What's going on Nation? I'm Scott from Muscularstrength.com and today, we're going to be talking about
Biceps or rather what you're doing wrong if you can't seem to get them to grow and even if your biceps are
Growing we're still going to be addressing a few points that might help accelerate their growth and maximize your time in the gym
But before we get started
Be sure to turn on notifications, so you never miss a new video uploaded from me
So mistake number one not understanding how gravity works all right guys now
You don't have to be Sir Isaac Newton to get your bicep training right okay?
But for the majority of you the most detrimental mistake you're making when training your biceps is simply not
Understanding how gravity works, and I don't mean to sound condescending
But this is the easiest way to explain my point
I want you guys to stand up with your arms hanging naturally by your sides like this
Gravity is naturally pulling them towards the floor now there is no bicep engagement here. There's no stretch
There's no contraction. They're literally just hanging out doing nothing
Now let's pick up a dumbbell and try the same thing if I just hold the dumbbell with my arm in the same position
There's no tension now my hand or my grip might get tired eventually, but not because my biceps are fatiguing
But rather my fingers and forearms are given out
But let's now perform a bicep curl if my elbow stays back here by my side
or in line with my hips
I will get a solid bicep contraction when I get to the top of the movement
But as I go down the tension stas a decrease as I lower the weight back down to the bottom
Where there is no tension at all
But that isn't totally true either guys if your palms are facing in there is no tension on the biceps
But if you keep your hands supinated with your palms facing forward
We can keep the biceps activated at the bottom of the movement also guys
This is a really good time to mention for those of you
Who are told fully extending is useless to remember that the sticking point of a bicep curl is the
Initial pull at the bottom of the movement so if you never fully extend your arms
You are essentially skipping the hardest part of the exercise
Where your biceps have to work their hardest to move the weight so skipping that is just a waste of time
Now the way to fully maximize your biceps activation during any curl is to keep your elbows locked
It's slightly in front of your torso so right about here
Next as I curl the weight up
I still get maximum contraction
But as I lower the dumbbell back down I can keep more tension on the biceps even when my arm is fully extended
Because my upper arm is no longer pointing directly towards the floor
It's at a slight angle and what this does is allow you to keep a nice
stretch on the biceps at the bottom of the movement
and if you take into
Consideration the fact that the most amount of muscle damage occurs during the negative it'd be a shame to waste that opportunity here
Simply because you're letting your elbows travel behind your hips as you lower the weight
Remember guys your body doesn't care about bicep growth
It's always trying to seek out the easiest path to move the weight that you're lifting
so that's why you'll naturally want to bring your elbows back and the dumbbells closer to your body as you lower the weight and
Even as you curl it up, but don't get confused guys because in the past we have talked about drag curls
Which I performed by bringing the elbows back on the way up
But that's a different exercise if you want to learn more about it. You can check out my recent video on drag curls vs.
Spider curls to target bicep peaks so to wrap up the first mistake guys if you want to maximize any bicep curl that you're doing
What you're going to do start with your palms facing forward like this
so I'm gonna supinate your hand get the bicep activation started at the bottom on the movement and then to ensure that we have a
Stretch on the biceps instead of just hanging straight down like this. We're gonna bring out our arms slightly forward once in this position
I'm gonna curl up
Contracting and flexing your bicep as hard as you can
Make sure when you get to the top you're flexing and squeezing your bicep as hard as you can and then as you go down
Make sure your elbow stays in that same position
Okay, you don't want to come up
And then do this because what that's gonna do is negate the eccentric portion of the movement
Where you get the most muscle fiber breakdown for regrow you want to really maximize that negative so elbows in front
up
squeeze
Come back down control the negative and then the other side up squeeze
Come back down control the negative and the entire time keeping those elbows in
front of my hips the second mistake has to do with the frequency of your training
Remember that your biceps and every other muscle in your body respond to progressive overload
This means that as long as you're consistently making progress in terms of how much weight you're lifting
Or how many sets and reps you're doing with a given weight your biceps will grow
however
If there's too much time between your bicep workouts your biceps may not be receiving the amount of growth
Stimulus they need which could result in less muscle growth or often none at all you see guys
Most people tend to train their arms once a week, and they usually have a dedicated arm or bicep day
They utilize this day to blast their biceps with ten different exercises or until they can't even hold their water bottle anymore
So in their head they feel like they're really destroying their biceps
But at the end of the day you're still only training them once a week, so if this sounds like you
You need to stop what you're doing right now
instead you need to focus on hitting your biceps two or even three times a week and
Divide them all the volume of those exercises across multiple sessions
and why should you do this well after you've trained the muscle group it will start recovering and
rebuilding the damaged tissue right this recovery and regrowth process or
Anabolic window will only last about 24 to 48 hours if you're lucky
So if you're training your biceps every seven days there are still five days in a week that your biceps are receiving
zero stimulus and that means that there is
Zero potential growth happening during that time on the other hand if you were to train your biceps two or three times a week
But with less volume per session your biceps would be growing practically every day of the entire week
Understand the difference guys also guys, and I cannot stress this enough
Remember the anabolic window changes, drastically when you're full natty
Verses on steroids if you're on drugs you can get away with training muscle groups once a week or bro
Splits as we like to call them
And you will see massive gains because your testosterone
Levels are four to five times higher than normal levels now as a full natty you can still see progress
Doing bro splits, and I'll repeat that you can still see progress doing, bro
Splits as a natural athlete however
Your progress will be much slower because your anabolic window is much smaller
which is why you need to train the same muscle groups multiple times a week to hit multiple growth periods
But I want to move on to the third and final mistake here
So if you guys want to watch my video that fully explains the anabolic window
I will link to it down in like my pinned comment below and
mistake number 3 being too strict or too loose with your form
Balance is everything guys today you might hear me say slow controlled form is key to muscle growth and tomorrow
you might see me advocating the use of a bit of momentum to cheat and
Overload your muscles like with my cheat and recovery training technique so the question is am I contradicting myself or what right?
Well, no. It's just that you need to get the best from both worlds of course
There is a time for slow controlled form and that's when you need to work on developing your mind muscle connection
Or when you're trying to pre-exhaust or fatigue a muscle group
But when it comes to busting through a plateau to gain a bit more size and strength
sometimes the best course of action is to
Utilize a bit of cheat reps so that you can lift much heavier weights and focus on controlled negatives
because you can always handle up to 40% more weight in the
eccentric portion of a movement versus the concentric portion, but when we're talking about biceps growth specifically
Exercises like concentration curls spider curls and preacher curls are okay to do especially towards the end of your workouts
But you need to focus more on exercises like the barbell biceps curl the incline dumbbell curl and weight
all of these exercises are perfect to use a bit more momentum and
Utilize the negative to stretch and force your muscle fibers to grow bigger and stronger and now for a bonus tip
Recently many of you guys have been asking me when bicep curling with dumbbells is it better to
Alternate one arm at a time or curl them both together. Well the straight answer is that it depends
This is always this always seems to be the answer take questions right it depends
Neither form is superior or inferior
To the other and they both should be variations in your excess exercise arsenal
It just comes down to what you're actually trying to do in my opinion the main reason why I
Personally would ever consider doing a standing dumbbell curl is so that I could focus on curling as much weight as possible
With each arm if you go grab some heavy dumbbells right now
You will quickly realize that you can curl a lot more weight even if it's just five pounds by
Alternating your arms one at a time versus trying to curl both at the same time
This is because whether standing or sitting it will be easier for your core to stabilize
One dumbbell instead of two because technically it's half the weight. I understand however that many of you are worried about losing
tension and wasting time
Because when your left bicep is working there what the right one might be resting or vice versa
And I'm gonna get into this so it makes you guys you know strapped in for the ride
This type of thinking is backwards and it's just laughable okay?
mainly when you see people talking about this it is literally just
clickbait BS
That's confusing and honestly this talk of losing tension is really starting to get old that's been talked about a lot
Over the past few years and let me explain
Do you really think that for the few seconds that one of your arms is not moving that the metabolic
stress from your reps is
Cancelling out okay now if you don't know what metabolic stress is it is what happens when you perform exercises that rely heavily
on anaerobic glycolysis for energy production in simpler words
metabolic stress happens when you do a lot of repetitions and
Sets with short rest periods in between this is what gives you guys the pump that you love so much and this is also just
One of three mechanisms that is responsible for building muscle
The other two are muscle damage and mechanical tension, but we won't get into those right now
But if you want to learn more I do have an article that covers them and I'll post that link in my pin comment below
too but simply put
Resting one arm while the other curls the wait for two to three seconds is not enough
time for your biceps to recover from the amount of stress being placed on them during the entire set if
It was and this is what you guys really gonna pay attention to what I'm saying
If it was an in theory you should be able to curl the weights
until the end of time and that goes for any exercise guys
half reps for more tension is just a stupid excuse to look cool lifting more weights period
I guarantee you that no matter what exercise you do
Whether you're fully locking out your elbows or alternating your arms that you will hit a point to where you are
fatigued and cannot possibly perform another repetition
So don't be fooled by the clickbait guys personally though guys
This doesn't bother me like doesn't impact my workouts or what I teach, but what it does
What does bother me and what it does impact is that so many of you guys are being fooled into
Basically training half-assed, and you're being promised more gains from it and that's kind of where I draw the line
And that's why I'm being more vocal about it
I'm sick and tired of people saying
More tension and do half reps when I know that for you full nattie guys watching my videos
It is not gonna benefit
You if anything it's gonna hold back your gains now on the other hand though if you want your sets to take less time
Or if you have a muscle imbalance and your biceps with one bicep being smaller and weaker than the other it is
probably okay to curl both arms at the same time this way you can make sure that neither arm is going up faster than the
Other since they'll both be going up with the same speed
But even with saying that it might be better for you to just use a barbell at that point so you
Have more control and lift more weight be sure to smash that like button if you guys enjoyed the video
And if you need a new program to build muscle and strength make sure you click the link in my pin comment below
No gimmicks or fancy stuff guys just straight to-the-point
Workouts to maximize your gains and as always more good stuff coming soon