What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
Are you struggling to get your biceps to grow?
If you are, don't worry about it because first of all, believe it or not, I actually had
a hard time getting my biceps to grow early on in my life
until I started to do a couple of things differently.
And I want to share with you guys those 2 same things.
And we're going to do it in a 2-phase approach.
So, maybe you've tried all the exercises, some even the exercises that I tell you that
I love, the Heavy Barbell Curls, and even that doesn't help your biceps grow.
Well, that kind of kicks off Phase I, and I think it's a major problem for a lot of
guys out there.
It's not just isolated to biceps.
It happens to a lot of different muscle groups.
And it's a lack of a mind/muscle connection because if you don't have that, I don't care
how heavy you lift,
or how hard, you know, what kind of effort you put in your workouts, if you don't have
a good mind/muscle connection between the muscle you're trying to work and
the one you're trying to get to grow which should be the same, then you're not going
to see the results you want.
So, there's a couple of things you can do to test to see what your mind/muscle connection
is in your biceps.
And firstly, you want to take your arm and put it into the position you would at the
bottom or the middle here of a Bicep Barbell Curl.
You want to really try to contract your arm as hard as you possibly can and see if you
can generate a strong enough contraction that it can cause some discomfort in here
from that strong of a contraction.
And if you can't, you know, you may or may not have reason to worry at this point
because even I sometimes can struggle to really tighten it as much as I could to get some
kind of a contraction.
But, if you then bend your wrist back just a little bit and allow your elbow to flex
just a little bit or to, you know, let your shoulder flex a little bit forward here,
now you're kind of putting yourself in a position of a Preacher Curl which you should be able
to elicit a strong enough contraction here to cause discomfort.
If you still don't feel any kind of discomfort in here, or any real strong contraction in
your bicep, then you definitely got something to start worrying about.
But lastly, if you can put it up here in this flex position where people say, 'Hey, flex
your arm.
Let me see your bicep.'
If you can put it up here and squeeze for as hard as you can and you still can't feel
any, like right there, I could already have to almost stop because I've got so much tension
in here
that I can't really withstand that contraction for much longer.
If you can't feel any discomfort here, then you really have a mind/muscle problem.
And what you need to do is not worry about Phase II at the moment, but focus on getting
that mind/muscle connection developed.
You're going to want to start by doing some of the exercises that I'm showing you here,
and this first exercise, the Bicep Flex Curl,
you're literally recreating that same scenario where someone asks you to flex your arm.
The key here is to really feel the contraction, so you might have to lower the weight, but
what you might really want to do is slow down the pace.
And when you're slowing down the pace, you're trying to control that contraction every single
inch, every step of the way.
Really feel it, and when you get to the end, hold the contraction,.
You're really just trying to establish the fact that you've controlled the weight from
point A to point B,
and it didn't just magically get there.
Now, you can take this concept over to another exercise like the Preacher Curl, like I talked
about.
You get in that position, the advantage of both of these exercises is that with that
slight shoulder flexion, and obviously with the elbow flexion,
we are putting in the bicep as close as we can to max contraction.
Obviously, the shoulder can go way more up than it is in these 2 exercises, but at least
you're getting into that position.
So if you're one that's struggling with feeling a contraction, put it as close as you can
to peak contraction position.
And then work on it.
And again, even in the exercise there, the Preacher Curl, I'm trying to work on the quality
of the contraction, not so much the amount of weight that I'm lifting.
Until we get to Phase II, and now in Phase II, now we have to start throwing in my second
and my favorite technique which is overloading with eccentrics.
I say it all the time.
Matter of fact, I made our Back and Bicep workout a couple weeks ago, and in there was
my Barbell Cheat Curl.
I love the Barbell Cheat Curl.
Now, what you're trying to do is, obviously trying to muscle it up as much as you can
but the most important component of that exercise is the eccentric lowering.
Eccentrically lowering the bicep under tension and elongating at the same time is absolutely
my favorite, number 1 way to elicit more muscle hypertrophy from it.
And I know it doesn't look all that pretty on the way up, but as long as you're not really
leaning backwards and jeopardizing your low back,
you're trying to stay, stick it at the neutral point at least, the fact is, you really slowly
lower that eccentric, you're going to do muscle damage.
You're going to cause a hypertrophy response in that muscle, and that's what we're looking
for.
But again, if you can't feel it, if you don't have good mind/muscle control,
you're really just slinging weights around with no, no real purpose, and that's not going
to get you there.
So, Phase I. Establish that connection if you don't have it.
Phase II, and I showed you how to test for that,
in Phase II, start working on using those heavy eccentrics and getting them into every
workout,. bicep workout, that you do because you'll start to see results from that.
So, hopefully, guys, you found this video helpful.
Remember, it's all about having a plan because doing the same exact thing over and over and
over again,
expecting different results, is really, as they say, the definition of insanity.
It's not going to work.
You've got to have a plan.
And when that plan's not working, you've got to be able to adapt and change.
And that's what we do.
With ATHLEANX, guys, I give you guys plans.
It's not just haphazard training.
It's taking my experience as a Physical Therapist and a Strength Coach to get you guys a step-by-step
plan
and even give you guys adaptations and changes to make along the way should something not
work for you.
And we do that all the time.
It's called training because working out is just working out, but training is having a
plan, following it,
and then making the adaptations as needed to make sure you continue to see plateau-free
progress, and that's what we do.
If you haven't already guys, go to ATHLEANX.COM right now.
Get our training plan and see what it's like to actually follow a step-by-step system,
to see how much faster you can see results.
I'm telling you, I didn't have the best biceps in the world as a kid.
But I followed the plan and little by little by little, I was able to get there.
And I think you guys can certainly do the same thing.
Even if you're struggling real mildly right now to get those things to grow.
In the meantime, if you found this helpful, guys, leave your comments and thumb's up below,
and whatever else it is that you want to see.
Remember, there's 3 videos a week going out.
Let me know what it is.
And I will make a video about it.
I promise.
Alright guys, I'll talk to you again soon.