Cool Stuff

If you want to get incredible bicep mass you will have to do the standing barbell curl and the standing barbell cheat-curl exercises. The cheat curl actually means the use of a heavy weight that you normally can’t lift in order to make the muscles of the upper body ‘swing’ the weight up, hence cheating, but you should only cheat enough to complete the curl. In this way The biceps are forced to work to the full throughout the movement.

If you go over the top in cheating you will only end up defeating the object of the exercise, which is to get the biceps to work 100% and get them accustomed to heavier weights so that you can later increase in strict barbell curls.

The biceps are made up of two different muscular heads that need different training techniques. The biceps peak is formed by the outer head and you are able to see this through the following manner: By putting your biceps of one arm contracted as you would in a front biceps pose, you then put a finger from the other hand on the peak of the muscle. Then, maintaining your finger in position on the muscle, just lower your arm to your side and you will find that your finger is positioned on the outside of your biceps, on the outer head.

Some Effective outer head exercises would include concentration curls that curl inward toward the middle of the chest, narrow grip barbell, preacher curls and hammer curls. Hammer curls are carried out with dumbbells with the thumb facing upward throughout the movement, and should be done in a cross-body fashion so that the dumbbell is lifted across the body and ends up with the thumb uppermost and the dumbbell against the chest. Hammer curls are great too for brachialis development, which is the muscle that is found under the biceps and is visible between the biceps and triceps in a rear double biceps pose.

The triceps muscles in both of our arms are made up of three heads: the inner, medial (referred to here as the ‘lower’ triceps) and outer heads. In my view the ultimate exercise to improve the lower triceps is weighted dips and dips when the arms are only straightened three-quarters of the way, but still keeping tension on the triceps during the exercise. The outer triceps will react to movements when the hands are in a ‘thumbs-up’ position. A good variety of exercises would include triceps pressdowns with a rope, dips, dumbbell kickbacks, one-arm cable pressdowns with the palm facing up, just to mention a few.

The inner triceps will respond to exercises while the thumb is turned inward, including one-arm cable pressdowns (palm downward), lying or standing barbell triceps extensions, triceps pressdowns with a bar (palms facing down), close grip bench presses, as well as a whole list a others.

It is not a good idea to over train arm muscles as they are also relied upon greatly when exercising other parts of our body such as the back and chest. If you are going to plan your workout routines always consider this point, so make sure that there are several days between arms, back and chest workouts. Always do arms in one day on their own or you could also do arms directly following shoulders.

The quantity of sets that the arms need in order to see the right results will all depend on how intense your exercises are and what you recovery time is. This really is a personal thing so you will just have to try it out for yourself and stick to what ever produces your best muscle gain results.