Safe Bicep Exericses

[Cephalic_Carnage]

[quote]mertdawg wrote:
SteelyD wrote:
mertdawg wrote:
I do two biceps exercises that I think might be a little risky. One is underhand rack pulls. I may put 225-275 on the bar and pull it, and even try to curl it 2-3 inches.

The second is upper range partials with closegrip chins. I will kneel on a bench so that the bar is just above my head, and then rapidly pull-up.

I also do incline curls where I clean the weight, and then drop it and catch the weight about half way down. Seated barbell curls from off of the lap might be a tad risky too.

I usually do one of these for 4 or 5 triples and then do higher rep sets of a more traditional type of curl.

I’m not trying to be a dork, but, as I’m trying to visualize what you describe, for the life of me I can’t figure out the “why”…?

My biceps development has been stuck right at 17 inches [/quote]There’s something at the back of your upper arm… Yeah, it’s probably fairly small and you can hardly make it out right now… It’s called “Triceps”. It exists, I swear… lol
Come on, why do 80 percent of the people in this forum always equate arm size with biceps?
Your biceps alone aren’t going to get your arms up to 20+… You’d have to have ruhl-like bis for that. It’s that other muscle-group which no one seems to care for that’s responsible for 2/3 of your arm size… Or at least it should be.[quote] forever and it was my biggest weakness. If I went straight to curls, I just did not seem to be able to turn on the biceps. I tried doing underhand pulls with about half of my rack pull max just to wake up the biceps before curling. It let me put a good 30 pounds more on the barbell curl. Maybe it just tightened up my set-up for curling.
Maybe exercises like this seem foreign to the BB forum. They are all modified from things I’ve seen on the Strength Sports forum and from Poliquin exercises (partial curls, midrange reversal curls)
[/quote]

Partial curls etc are now “poliquin exercises”?
Uh-huh.

What are your bicep attachments like?

[schultzie]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
schultzie wrote:
X thanks for chiming in and reminding us of how awesome you are and how shitty the rest of us are.

What?

I have had an injury due to biceps curls. It wasn’t major like a tear, but it was enough to show me that the heavier you go, the greater the risk is.

But then, comments like your own are why I used to avoid mentioning how much I lift…because one of you is simply bound to get butt hurt over it if it is much more than you do.

Sorry for hurting your feelings by not avoiding the topic completely.[/quote]

touchee, touchee

[mertdawg]

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
mertdawg wrote:
SteelyD wrote:
mertdawg wrote:
I do two biceps exercises that I think might be a little risky. One is underhand rack pulls. I may put 225-275 on the bar and pull it, and even try to curl it 2-3 inches.

The second is upper range partials with closegrip chins. I will kneel on a bench so that the bar is just above my head, and then rapidly pull-up.

I also do incline curls where I clean the weight, and then drop it and catch the weight about half way down. Seated barbell curls from off of the lap might be a tad risky too.

I usually do one of these for 4 or 5 triples and then do higher rep sets of a more traditional type of curl.

I’m not trying to be a dork, but, as I’m trying to visualize what you describe, for the life of me I can’t figure out the “why”…?

My biceps development has been stuck right at 17 inches There’s something at the back of your upper arm… Yeah, it’s probably fairly small and you can hardly make it out right now… It’s called “Triceps”. It exists, I swear… lol
Come on, why do 80 percent of the people in this forum always equate arm size with biceps? [/quote]

Because I trained like a power lifter for the last 8 years, did JMs, closegrips and lockouts. When I closegripped 330 and could only strictly curl a 45 pound dumbell once, I came to a conclusion.

[quote]
Partial curls etc are now “poliquin exercises”?
Uh-huh.[/quote]

Yes, he even has punch curls, where you have a partner punch down on the barbell at the midpoint. I will try to dig up the article. At least 2 variations of partial curls.

http://www.wiredfitness.com/v2/articles/Exercise/Arm%20Yourself.pdf

[quote]
What are your bicep attachments like? [/quote]

Thicker than they used to be??? Not really sure what you are asking.

[Cephalic_Carnage]

[quote]mertdawg wrote:
Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
mertdawg wrote:
SteelyD wrote:
mertdawg wrote:
I do two biceps exercises that I think might be a little risky. One is underhand rack pulls. I may put 225-275 on the bar and pull it, and even try to curl it 2-3 inches.

The second is upper range partials with closegrip chins. I will kneel on a bench so that the bar is just above my head, and then rapidly pull-up.

I also do incline curls where I clean the weight, and then drop it and catch the weight about half way down. Seated barbell curls from off of the lap might be a tad risky too.

I usually do one of these for 4 or 5 triples and then do higher rep sets of a more traditional type of curl.

I’m not trying to be a dork, but, as I’m trying to visualize what you describe, for the life of me I can’t figure out the “why”…?

My biceps development has been stuck right at 17 inches There’s something at the back of your upper arm… Yeah, it’s probably fairly small and you can hardly make it out right now… It’s called “Triceps”. It exists, I swear… lol
Come on, why do 80 percent of the people in this forum always equate arm size with biceps?

Because I trained like a power lifter for the last 8 years, did JMs, closegrips and lockouts. When I closegripped 330 and could only strictly curl a 45 pound dumbell once, I came to a conclusion.
[/quote] Out of curiosity, did you simply never curl or what were your training parameters for curls back then?

Partial curls etc are now “poliquin exercises”?
Uh-huh.

Yes, he even has punch curls, where you have a partner punch down on the barbell at the midpoint. I will try to dig up the article. At least 2 variations of partial curls.

http://www.wiredfitness.com/v2/articles/Exercise/Arm%20Yourself.pdf

What are your bicep attachments like?

Thicker than they used to be??? Not really sure what you are asking.

Short or long bis, high or little peak,…

If you have short bis with little peak, then you’re in trouble.

[DJS]

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
mertdawg wrote:
Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
mertdawg wrote:
SteelyD wrote:
mertdawg wrote:
I do two biceps exercises that I think might be a little risky. One is underhand rack pulls. I may put 225-275 on the bar and pull it, and even try to curl it 2-3 inches.

The second is upper range partials with closegrip chins. I will kneel on a bench so that the bar is just above my head, and then rapidly pull-up.

I also do incline curls where I clean the weight, and then drop it and catch the weight about half way down. Seated barbell curls from off of the lap might be a tad risky too.

I usually do one of these for 4 or 5 triples and then do higher rep sets of a more traditional type of curl.

I’m not trying to be a dork, but, as I’m trying to visualize what you describe, for the life of me I can’t figure out the “why”…?

My biceps development has been stuck right at 17 inches There’s something at the back of your upper arm… Yeah, it’s probably fairly small and you can hardly make it out right now… It’s called “Triceps”. It exists, I swear… lol
Come on, why do 80 percent of the people in this forum always equate arm size with biceps?

Because I trained like a power lifter for the last 8 years, did JMs, closegrips and lockouts. When I closegripped 330 and could only strictly curl a 45 pound dumbell once, I came to a conclusion.
Out of curiosity, did you simply never curl or what were your training parameters for curls back then?

Partial curls etc are now “poliquin exercises”?
Uh-huh.

Yes, he even has punch curls, where you have a partner punch down on the barbell at the midpoint. I will try to dig up the article. At least 2 variations of partial curls.

http://www.wiredfitness.com/v2/articles/Exercise/Arm%20Yourself.pdf

What are your bicep attachments like?

Thicker than they used to be??? Not really sure what you are asking.

Short or long bis, high or little peak,…

If you have short bis with little peak, then you’re in trouble.

[/quote]

Ceph… so if you have a short bi then you have a larger gap. That i understand but what physical characteristic decides if you have a peak or not. Suposedly you can’t train peak but i feel like my peak was better before i ever lifted. My biceps seem to of only gotten wider and ticker from lifting. nothing added to the peak at all.

[counterfeitsoda]

[quote]300andabove wrote:
Did you miss the Kg part ?

Thats 215lbs, which i would consider a pretty good bench all in all for anyone under 2-3 years training
[/quote]

215lbs is not a pretty good bench, unless you’ve been benching for less than 6 months.

[RWElder0]

the technical bit;

“The proximal tendon of the long head of the biceps is one of the most commonly injured structures of the shoulder joint. It’s highly susceptible to overuse and even rupture if the degeneration is allowed to proceed. Given the long head of the biceps’ interaction with the highly important glenoid labrum, you want to be very careful to avoid irritating this tendon. When you take your elbow and shoulder into full extension simultaneously, you lengthen the long head of the biceps. Now, put yourself in the incline curl position, and you turn that shoulder extension into hyperextension. Tendons with a history of trauma don’t typically like to be taken to extremes, especially under load.”

In the untrained population that may not understand what shoulder hyperextension is there could be a problem IF the person decided that they would try to impress someone by lifting maximally.

Everything in the post above is predicated on the assumption of poor shoulder health which may or may not be the case.

For the record I wish I could incline curl more weight but my shoulders won’t allow it at my current strength level without hyper extension. This tells me 1 thing. I NEED STRONGER SHOULDERS.

OP - at 80KGs (176 lbs) I doubt you need to spend too much time worrying about this type of injury unless you have a history of shoulder trouble. Work on getting stronger and your bicep curl numbers will increase with all of your other numbers.

As a previous poster noted: Anything you do can injure you if done in a certain way under very specific circumstances. When it comes to training nothing holds true 100% of the time. (All right - I am opening myself up here but you get what I am saying.)

[AimHigh]

I would say standing BB curls with very slow, controlled form (7-10 reps), and slow and controlled hammer curls are the safest bicep exercises as one directly hits the biceps, and the other one indirectly (more the brachialis). This not only lessens the risk of tendon overuse, but also hits the biceps in quite different and beneficial ways. I think that sounds right? Any back up would be good as this is my routine for biceps at least lol.

[Cephalic_Carnage]

[quote]DJS wrote:

Ceph… so if you have a short bi then you have a larger gap. That i understand but what physical characteristic decides if you have a peak or not. Suposedly you can’t train peak but i feel like my peak was better before i ever lifted. My biceps seem to of only gotten wider and ticker from lifting. nothing added to the peak at all.
[/quote]

Ok, I’m no doctor, I’d ask pX or so if I were you.

That being said, I believe that your muscle shape depends somewhat on your fascia around the muscle (as well as your length of muscle vs. tendon/attachments, of course) and also that you cannot really see your true muscle-shape as a skinny beginner. You need to train seriously, getting stronger on key exercises for every muscle-group, for a year or two at least before being able to really see which shape you’re essentially stuck with.

I started out with arms under 12 inches, so there was really nothing visible at first lol (was not super-lean, I ate virtually carbs only and thus had just enough fat on my arms to cover my practically non-existant muscle), but later on (between 13-14 inches or so), I thought that I had a fairly decent peak… I also thought that my biceps were somewhat short.

Later, with arms being significantly larger, I realized that I’m actually stuck with more of a relatively long (not scott level, but fairly long anyway) and only somewhat peaked biceps (right and left arm differ, too. My right has a bit more of a peak, while the left seems to be a tad longer).

Another thing to keep in mind is: You have brachialis, too. Those may diminish your “peak” some because they fill up the gap at the elbow somewhat (or, if you have longer bis like me, push the lower part up to an extent).

I dunno about assisted trainees, from what I hear, repeated site injections will cause scar tissue over the years and thus, if you keep injecting into your bis, may cause you to develop more of a peak… Don’t quote me on that, though, I’ve no idea if things really work like that.
You could ask some of the gear gurus on here, or a Pro or higher-up NPC guy if you know any personally.

I can tell you for sure that, unless you simply never bothered training your bis directly before and just added bi work in now, you will not end up developing more of a peak simply by doing spider curls or concentration curls… You may be able to emphasize one of the two bicep heads somewhat more via different exercises, but I’ve tried all that stuff over the years… No great peak for me lol

OneMoreRep has a nice peak with somewhat shorter bis, that’s good… People like dave henry, with relatively short bis and fairly little peak, aren’t so lucky.
He has great strength (pinwheeling the 125’s or so for plenty of reps) relative to his height and weight, but nothing will ever turn his bis into a strong point.

Arnold was a real oddity as far as bi-shape goes imo… Nice peak AND very long bi-heads.

[Cephalic_Carnage]

[quote]AimHigh wrote:
I would say standing BB curls with very slow, controlled form (7-10 reps), and slow and controlled hammer curls are the safest bicep exercises as one directly hits the biceps, and the other one indirectly (more the brachialis). This not only lessens the risk of tendon overuse, but also hits the biceps in quite different and beneficial ways. I think that sounds right? Any back up would be good as this is my routine for biceps at least lol. [/quote]

Standing BB curls with a straight bar unfortunately cause wrist/elbow issues for many people (depends somewhat on your bone structure etc).

You’re likely much better off with alt. db curls or some such.

[BONEZ217]

[quote]AimHigh wrote:
I would say standing BB curls with very slow, controlled form (7-10 reps), and slow and controlled hammer curls are the safest bicep exercises as one directly hits the biceps, and the other one indirectly (more the brachialis). This not only lessens the risk of tendon overuse, but also hits the biceps in quite different and beneficial ways. I think that sounds right? Any back up would be good as this is my routine for biceps at least lol. [/quote]

Come on man.

You just made a thread about how your goal is to have 15 inch arms and here you are giving advice about biceps.

Think about it

[mertdawg]

[quote]DJS wrote:

Ceph… so if you have a short bi then you have a larger gap. That i understand but what physical characteristic decides if you have a peak or not. Suposedly you can’t train peak but i feel like my peak was better before i ever lifted. My biceps seem to of only gotten wider and ticker from lifting. nothing added to the peak at all.
[/quote]

Peak comes from the brachialis, under and behind the biceps. For this you want “unstretched” curl exercises like spider curls and concentration curls.

[mertdawg]

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:

Short or long bis, high or little peak,…

If you have short bis with little peak, then you’re in trouble.

[/quote]

I was going to say short with no peak. I guess they are peaked. My forearms make the gap look smaller in the pictures, but there is a pretty wide gap at the elbow.

[mertdawg]

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
Out of curiosity, did you simply never curl or what were your training parameters for curls back then?

[/quote]

I only curled or did direct bicep work every other month, and probably just 4 x 10 once a week of 1 exercise. Maybe 2 months a year I would double the volume and frequency.

I also did forms of rows and pulls that required the least bicep involvement.

[Bchamp]

[quote]Rape Weight wrote:
Trying to curl what you rack pull sounds like a good way to tear your bicep.[/quote]

You mean like this…

125kg bicep curl TEAR

[DJS]

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
DJS wrote:

Ceph… so if you have a short bi then you have a larger gap. That i understand but what physical characteristic decides if you have a peak or not. Suposedly you can’t train peak but i feel like my peak was better before i ever lifted. My biceps seem to of only gotten wider and ticker from lifting. nothing added to the peak at all.

Ok, I’m no doctor, I’d ask pX or so if I were you.

That being said, I believe that your muscle shape depends somewhat on your fascia around the muscle (as well as your length of muscle vs. tendon/attachments, of course) and also that you cannot really see your true muscle-shape as a skinny beginner. You need to train seriously, getting stronger on key exercises for every muscle-group, for a year or two at least before being able to really see which shape you’re essentially stuck with.

I started out with arms under 12 inches, so there was really nothing visible at first lol (was not super-lean, I ate virtually carbs only and thus had just enough fat on my arms to cover my practically non-existant muscle), but later on (between 13-14 inches or so), I thought that I had a fairly decent peak… I also thought that my biceps were somewhat short.

Later, with arms being significantly larger, I realized that I’m actually stuck with more of a relatively long (not scott level, but fairly long anyway) and only somewhat peaked biceps (right and left arm differ, too. My right has a bit more of a peak, while the left seems to be a tad longer).

Another thing to keep in mind is: You have brachialis, too. Those may diminish your “peak” some because they fill up the gap at the elbow somewhat (or, if you have longer bis like me, push the lower part up to an extent).

I dunno about assisted trainees, from what I hear, repeated site injections will cause scar tissue over the years and thus, if you keep injecting into your bis, may cause you to develop more of a peak… Don’t quote me on that, though, I’ve no idea if things really work like that.
You could ask some of the gear gurus on here, or a Pro or higher-up NPC guy if you know any personally.

I can tell you for sure that, unless you simply never bothered training your bis directly before and just added bi work in now, you will not end up developing more of a peak simply by doing spider curls or concentration curls… You may be able to emphasize one of the two bicep heads somewhat more via different exercises, but I’ve tried all that stuff over the years… No great peak for me lol

OneMoreRep has a nice peak with somewhat shorter bis, that’s good… People like dave henry, with relatively short bis and fairly little peak, aren’t so lucky.
He has great strength (pinwheeling the 125’s or so for plenty of reps) relative to his height and weight, but nothing will ever turn his bis into a strong point.

Arnold was a real oddity as far as bi-shape goes imo… Nice peak AND very long bi-heads.[/quote]

Thanks for all the great info. I might as well throw in spider curls for a bit.