Incline curls, preacher curls, concentration curls, overhead cable curls, and 21s all hit the biceps pretty harder.
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Biceps are too small for many exercises
There are some people who’s limbs respond well to rows/chins or dips/push-ups/presses, but I think most people aren’t like that.
Let’s say youre Dorian Yates, you have a monstrous back and some badass forearms.
Your biceps have about as much chance of being stimulated by a row as I have in a room full of models and billionaires.
Your options are:
- hope your biceps will somehow magically get involved via rows even though you now have an even stronger back and forearms
- do direct biceps work
- do some form of, dare I say it, pre-exhaustion work
So, I don’t agree with listen to your body, there needs to be dedicated action to get results unless you dont care.
In the end, dorian’s biceps were up against too much, they always lagged and gave out in the end but it probably would have looked worse and ended far earlier with leaving his arms as an afterthought.
Average people need not worry about pro bodybuilders and what they did and chin ups are a more direct way to hit the biceps instead of dumbell rows.
By all means do a few sets of barbell curls if you need it but doing 3 or 4 different arm curls as an amateur is overtraining and will be counterproductive.
I dont like bench press or military press. Used to hate front lateral raises too until I switched to thumbs up position, now I really like it.
I see the problem, I was talking about people who wanted to achieve something. I can see that a blanket rule does apply to average.
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Throwing it up there: isn’t some direct arm (bicep) work recommended for strength training too, to prevent bicep tears in deadlifts, wide grip benches, or in strongman stuff when people clean with a mixed grip or have to lift tires? I seem to remember reading by various sources that neutral grip with a close angle (hand inside the body) are particularly valid for this purpose
Achieve what?
Strength comes from smart training not massive volume.
That’s true, hence why direct work is not necessary. I just don’t understand why he doesn’t like doing arms but that’s cool, everyone’s different and that’s a good thing, life would be pretty boring if we all thought the same way.
I don’t like lifting at all.
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I like lifting steaks into the pan
I like it when someone else does it.
There’s 2 kind of guys, ones that want big arms and and others that lie about it.
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I used to think it was bizarre when you said this… but now, I kind of agree.
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We’re in good company.
Only real good part I want to capture is that, in the video, Jim talks about the difference between beginner and experienced lifter. To paraphrase: when you ask a beginner lifter what their favorite lift is, they say deadlifts, and that’s because it’s the movement you can lift the most weight on. When you ask an experienced lifter, they say “I dunno man, I f**king hate them all”
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Speak for yourself. My biceps are hooge.
I do massive volume and I’d put my strength against just about anyone here.
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I don’t know, Rippetoe’s eyeroll at 2:31 is better than any teenage girls.
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But just imagine how much stronger you’d be if you trained smarter.
Ya know, like all those really smart weak people do.
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