foreign [Music] curling exercises can be great for building the biceps for the simple fact they can all involve elbow flexion and supination but let's say you wanted to push me could a certain type of coal be slightly more effective than the wrist maybe I'm wondering if a curling exercise while the shoulders are extended such as drawing an incline curl or face away cable curl might be the single most favorable biceps exercise why am I wondering this due to the origins of the biceps placing the shoulder into extension stretches the biceps particularly the long head since
this passes directly over the shoulder joints in recent years the power of achieving a stretch of a muscle during an exercise is becoming apparent though it's worth knowing that the scientific origins of stretch playing a role in hypertrophy stretches back to the 1970s a range of studies conducted on animals found that when having them stretch various muscles with extreme intensity for a long duration muscle hypertrophy occurred even Elite bodybuilders seemingly recognize is the importance of stretch Arnold mentions in his book that incline dumbbell curse are a great exercise alluding to the stretch of being an
important factor today we have three areas of the scientific literature in humans showing the power of achieving a stretch during an exercise [Music] the isometric training research is the first for those unaware isometric training is where you hold a muscle in a static position and we have three studies that demonstrate isometric training as a stretch to muscle position produces more hypertrophy than isometric training at a shortened muscle position an important consideration with this data is all three of the studies looked at the quadriceps muscle so we can't be certain the same applies to the biceps
however the second area of the scientific research comparing different range of motions potentially indicates that biceps do respond to stretch [Music] foreign studies won by Sato and the other by Pedrosa have compared performing a preacher Co with a partial range of motion at the initial position to a partial range of motion at the final position you can lift heavier loads with a partial range of motion in the final position and this was adjusted for in both studies now preacher curls don't optimally stretch the biceps since this exercise is performed in shoulder flexion even so the
subjects in both studies that trained with a partial range of motion at the initial position would have been stretching the biceps more than the subjects training with a partial range of motion at the final position if the biceps do not benefit from being exposed to a stretch we'd expect similar hypertrophy between both groups but the Sato study found elbow flexor growth across three regions tended to be superior for the partial range of motion at the initial position when we average growth across the three regions it's evident elbow flexor growth was Superior with a partial at
the initial position as for the Pedrosa study elbow flexor growth was measured at the 50 and 70 upper arm regions and at the 50 region thickness gains were actually similar between both groups but at the 70 region gains were Superior for the partial at the initial position if we add both regions we can see growth favored the partial at the initial position an interesting consideration is that both studies found considerably more gains at the 70 region for the partial at the initial position this phenomenon of stretched exercises growing this region of a muscle substantially have
also been found with a quadriceps muscle group we do actually have another study comparing different range of motions with a biceps exercise that further suggests that biceps May grow more when exposed to stretch this is a 2011 study by Pinto which also had subjects trained to preacher coal one group of subjects trained with a full range of motion while another group of subjects trained with a partial range of motion in the middle position increases in elbow flexor growth at around the 60 upper arm length favored the full range of motion group considering the findings of
the Sato and Pedrosa studies I think these results are probably in large part since the full range of motion group achieved greatest stretch of the biceps an important consideration with all this range of motion data is although it indicates the stretched part of a preacher curl is great for building muscle it of course cannot prove an even greater stretch achieved for the curls and shoulder extension would be even better for biceps hypertrophy nonetheless the third area of scientific literature comes from data on the triceps [Music] the triceps generally consist of the long medial and lateral
heads all three heads pass over their elbow joints but the long head specifically passes over the shoulder joint as well and when you place the shoulder into flexion the long head of the triceps is going to be stretched this is quite similar to the biceps Long Head we know this passes over the shoulder joint too and will be stretched during shoulder extension an overhead extension is a triceps exercise that will train the long head of the triceps in a stretched position since this exercise is performed with the shoulders flexed and here's the key point a
great Study last year by Mao compared overhead extensions to push downs and found that overhead extensions produced greater long triceps head volume increases fascinatingly the overhead extensions also produced greater combined medial and lateral head volume increases as well a finding that was unexpected but nicely demonstrates a point many people tend to forget that there are likely still things we do not fully know about muscle hypertrophy of course we'll dissect this study by Mal plus other relevant research in our Ultimate Guide to developing the triceps that should be released in the upcoming weeks foreign these three
areas of the scientific literature collectively aren't Crystal Clear proofs curls would show the extension are the single most hypertrophic exercise but I think they're sufficient for us to hypothesize it could be despite these three areas of the scientific literature there's a chance you may have come across people suggesting the biceps should not grow more when exposed to stretch their belief seems to stem from research looking at the length tension relationship of the biceps sarcomas I don't believe this research is strong enough to Warrant a full explanation of it in this video so for those interested
in the full dissection of it my views can be found at the link on screen essentially I simply do not believe we can look at one area of the scientific literature that has an array of potential limitations and make definitive conclusions about whether the biceps grow more in response to stretch or not especially considering when other areas of the scientific literature as we analyzed provide solid grounds to speculate the biceps May indeed grow more in response to stretch I will point out for the same reasons people speculated the triceps should not grow more in response
to stretch that is they believe to length tension relationship studies on the triceps sarcomas meant the triceps shouldn't grow more when exposed to stretch but as we saw with a mouse study released last year the triceps Longhead grew more in response to stretch nevertheless you can be sure that if any future research emerges about how the biceps May respond to stretching based exercises we'll have a video on the house of hypertrophy to update you all for those interested in guidance or ideas about programming for hypertrophy you may be interested in our partner Alpha progression a
tremendous app that includes a custom workout generator the training variables deployed are grounded in various meta-analyzes and systematic reviews from the scientific literature plus there's great flexibility you can fact in what equipment you have so if you only have dumbbells no problem how long you want your workouts to be how often you want to train furthermore the workouts are still editable to your liking allowing you to individualize things as you see fit the app also has other great features it provides neat graphs that can display your long-term progression and there's a database with over 550
exercises with excellent video and text tutorials behind each the link in the comments and description gives you everything on the app for two weeks completely free and if you like it and go beyond the link gives you 20 off a subscription we don't just partner up with anybody at the house of hypertrophy so you can rest assured the app is seriously quality [Music] as an additional part to this section we know incline curls and cable face away curves are two ways you could train the biceps in a great stretched position but are there any differences
between either of them that makes one better than the other some suggest cable face weight cars are better as they provide more consistent biceps Force production throughout the range of motion versus incline curves however I'm skeptical this matters that much for hypertrophy if training a muscle with consistent Force production throughout a range of motion was crucial for muscle hypertrophy variable resistance should build more muscle for those unaware variable resistance is typically achieved with machines that vary the resistance throughout the range of motion resulting in the muscle being challenged in there equally throughout it four Studies
have examined the effectiveness of training with variable resistance compared to using normal resistance and all of them find similar muscle hypertrophy between the two two of these involve the biceps training one of them was this 2018 paper which compared variable to normal resist since machine preacher curls and found similar arm circumference gains between the two the second one was this 1995 study which again compared variable to normal resistance Preacher machine curls and observed similar biceps cross-sectional area gains between the two since these two studies only use the preacher curl it's not a guarantee that these
findings apply to curling with a shoulder extended but I do think it could be the case that regardless of the resistance profile of an exercise taking your repetitions to or at least near failure sufficiently stimulates the biceps therefore I'm currently not sold on the idea that cable face away curves would truly be superior to inclined dumbbell curls so for now I'd say an individual should select whichever they prefer what you just watched was a clip from our free Ultimate Guide to biceps hypertrophy feel free to check out the full video here or you may wish
to check out another one of the House of hypertrophy's videos
