The Best And Worst Biceps Exercises

the biceps get a lot of attention and for good reason simply growing this one muscle can make a dramatic difference in how jacked you look in a t-shirt so in this video I'll be covering the best and worst biceps exercises based on the latest science I'm going to rank them on a tier list from s for super to F for fail and at the end I'll Crown one exercise as the best of the best and I'll pick one as the worst of the worst and here's my criteria for ranking exercises to get into s tier

it needs to provide high tension especially in the stretched position it needs to feel good which means it doesn't cause elbow pain and it has a smooth resistance profile and it should have a simple progression that's ultimately what keeps your arms growing if you can't add weight or reps over time I'm knocking it down now the biceps have two heads as the name biceps implies there's a short head which sits on the inside of your arm and a long head which sits on the back of your arm and contributes more to that elusive biceps Peak

there's also another big muscle that sits underneath the biceps called the Breaky Alis and it's actually just as big as both heads of the biceps combined and it can also help push the biceps up more creating bigger Peaks so it's an important muscle and as we go we'll consider which variations will Target which head and along the way we'll see that there's some decent evidence that you most likely can Target your biceps Peak and there's one exercise in particular that I think you should definitely include if you're trying to bring up your Peaks now the

biceps perform two main biomechanical functions elbow flexion which is when you bend your elbow like in a curl and supination which is when you turn your palm facing up you can try this out for yourself if you start with your palm facing down and then slowly turn it up you'll notice that your biceps automatically contract and I cue for this subnation by thinking about driving through my pinkies as I curl both heads of the biceps also cross the shoulder joint which means the biceps will be more stretched when the arm is held back behind the

Torso okay let's start with the most popular biceps exercise of all time the barbell curl right away we can see that tension on the bicep STS isn't exactly optimal the hardest part of the range is when the elbow is at 90° and above that tension goes down and below that tension also goes down until it reaches zero tension at the very bottom and the very bottom is also when the biceps are most stretched so this most likely isn't ideal but you'll still grow your biceps as long as you're pushing hard and the barbell curl is

very good for overload you can easily add a little weight each week the biggest issue is that the straight barbell puts some strain on my wrists Plus in public gems hugging up a squat rack just to do curls is bad etiquette that's because you can do curls so many different ways but you really need a squat rack to do barbell squats All Things Considered I think the barbell curl belongs in C tier plus but I'll bump it up to B tier just because it's so accessible the easy bar curl is the same thing except the

handles curve in a way that eases up some torque on my wrists I use the outer part of the Easy Bar Because a shoulder width grip feels more comfortable this grip angle puts you in between a fully supinated grip like You' use on barbell curls and a neutral grip like you'd use on hammer curls however if you use this in between angled grip you will take your biceps out of subnation to some degree this means it might shift some tension toward the brachialis and bracho radialis instead of the biceps per se so to make sure

my biceps are still firing I simply think about driving through my pinkies as I curl problem solved I actually really like the easy bar curl especially has a heavy free weight bicep movement in the 6 to8 rep range from an optimization standpoint it probably belongs in B tier but I'm going to go ahead and bump it up to a tier because it's still an exercise I do quite often for the convenience Simplicity and overload the standing dumbbell curl has zero tension in the full stretch just like the barbell and easy bar curl honestly I might

have made a bigger stink about this if I made this video a few months ago before our new study came out on full range of motion versus length and persels in experienced trainees check out this video for more on that so the dumbbell Cur loses one point for the suboptimal tension curve but it's still a very convenient exercise that'll still grow your arms it's also nice that you get to work each side individually which can help fix bicep size asymmetries doing alternating dumbbell curls might be slightly less optimal just because your biceps get this long

rest in between each rep the study from goto and colleagues makes me think that doing those long pauses without any tension in between reps probably is a bit worse for muscle growth as long as you're doing both arms at the same time I think the dumbbell curl belongs in low a tier doing your dumbbell curls as preacher curls immediately makes the exercise better that's because by angling your upper arm you actually pull more tension into your biceps in the stretched position and even though your arm is out in front of you you still get a

pretty good stretch here as long as you go all the way down and more importantly you have high tension in that stretched position and having high tension in a stretched position seems to be more important than the total stretch that a muscle experiences this was shown in a recent study that compared incline curls to preacher curls the preacher curl caus significantly more distal biceps growth growth closer to the Elbow joint that's most likely because with the preacher curl you get very high tension in a pretty good stretch while with the incline curl you get basically

no tension in a very big stretch pracher curls also lock your elbows in place making it near impossible to cheat there's basically nothing I can knock it for so the preach curl definitely belongs in s tier and as for incline curls since we now have that study showing that they are a bit worse than preure curls they have to go in a lower tier I still do them from time to time since they're a solid lengthened biased movement that's fast to set up and easy to do I'm still putting them in low a tier the

lying dumbbell curl is basically just the more extreme version of the incline curl I first saw these in Dr Mike's arm routine so I tried them out for myself while they do look a bit wonky they actually felt pretty solid you get this huge stretch especially near the top of your bicep close to your shoulder this felt great to me but if you have shoulder issues you might want to skip this one also unlike the incline curl when I lie down I can feel more tension in my biceps in that most stretch stretched starting position

so while it's a bit too early for me to say if I like it better than the standard incline curl I definitely think it's worth trying out and I'm putting it in a tier now the Scott curl is basically just a preacher curl with a vertical arm and while the man who it's named after had some of the most impressive biceps of all time I don't think it's the best biceps exercise that's because by placing your arm vertically you remove all the tension in the stretched position it's basically just a worse version of the 45°

pre-ra curl so I just don't see why you do it and for that reason it's going in C here on the other hand the flat bench curl is basically a pretr curl with the bench angle completely horizontal doing curls this way will cause the highest bicep tension in the most stretched position and then tension drops off throughout the positive I was doing these for a while as a high rep finisher but I found myself gravitating back toward the standard 45° pre-ural lately I found you just hit a wall with your progression on these because you're

limited to light weights and High Reps as a high rep burnout with a really big stretch emphasis I think they're good but they got old for me quickly I'm putting them in low B tier the machine preacher curl has the added benefit of being nice and locked in actually only do these in the bottom half of the range to emphasize the stretch a bit more and I do these every single week they're easily going in s tier but they're still not my number one bicep Builder before we get to that let's knock out the waiter

curl this is probably the most gimmicky biceps exercise I actually see people do it cranks your wrists the plate feels awkward and you're limited with overload I just use dumbbells instead and if you really want to hyperextend your wrists a bit to help take your swms out you can still do that with dumbbells but with more degrees of freedom I'm putting waiter curls in F tier the drag curl does have potential because by moving your arm back as you curl you do put the bicep under a greater degree of stretch however as you curl you're

shortening the bicep at the elbow joint while simultaneously lengthening it at the shoulder joint this means that the total biceps muscle length doesn't actually change much throughout the range of motion it's kind of similar to how the total hamstrings muscle length doesn't change much on a squat and we know that squats don't grow the hamstrings very well so even if there's no direct science on it I still think the drag curl wouldn't grow the biceps as well as a more standard dumbbell curl it's going in C tier the spider curl is the other overrated exercise

by shifting your arms forward in front of your body you're putting your biceps in a very shortened position so at no point in this range of motion will your biceps experience a high degree of stretch the dumbbells can also annoyingly hit the bench and throw off your groove so spider curls are going going in C tier okay chinups if you look at these from a side angle you can see that there's actually a pretty solid range of motion at the elbow joint and out of all the back exercises I do think these will grow your

biceps the most however because so much of your back musculature is also involved it's unlikely that your biceps will be the limiting factor and so while they clearly will grow your biceps especially as a beginner I don't think they're as good as most isolation exercises that said because they're so accessible all you need is your own body weight I'm still putting them in B tier okay let's have some fun 21s are a sort of bro exercise where you do seven reps in the bottom half then seven reps in the top half and then you finish

with seven full range of motion reps this is a fun way to challenge your arms but I just don't think it's in the right order traditional 21s has you hit the lengthened part first which is probably the most anabolic then you hit the shortened part which is the least anabolic and then the full range of motion last so the order is long short full I think it's a lot smarter to do these short then full then long so I do seven seated curls first which trains the shortened top half obviously you could just do these

standing but I find doing them seated standardizes the range on each rep and keeps it more interesting then I stand up and do seven full ROM curls and then I do seven bottom half curls at the end this way the curls get a little easier as your biceps fatigue and this way you get to end the set with a bunch of length and partials I don't always stop at exactly seven reps at the end either I just keep going until I can't get at least halfway up so if you do 21s the old school way

I think they belong in high C tier but if you do them the modified way I think they can get into low a tier okay let's rank some cable exercises the standard cable curl is good but not great by having your arms at your sides you don't get a big pre-stretch in your biceps I do still include these periodically though because you do get this nice even tension throughout the range of motion and I do think they're just good enough to get into low a tier however by flipping around and facing away from from the

cable you immediately improve the tension profile by placing your arms back behind your torso you get maximum stretch on the biceps and you still get that nice even tension throughout the range I recommend setting up the cable at around hand height taking one or two steps forward and curling with both arms at the same time now if you don't have a dual stack cable machine you can always do one arm at a time and if you're trying to bring up your biceps Peak this is an exercise I definitely wouldn't skip because the long head will

experience a very high degree of stretch and tension it's probably not my number one exercise for the peak I'll get to that in a second the face away Bean cable curl is going in s tier of course it is it's amazing all right this is a freaky looking variation on the beian cable curl that I've been playing around with lately I don't have a name for it yet so I'll open it up to suggestions in the comments the cool thing about this variation is that you actually get this 90° angle between the cable and your

forarm while the bicep is most stretched this means you're getting maximum tension on the biceps while they're in their most stretched position they were a little awkward the first time I tried them but once I figured out the right cable height they felt fantastic I'm honestly feeling s tier but since I've only had them in my rotation for about a month I don't want to overhype them too early so I'm going to tentatively drop them back to a tier for now you may be surprised to learn that there actually aren't any studies on whether or

not cheating or strict form causes more muscle growth I'm planning to help run that study soon but for now I can't see the theoretical merits of both as long as the cheating isn't too extreme by by using a little momentum to help get the weight moving you can curl up a bit more load and then resist and control that load on the very anabolic negative phase this might surprise some of you but I actually think a properly executed cheek curl can be great for biceps growth and can also teach some people who might be more

uptight and rigid with their form how to push themselves hard I definitely don't think I'd recommend them for beginners but as an experienced trainee as long as you can control the negative and keep the cheating under control I'd put them in the bottom of a tier the strict curl is at the opposite end of the spectrum here you maintain very strict technique by bracing against a wall with three points of contact your glutes your upper back and your head the theoretical upside here is that you direct all the tension coming from the bar into your

biceps unlike with the cheek curl there's no tension being lost to your hips or your low back with stri curls if you're lifting more weight or doing more reps your biceps are getting stronger and they're most likely getting bigger too I suspect strict curls would be a bit better than cheet curls but without that study it's hard to know for sure and honestly I could see it going either way so I'm going to leave strict curls in a tier for now as well now hammer curls are really interesting by taking a neutral grip and pointing

your thumb up you take your biceps out of supination this means the biceps probably will be less active on hammer curls than on standard curls however remember there's this other big muscle that sits directly underneath the biceps called the brachialis and the brachialis will be very active on hammer curls that's because all it does is bend the elbow it can't contribute to subnation at all so by performing hammer curls you might shift some tension away from the biceps and toward the brachialis and since the brachialis can push the biceps up more that should enhance the

appearance of bicep peak and because of their ability to smash the brachialis I think I would consider them my number one movement for biceps Peak now obviously you can't change the genetic structure of your biceps and there's honestly no hard science on this but it does make sense to me that as you grow your brachialis bigger the shape of your bicep should become more pequ even if just a little of course dumbbell hammer curls have the same tension issue as all the free weight standing curls so they're not quite good enough to get into s

tier but they definitely do belong in a tier that said if you do your hammer curls while braced against a preacher bench you instantly improve the resistance profile and so hammer grip creature curls are going in s tier inverse zman curls are where you do a hammer curl on the positive and then a standard supinated curl on the negative this means you get the advantage of hammer curls on the positive for the break Alis and the advantage of supinated curls on the negative for the biceps these also can help overload the biceps on the negative

with a bit more load since you're generally able to curl more weight up with a hammer grip and since your biceps are stronger on the negative I think that's a smart pairing inverse s and curls are going in high a tier and if I had to pick just one exercise as the best of the best it'd have to be the face away beian cable curl I think the 40 45° preacher curl would be a very close second and I think they should both be in your biceps routine and the worst of the worst would have

to be the waiter curl also I want to give you guys a quick update on my new book I'm going to send everyone who pre-orders the muscle ladder a free ebook called the ultimate exercise guide which covers my best exercise for every muscle it covers the muscles that I haven't covered in this series like the forearms glutes and calves it also includes a more depth than I'm able to give in these videos to get the free ebook all you need to do is pre-order the muscle ladder on Amazon Burns a noble or wherever you buy

your books and then show me your order number to do that just go to Jeff ner.me you the free ebook to your email as well all you have to do is go to Jeff ner.me versus cheating technique I'll definitely do a video on that once the the study is up and running um don't forget to leave me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video and I'll see you guys all here in the next one