Moving Biceps to the Front of the Workout?

Training
1

In the context of a full-body workout, if I wanted to prioritize biceps for growth…Could I do them first? Also, what subsequent exercises would suffer as a result?

To give you some background: I do 2 full-body workouts per week (3 if I am lucky). Recently, I have had some success in growing my upper chest. I did this by focusing on the inclined bench press and having that as my first exercise in my full-body routine:

  1. Inline Bench / Bench
  2. Pull ups / Chin ups
  3. Overhead Press / Flys
  4. Squat / Deadlifts
  5. Seated Row
  6. Sit-ups / Crunches
  7. Back extension (with weight)
  8. Biceps Isolations.

In any case, it seems like its taking forever for my biceps to get going. I would like to move them from the back to the front. True, I have begun to do chin ups along with pull ups to try and get them activated earlier. I was thinking maybe my workout should begin with chin ups and curls… would that be dumb?

2

How much weight do you do for weighted chin up and pull up

3

I am not so far along that I can do weighted pull ups and chin ups.

Unweighted pull ups I hit 9 or 10reps on the first set on a good day
Unweighted chin ups I hit 6 reps on the first set…but I only started doing them 3 weeks ago.

4

I wouldn’t be doing biceps exercises for a pump before deadlifting, even if it’s a few movements afterwards. That’s asking for a tear.

5

Thanks…this is exactly the good advice that I need.

With deads, I was not sure how much of a role the biceps play and if the curling type motion would effect overhand pulling performance. (I do deadlifts with and overhand grip on both hands…I am not moving that much weight anyway.)

6

Buy a resistance band, and do some extra biceps pump-work with it on the other 3-4 days a week.

7

Are you able to get in an extra day other than your 2 sessions? A really quick one like 15 minutes?

Chin up and hammer curl super set is great, set the timer for 15 minutes. Do 10 hammer curls then jump up and do a few chin ups, repeat over and over until the time runs out. Keep a note of what you got on each exercise and try and beat it each time.

Also what kind of weights are you using for biceps? Could you be going too heavy and not isolating very well?

Remember that if the goal is big arms then triceps need to be made a priority too.

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8

Excellent. After the comment about the potential muscle tear, I realized that the idea of doing biceps first isn’t going to happen. Doing something on the off-days, however, seems like the way forward.

Thanks for the tip!

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9

That sounds like a devastating routine with the chin ups and hammer curls. I may have to try that if I can get a third workout in.

Anyway, as far as what I can curl with a dumbbell, I can get a couple of reps with very poor form out of the 45lb 'ers. If I back off to 35’s I manage 8 decent reps.

10

I would really recommend using a lighter weight and concentrating more on quality of contraction, really good squeeze and a slow eccentric.

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