go the traditional route of up and down. All of this will make a bit more sense when you watch the exercise guide video for the barbell curl below.
Brachialis
It doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the muscles described in the previous paragraph because it lies deeper and it is not visible superficially. However, increasing its size will push your biceps up and out more so it does contribute to the overall size of your arms.
Unlike the biceps muscles, it doesn’t cross the shoulder so it primarily helps with elbow flexion.
Per usual it’s time to talk some volume:
Minimum volume (MV)
Unlike most other muscle groups, bicep size can be maintained with anywhere between 0 and 6 weekly sets. You might be wondering why the huge gap and that is because there are differences in individuals and how they got to their current biceps development. Namely, people with big biceps who have invested a lot of time and more importantly a lot of direct work (curling) into developing them, will not be able to get away with no direct work to maintain size. For them, it will be something like 4-6 sets a week. On the other hand, someone with relatively small biceps and not a lot of training experience will be able to maintain size by simply doing sufficient back work (remember all the pulling movements from the back article).
Minimum-effective volume (MEV)
In order to start gaining size some people will still be able to get away with doing zero work, but that’s mostly beginners and people who don’t do any curling. Direct bicep work is basically required if you want to MAXIMIZE (do it optimally) your growth. For most individuals, MEV is around 8 sets of direct work per week which can look something like this:
As a part of an upper body day on Monday you do 4 sets of barbell curls
As a part of your second upper body day on Thursday you do 4 sets of cable curl
Maximum recoverable volume (MRV)
Again, we have a range here and it is between 20 and 25 sets per week. Remember, all of these values are averages, so you might be able to do slightly more or you might need to do slightly less.
Key point to note is that if your program has a lot of pulling movement (imagine doing close to your MRV for the back) your biceps MRV we will be lower automatically since biceps get hit pretty hard by back exercises. Naturally, if you don’t have a ton of back work in your program, you’ll probably be able to squeeze in more bicep work.
Intensity and frequency
As with everything I suggest a variety of rep ranges and for your biceps it won’t be any different. However, I am not a big fan of doing really, really heavy bicep work and you shouldn’t be either. Here’s why, if you want to perform exercises properly and minimize injury risk whilst still getting a sufficient overloading stimulus you want to be lifting heavy. However, your biceps will get the heavy stimulus from back work, especially from heavy bent over rows and chin ups. With all of that in mind, I recommend doing the vast majority of your bicep work in the 8-15 rep range. Some individuals can do heavy 6-rep exercises (barbell curl or EZ bar curl) but I don’t recommend that to most. As with everything, keep the work heavier than 60% of your 1RM and relatively close to failure per RIR scale.
In terms of frequency, biceps are not a huge muscle group and almost everyone can train their biceps hard at least twice a week. I recommend starting with 2 weekly sessions where some overloading bicep work is done and then testing the waters with 3 and 4. Unlike back, chest and legs, you can get away with doing biceps more frequently. In fact, frequency is a really cool way to get some extra volume for your biceps provided that you don’t blast it with 10, 12 or 15 very heavy sets every time you do it.
Exercise selection
Really there’s not much to say here, except that you will be curling. A lot.
Twist curl (utilizes forearm supination quite a bit)
Hammer curl (activates both the biceps and the brachialis well)
Tips for making a program
Depending on how you structure your week, you may have many different ways of incorporating direct bicep work into your training. You should keep your bicep work anywhere between 3 and 12 sets per workout with a minor caveat that 10 or 12 sets should be done only if you cannot get more than 2 biceps sessions per week.
The best piece of advice I can give is that you should find a single exercises that feels great to YOU and that is simultaneously suitable for progression in terms of load. My absolute favorite is the barbell curl but the EZ bar curl is also great, especially for those with wrist issues on the barbell curl. Whatever the case may be for you, pick that one exercises and stick with it. Make sure your form is impeccable and keep adding weight whenever possible, that will ensure most of your growth.
Additionally, you have to keep two things in mind:
The first is that most back movements will have a high degree of biceps activation
The second is that you should try to avoid having really heavy bicep sessions a day (or maybe two days if the session is really heavy) before your back work as it might interfere with the quality of your work in that department. So it’s best to train your biceps either after back in the same session or to space it out enough so they don’t affect each other.
One last important consideration is that you should have variety in terms of repetition ranges (intensity) but also in terms of grip. This is because the long (outer) head is better stimulated with a narrower grip whereas the short (inner) head is better stimulated with a wider grip. Hammer grip helps with activating the brachialis muscle and the reverse grip can help you exhaust the forearm muscles (most notably brachioradialis) in order to let the main biceps muscle do the work on your main movements.
Other important comments
Your biceps will also benefit from something called metabolite training. This is achieved when you pump a lot of blood into the targeted muscle and then metabolites build up. You should incorporate 3 or 4 weeks of this every once in a while, but please note that your biceps will become pretty resistant to hypertrophy so you will have to reduce volume in the subsequent mesocycle to let your biceps re-sensitize to growth again.
This effect is best achieved with drop sets with biceps. You can do cable curls and go to failure with one weight, reduce the weight and continue with no rest then repeat until you’re screaming or wanting to shoot me in the head for giving you this technique. Another great drop set option is to get multiple sets of dumbbells (16 kg, 12 kg, 8 kg and 4 kg dumbbells for example) and similarly to the cable variant above, just keep going down in terms of weight with no rest.
One of many ways to structure this is the following:
4-8 weeks of moderate volume (12-16 weekly sets)
4-8 weeks of high volumes (18-25 weekly sets)
3-4 weeks at the upper end of moderate volumes or at the lower end of high volumes (15-20 sets) where you include some metabolite style training at the end of your sessions
4-8 weeks of lower volumes but with some higher intensity training (around 10 sets but you include heavy 6-rep sets once a week)