what are the best exercises to Target your biceps I'm going to share with you the best methods for bigger arms my top picks for exercises and some sample workers that you can use immediately at the end of this video your biceps here are a pretty simple muscle they run up along your arm here and they perform this action elbow flexion which means anytime performance movement they're going to be working whether it's up here or down here and even up here so when you want to Target your biceps there are literally millions of exercises that you
could be doing but they're all going to fall into one of two buckets these buckets will Det which part of your arm you're training because technically these here are your biceps but we also care about this little guy here the brachialis and we can't forget this guy here the brachio radialis because even though people mainly talk about the biceps and triceps when it comes to Arms these other parts make up a humongous portion of the arm and can't be neglected which is where these two buckets come into play the first bucket is anytime you're bending
the elbow and your palm is facing up here you're going to be working the biceps you have your basic barbell curl dumbbell curl incline curl and even things like chin UPS or pull Downs will work your biceps to a degree and anytime you're bending the elbow but your palm is facing in or down towards the ground you're going to be targeting the brachia radialis and the brachialis a little bit more so that all makes sense but how do we now go about picking which exercise is best for you my friends it is time for us
to peel the onion first layer we have already done you've decided for yourself whether you want to go Palms up or Palms down the next layer is working out where in the range of motion is the exercise hardest then we can finally get to the fun stuff my personal favorite exercises and some actual workouts so the first question for you is what's the difference between these two curl exercises here this dumbbell curl is really easy down here I can hang out here forever but it gets really challenging up at this point whereas this shallow angle
preacher curl is really challenging here at the bottom position but I can get to here and hang out forever the same concept applies here at this start position this is really challenging but once I get past it I can hang out here indefinitely this is really easy the only thing that I recommend you do with this information is apart from picking exercises that feel good to you and that are convenient and easy for you to set up in your own training environment but it's to pick exercises that challenge your biceps in these different parts of
the range of motion you pick one exercise where it's harder towards that Peak contraction one exercise where is harder towards more lengthened position and avoid redundancies where you keep adding more and more and more exercises through an endless list of movements that end up essentially training the exact same thing in the exact same position because is there really a huge difference between a standing barbell Cur and a standing dumbbell Cur no it just comes down to convenience preference and what you have available now you can make the case that an incline curl in this position
is significantly different to me being more upright and curling just like this but to be perfectly honest with you this change in extra stretch is quite minimal and quite small not to mention the fact that yes my bicep is more stretched but there's no tension here just like we saw earlier who cares if a muscle is more stretched if it's not being challenged in that position and this exact same concept applies to that brachia radialis and brachialis so I've got the hammer curl this is really hard up here whereas the hammer preacher curl is really
hard down here and this lying curl is pretty much the exact same as me doing a standing upright with dumbbells except I get to lie down which brings us to the bonus layer of this onion stability I love Pelican curls but there's a lot of technical skill involved and they're very challenging but a cable Cur does pretty much the exact same thing with more stability and less technical demand and if instead of doing the typical cable Cur or Bean Cur that most people do with the cable set up quite low if we took that same
cable and set it up quite High we can get a closer copy of that Pelican Curl we're able to get this monstrous stretch through our shoulders and chest at the same time as we're training our biceps in their more lengthened position Dr Mike Israel really likes his dumbbell laidback Hill variation which is a cool exercise I'm not as biger fan because you're relying somewhat on your shoulders to help stabilize you in this position whilst you're doing the curl exercise it's not wrong or bad but I prefer to lay back on a preacher bench just like
this to get the exact same effect with more stability at the elbow before we get to a couple of actual workouts I'm going to leave you with a few different exercises that I really enjoy when it comes to hitting the biceps and the brachialis and the Brach radialis you can pick one or two from each bucket and just follow them blindly but one question that does come up from time to time is can you bias each individual head of the short head and the long head of the biceps to get that split down the middle
and to be perfectly honest with you there is probably a way to be biasing these in terms of how you position your arm closer or further away from your body but the difference would be so infinitesimally small that you would never notice a significant difference between your short head or your long head being hit further and growing more as a result so I'm going to sound a bit like a bro here but bro seriously just get bigger arms and you'll be okay you can have differences in insertions and how your biceps look overall as they
grow but that's more the do of genetics and where the muscles actually attach as opposed to picking specific exercise to Target one head over the other the only other tiny detail that you might want to think about when it comes to picking different exercises for your body is not just about does it feel good and is it easy to set up but also trying to train your biceps when your arm is in different positions so not just here by your sides or here in front of you on a preacher bench or even here on incline
kill but getting way back behind your body here bring your arm out to the side here as well or I mean this 45° scapula plane as well this isn't as much about Max size or Max biceps gains but more about shoulder health or Mobility because the biceps cross through the shoulder joint and attached to the shoulder blade back there and they play a big role in stabilizing and moving this shoulder joint as well I'm a big believer in the idea of having Mastery and strength in as many different varied positions as possible and if you
never go somewhere such as maybe up here or behind your body when you're training your biceps you're never going to build strength and capacity there okay let's take a look at sample workout number one this is a pretty simple one we're going to have one exercise here for the biceps for the peak contraction one exercise for the biceps more of that lengthened position and one exercise down here for the brachialis brachia radialis we are also adding in some partials here in the bottom half of the Beijing curl and some partials here for a little bit
of fun on the hammer curl but you can absolutely do without those two extra partial exercises if you wanted to this workout and hundreds more are available in my app along with over 70 complete programs for myself and other experts in powerlifting calisthenics running and more you can even build and track your own programs I'll leave a link in the description below for you if you want to try it out but this one here is a dumbbell only workout that is perfect for when you're short on time so we're going to do it together first
we're going to start down here in a spider curl so this exercise is hardest at this point here and it gets a lot easier down the bottom you want to pick a weight that has you challenged at about 6 to 8 rep max and get a really strong hard contraction right up here in this peak one thing I didn't mention before is in this fully shortened position with the arm in front of my body this is a very weak position for the biceps so you'll find yourself failing quite early so again 6 to8 reps 1
to 2 second pause around there and that's it and then go straight into layback incline kill so we're using the same weights and even though I hit close to failure I had a couple of reps in the tank still I failed at the time ask of the exercise but my biceps still have more to give so now I'm able to get this monstrous stretch on the biceps load them up down there in that stretch but I appear is easy I can hang out here for a while down here super hard get as many as you
can five six would be a good Target and then we're still not done going to come around to the spider Cur one more time and because I've hit those two failure points I can only get about there or the halfway mark 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 I meant to do five but I'm talking to you guys so give me a break then last bit to finish this off standing dumbbell curl working that midrange add a little bit of a cheat if you need it oh God and that is set one my
God that hurts so that's it there just to took about 2 minutes and that is plenty for your biceps if you want you can do another round or you can switch up to something more for the brachialis and that braio radialis but truth be told what we just did is plenty for them as well it's going to thrash them you don't need a lot of exercis you don't need really fancy you don't need really complicated you just need a really hard effort and that's one of my favorite ways to really shorten the time demand but
maximize stimulus so I hope you enjoy that one
