[quote]LoRez wrote:
So, I agree with needing to change your mindset, but there hasn’t been much to reference as examples. At least not in the past couple years I’ve been on this site, since a number of the more “size” focused lifters left.[/quote]
Agreed, you don’t see much on this topic. I recall a few articles from the past on different “bicep blitz” type approaches - kind of like the “grow an inch on your biceps in 21 days” type format.
I don’t train clients or anything like that, so I can’t say that what works for me would work for everyone, but here’s my approach during times when biceps are a #1 or #2 priority (I’m guessing there are lots of people who can’t even get their heads around the concept of biceps being a number one priority, but let’s just play make believe.)
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Do a dedicated biceps day once every few days, building up over time to as frequently as every-other-day. To me, that means that biceps training takes up about 1/3 or 1/2 of the session for that day.
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Do biceps movements as active rest between other exercises on the days you aren’t doing a dedicated biceps session.
As far as movements, rep schemes, etc…
Uggh, I’m horrible at trying to describe what I do because I don’t count reps and I have no idea what I’m going to do until I start.
Typically, I do a shit load of standing alternating DB curls…mostly partials and mostly constant tension stuff. I use different wrist configurations and different types of squeezes and drop-and-catch type reps and the focus is on the exact location of the contraction, the pump, and the squeeze. I do lots of “extended sets” and drop sets and just continue until the contraction quality starts to diminish.
I don’t do any barbell curls because I don’t like my wrists and arms to be locked into one plane.
Then I’ll move to cables and do 1-arm cable curls - again using mostly partials in the mid range but I will play around with other parts of the range. Again, I use a mix of slow reps, more explosive reps, holds, angles, etc.
Then I’ll go to the smith machine and do 1-arm curls with just the bar plus a 10 on each side. Light weight, but I do mostly drop-and-catch reps on this, so the load that the muscle experiences during the “catch” phase is actually much higher because the bar is moving at that point.
At this point, the pump should be pretty skin splitting. I’ll usually go grab the heavier dumbbells after the smith machine work and do lower-rep sets. The biceps are fatigued, but they are so pumped that it makes the heavier weights feel much lighter.
After some heavier work, I’ll probably finish off with even more DB curls, but here I’ll do some “concentration curl” style reps where I focus on the squeeze at the top and basically try to squeeze my bicep until it wants to bust out of my skin.
I’d say that I’ll spend about 30-40 minutes total on biceps during those sessions, without much rest between sets.
And then on non-bicep days, I’ll throw in similar movements between sets of whatever I’m doing, but with even less weight and less intensity - more to just get the blood flowing and let the arms know that they are going to need to do something every day.
Oh, and I also do tons of pullups - not within any kind of set schedule but just sprinkled around everywhere in my sessions throughout the week. I’m sure this helps a little, but honestly I’m so focused on my lats when I do pullups that whatever impact it has on biceps is probably minimal.
I was born lanky and played volleyball and tennis, so lanky is my natural build. But when most people see me in person, the first thing they comment on is my arms, so I think something is working.
One last thing I’d add is that if you want to focus on biceps, you might as well focus on front and lateral delts as well, because from a visual standpoint it really pays to develop both.
