Developing huge and well rounded pair of biceps is probably the number one dream of many guys who ever took on bodybuilding. However, the task of growing fully developed biceps is not an easy one. Some guys swear that all it takes to grow your biceps is to do hours upon hours of barbell curls. Yet, we all know that this is just an oversimplification of a problem that takes far greater subtlety to handle.
Sure, doing aimless set of barbell curls will spur some growth in your arms. But will you suffice with the average, or are you aiming something bigger? If you want to reach your full potential, you’ll need to savvy your approach to this problem. We hand you several tips that will provide you with faster and rounded growth of your biceps.
Adding these five strategies will greatly help your biceps growth, and you should gain both size and strength.
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VARY YOUR GRIP
One of the crucial factors in achieving fully rounded biceps growth is the width of your grip when doing barbell curls. The shoulder-width grip applies almost unilateral tension to your biceps, emphasizing both its short and long head. By varying your grip-width you can shift the stress focusing more on the short or the long head.
The wider grip, for example, shifts the emphasis to the short head. Conversely, narrowing down your grip, shifts the emphasis to the long head, forcing greater activation of its fibers. Since both heads participate in forming your biceps size, you need to pay ample attention to each of them.
That is why you need to perform your biceps curls with varied grip-width. We recommend including four sets of barbell curls in your arm routine. Begin the sequence by performing one set of close grip curls. Perform the second set with hip-width grip. Follow with a set performed at shoulder width grip. Complete the sequence with a set of wider-than-shoulder grip.
SEATED CURLS
Performing the reps with partial movements can be highly beneficial for increasing your muscle strength. This is due to the fact that you can increase the weights you are using in performing certain exercises. This same principle applies to training your biceps. Performing the biceps curl with full range of motion limits you in using the loads you can handle through the weakest portion of the movement.
You can eliminate this problem with the seated barbell curls, because you remove the bottom portion of the movement. Resting the barbell on your thighs allows you to use greater loads and to shift your focus to the biceps. According to the research, performing the barbell curls in a seated position allows you to increase the loads by up to 30% compared with the standing barbell curls.
The seated barbell curls have the best effect if you perform them early in your workout, while still fresh. Start by doing three sets of partials. Follow with three sets of standing barbell curls, performed at full range of motion.
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