What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today we're dealing up the master tip, when it comes to training your biceps.
Remember, for anything to be the master tip it has to accomplish, or meet four criteria.
Number one: it has to work.
You know if I show it to you it's going to work.
Number two: it must not require any additional equipment in order to pull it off.
Number three: it must be something that applies to every, single bicep exercise that you're
doing, not just selective exercises.
And number four: it has to be something that we all could do instantly, and feel instantly.
I'm going to deliver on all four counts here today.
So when you're training your biceps, the absolute best thing you can do if you want to get more
from your biceps is bend your wrist backward when you perform the movement.
Now, it doesn't have to be much.
We're talking about not using a neutral grip, and bending back about 20 or 30 degrees.
The reasons for this are many.
Let me start by this: if I were to go grab something – and you can test it yourself
– take note of the position of your wrist when you do that.
You will see that your wrist is angled – here's neutral, from my arm – it's angled up.
It's always going to be in some sort of extension because extension is the strongest, most stable
position of the wrist.
Not a neutral position.
There are a lot of times when you want to use a neutral position of your wrist.
When you're doing pressing exercises, when you're doing pushing exercises off the ground.
You can get more neutral if you have wrist problems by using blocks, or anything like
dumbbells to grab onto during a pushup.
But when we're talking about a curl here, an open-chain curl, an extended position of
the wrist is more stable.
Next, you might be saying to yourself "Hold on.
Isn't that a lot of pressure?
Especially if we're bending backward on a curl?"
No, it's actually quite the opposite.
You're less likely to hurt your wrist in this position.
Number one, because of that stability, and number two, because you're alleviating the
big problem that's caused by doing this.
That is when you don’t extend your wrist and make it stay extended as you curl.
You're getting too much activation of forearm flexors.
And when we curl up you're going to find that your body wants to get that bar closer to
your eyes.
That's the visual point.
Get that bar up.
If I start to fatigue out here, what I wind up doing is, I just curl with my wrist to
activate the forearm, to get that bar closer to me.
Even if I'm not really moving the bar that much anymore.
So that over activation of these forearm flexors is way too much for them to handle.
They are not that strong.
All that force connects right here.
All these form flexors connect right here on that medial elbow.
That is why way more people wind up with medial elbow pain from bicep training, and bicep
exercises than they will wrist pain, from holding a barbell bent a little more backward.
So here's how it looks in action.
You can see here – I talked about the straight bar curl.
Here it is.
As you come up you're allowing your wrists to stay bent backward.
So in the beginning they're going to stay straight, but as soon as you start to lift
the bar you're going to adapt, and bend your wrist back just a little bit to about 20,
30 degrees, or so.
So at the top, you now have peak tension on the biceps, and the biceps are doing all the
work here.
You're not allowing the forearm flexors to curl for you.
You're letting the biceps do the curl.
And it doesn't just end at the straight bar curl.
Of course you could do it with a dumbbell curl.
And even if we're doing simultaneous supinating.
So as I'm curling up, and turning my wrists out for supination of the biceps, you can
see I'm also still worried about keeping the wrists bent backward.
It works, again, on every, single rep.
I said "feel it instantly".
You will feel this instantly between one rep not doing it, and one rep doing it.
We could go even further than this.
We can go here to a lip buster.
This is a great exercise, actually, because you're just denting those hands, you've dented
those forearms, you're letting the biceps do all the curling here.
This is actually a great on because your elbow is raised up, in front of you so your shoulder
is flexed, which is the third component of a complete bicep contraction.
They do elevate the shoulder.
You will feel an incredible contraction when you do this exercise, especially if you do
the master tip, and hold that wrist in that slightly bent back position.
We can go even further than that.
We can take it to a chin-up bar.
Yes, a chin-up is a great bicep exercise.
Especially if you do it, as I call it, the 'bicep chin-up'.
So as you pullup you actively try to pull your wrists backward a bit.
I'm almost trying to pull myself straight up to the ceiling this way.
As my hands are hanging here, and then I'm trying to pull myself up – and you can see
that all the work now is being done by the bicep, and the forearm here is saying "Okay,
I'm out of this."
You're actually extending.
So you're making these relax.
Then finally, we have a spider curl.
It just has a different strength curve than a regular curl because the peak of tension
is at the end of the movement, but it doesn’t change the fact that we could still do the
same bent wrist positioning to make the biceps do more of the work.
You can see my biceps are about ready to pop by now.
The fact of the matter is, guys, it's not always – and I say this all the time – it's
not just the exercises that you're doing, but it's the little things that matter in
how you're doing the exercises that makes all the difference in the world.
When it comes to the master tip I have delivered to you – not just on biceps, but in other
muscle groups – that one thing that you can do right now, that I promise you is going
to work, doesn’t require the extra equipment, and doesn’t require any extra ability level,
or skill level to pull it off, and you're going to see the difference, and it's going
to work on every, single exercise you do.
Try it out, guys.
I know it's going to help you.
In the meantime, if you're looking for a program that cares about all those little details
– because they matter – I've put them all together for you in one step by step program.
Click the program selector link below this video.
Go over and use our tool to find the program that's best suited to your current goals.
We actually have an Ultimate Arms program that's geared on training your whole body
– it's not just an arm program – but one on helping you to specialize, and make sure
you're focusing more on your arms.
That, and all our other programs are at ATHLEANX.com.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful, if you like the master tip series,
let me know.
I'll continue it below.
All right, guys.
See you soon.