Get Big Biceps.
To get big biceps you need a diet plan as well as a training plan. Let’s say your eating a healthy well balanced diet. Your eating quality natural foods 5- 6 meals a day, about every 3 hours, with good ratio of lean protein, carbohydrates and good fat at every meal. Drink at least half your bodyweight, in ounces of water, every day.
Your weight lifting routine should consist of doing your big compound lifts first. Squats and other similar compound exercises will make your body produce more growth hormone, which will stimulate muscle growth throughout your body.
I recommend using free weights over the machines, because they wiil recruit other stabilizing muscles for control, making them more functional than the machines. You will use your arms when you do your compound exercises, so they’re going to get worked even without doing isolated arm esercises.
Biceps assist in all upper body pulling exercises,. You will not perform well on your compound exercises if you do your isolated arm exercises first. Use your isolated arm exercises to finish up and polish the arms after you’re finished with the compound exercises.
There is a technique called, pre exhaustion training, where the aforementioned plan is reversed. You would do an isolated exercise first to tire out a support muscle, so when you did the big exercise, the main muscle doing that exercise would have to work harder to do the job, since its support system would be pre- exhausted. For example: you could do sets of tricep extensions before doing bench presses. The idea here is that, since you biceps are tapped out, your lats will have to work harder to perform the movement. It sounds like a good idea, but, does it really work? Give it a try and see what you think.
If you’re finished with the big compound moves, then it’s time to move on to the arm exercises to get big biceps. Use a lot of different angles to work your arms without overdoing it. I like to do a standing curl to hit the middle portion of the biceps; a decline curl (about 10 – 20 degrees off vertical) for my biceps to get it in the stretched position; and a concentration or spider curl to really hit the peak contraction point. By the way these are all supinated, or palms up.
I would superset the above with three position triceps exercises. For example: a standing triceps pushdown for the middle position, a triceps kick-back for the peak contraction position and an overhead triceps extension for the stretched position.
Choose what position you wish to work that day; middle , stretched or peak contraction and just do 3 to 4 supersets of that position that day. When it’s time to do arms next, work a different position,. And don’t forget a few reverse curls to warm things up.
Turn your hands palms down to do reverse curls, in order to maintain muscular balance in the arms and concentrate on the brachialis muscle under the biceps. The brachialis works when your hands are palms up or palms down, it is the workhorse for flexing the elbow. When you turn your palms down you kick the biceps out of the equation and concentrate on the brachialis. If you make the muscle under the biceps bigger, it will push the biceps up and make it stand out more.
I can’t emphasize enough the importance of good nutrition, without it, you may get stronger, but, you’ll never get the lean muscularity you’re after.
Eat well, work hard, get green!
Article by:
Kurt Williams