Hey guys, Scott from Muscularstrength.com. You know,
since I started doing full body training,
I'm able to experiment where a lot more other exercises,
because there's really no set progressions here, right?
We're not trying to increase our weight on every single exercise week to week.
It's more about overall volume attacking a specific muscle group.
So because of this each day, I go to the gym,
even though I have a set schedule of what I'm trying to hit,
and I have specific exercises that I'm trying to do for certain body parts.
I do have the option of switching things out or adding depending on how I feel
or what I want to train. So in today's video,
I want to share with you guys three exercises that you can incorporate into your
program right now, if you're trying to build a bigger biceps peak.
Now on some of these exercises,
you guys are going to notice right away that I'm doing half reps,
but we're doing half reps for a specific reason.
And I'll get to that during the exercises. Also,
one more thing before we get started,
if you're here and you think that you can never improve your biceps because of
your genetics, because you might have long bicep bellies,
the short answer is you're wrong.
You can always improve what you've got by focusing on lagging areas with
specific exercises. Now,
am I going to sit here and say that you're going to have better biceps peak
than somebody with short muscle bellies? Hmm. Maybe that might not happen,
but any improvement is always good. And what I mean by that is someone like me.
I have short bicep bellies. Okay. So when I flex my arm,
I got a gap in between my bicep and my forearm
Some of you guys might have long bicep bellies.
When you flex your album like this, your bicep already hits your forearm.
So that's the difference.
The first exercise we want to share with you is a seated drag curl.
And we've talked about seated curls before I even did a video on it,
talking about how I thought that a seated barbell curl was a useless exercise,
but that's the difference. We're doing a drag curl, not a seated barbell,
curl a seated barbell curl.
You're still putting your hands out in front of you like this and curling
straight up. And then back down, you're doing a half of the range of motion.
And in my opinion, if you're trying to do a barbell curl to target your biceps,
you need the full range of motion.
You need to push through that sticking point at the bottom. However,
if your focus is going to be the outer head of your biceps,
and we're going to do a drag curl, we're doing a drag curl standing.
The first half of the motion.
It kind of just feels like you're pulling the weight up to your hips.
And then from your hips to the top of the movement,
that's when you really start to feel that stretch.
Remember the outer head of the bicep is the only head that crosses the shoulder
joint. So if we're able to pull our elbows back like this,
we're going to get a much harder stretch at the top of the movement on the
outer head. And you guys can do that right now, flex your arm like this,
and then pull back. And as you pull back again,
a feel a lot more stretch and flex on that bicep outer head.
So when doing the seated drag curl guys, pull it in and right to your body.
And then instead of wasting time doing the exercise standing where you're not
really getting anything out of that bottom range of motion,
you can increase the weight a bit more. And then from right here,
you can pull straight up flex and then bring it back down.
And just to make sure that as you're doing this exercise,
you're really focusing on pulling your elbows back as you bring your arms up and
you're keeping that barbell against your chest and against your torso the entire
time. That's why it's called a drag curl. You want to drag it up and down.
The second exercise is actually something I've never really recommended before,
but after trying out the movement and doing a bit more research on it,
I realized that most people who showed me the exercise were doing it the
incorrect way.
So I want to explain to you guys exactly what to do to get the most out of this.
And it's called a dumbbell plate curl. Now,
the reason why it's called a dumbbell plate curl is because you traditionally
want to use one of those dumbbells. That's a bit more flat.
I have hexagon dumbbells in my gym,
which makes it a bit harder to get your hands underneath and keep them flat and
parallel.
So if you can find a different dumbbell or another alternative to keep your
hands more flat, definitely do that,
but you can still get away with using the hexagon.
So the reason why this is a great exercise to help target the peak of your bicep
or the outer head is for the same reason why the drag curl is.
And that's because you're supposed to pull your elbow back to maximize the
stretch on your outer head of your biceps.
And now you could also utilize this exercise to get a bit more supanation out
of the movement, as well as you guys know.
And I teach this all the time with my dumbbell curls. If you're doing a curl,
you want to start off with your hand facing forward,
to be in supanation of the forearm.
So you get maximum bicep engagement the entire time.
If you're starting this way, then superintending, halfway,
you're only really recruiting as much bicep as possible.
Halfway through movement. I actually have a vs series video on this.
You guys can check it out. I'll post a link down below, but with this exercise,
most people in the gym,
unfortunately they just see the movement as an up and down biceps curl.
So you see a lot of this with the dumbbell in front of the body, okay?
This is not targeting the outer head. I mean, granted, yeah,
you're targeting the outer head and in the inside head, right?
Because you're doing a curl, but we're not targeting it the way we want it to.
We're not maximizing the effectiveness of the exercise,
what you actually need to do is cup the dumbbell. Then pull it to your body.
And this is why this exercise is going to look like a half rep as well.
When you come down, you want to keep your hands parallel to the floor.
So you're only going to be able to come down to about here.
If you go any lower than your hands are parallel to the floor anymore,
the Dumbbell also might slip out of your hands. So keep your hands parallel.
They're going to come down to about here, max. Then as you come up,
you're going to pull your elbows back almost like a drag curl and bring the
Dumble up as hard as you can and flex your biceps. And if you do it right,
you're going to feel that outer head
screaming and your forearms are going to light up like crazy as well.
And I have one more quick tip for this exercise to make it even more intense.
So if you like torture, this is what you're going to do.
When you perform the movement, as you bring the dumbbell up,
you're going to hold it against your body like this.
I want you to twist your elbows out a little bit.
If you take a Dumbbell right now and hold it against your body and start to turn,
your elbows out, you're going to feel that outer head
really start to light up because what are we doing? Well, essentially,
we're doing this.
When we come to the top of the movement and we twist our wrist for more supanation
you feel that outer head activate, well, that's what we're doing here.
Except instead of twisting our wrist,
we're essentially doing the same thing by pushing our elbow out. Okay? I mean,
even with no weight and I do this, you feel that flex. So give it a shot.
Let me know what you think. So the third exercise is a dumbbell hammer curl.
And now you guys have done this exercise traditionally by curling out in front
of your body.
And now we know that the dumbbell hammer curl places more emphasis on the
brachialis, okay. Which is right here in the center of your arm.
And it also hits the brachioradialis as well, reverse curls a bit more,
but you're going to feel that areas that to light up when you perform your reps.
Now we can alter this exercise to still hit the brachialis
but also target more outer head or more of the outer head of the biceps
by instead of curling out in front of our body like this,
by turning into the side and curling this way, but just be mindful guys,
because it's a lot more than going from this way to just curling inside like
this, you do need to pay attention. Once again,
we want to feel that stretch on the outer head and the way we can do that is by
instead of just curling in front of our body,
this way we can pull our elbow back a bit and we can curl almost like into our
armpit. And if you sat to do this movement again,
you could even do it with no weight curl like this curl here,
pull your elbow back versus curling here.
You're going to feel a big difference in how much of your out ahead of your
bicep is being targeted or how much of that stretch and flex you feel throughout
the entire movement. And now for a few quick bonus tips, before I let you go,
number one, please show your support, go down,
tap that like button YouTube loves the screw me on the algorithm.
I got 2.3 million subscribers,
but like 10,000 of you get the actual notification. So let's show YouTube.
Who's the real boss smash that like button.
And let's see if we can hit 8,000 likes on this video.
And now for the actual bonus tip,
when you guys incorporate these movements into your workout, just pick one,
but make sure you still have a bicep specific movement.
And what I mean by that is if this were my workout,
I would still do a traditional barbell biceps curl with a neutral grip on the
bar to activate my biceps.
I'm not necessarily trying to increase my mind muscle connection before doing
this movement. Although if you need to do that, it wouldn't be a bad idea.
You can use some lighter weight to do that,
but if I'm trying to work on a lagging area and in this case,
it's the outer head of the biceps peak.
I don't want to get into the habit of just doing some of these movements that
involve half reps, okay.
For maximum activation of the biceps heads of them,
you need full range of motion and an exercise like a barbell curl.
In my opinion is a great place to start. And then from there,
I would either go into the seated drag curl, the dumbbell plate curl,
or the hammer curl variation that I showed you as for sets and reps,
I would keep it simple three sets, eight to 10 repetitions per exercise.
Obviously when doing the hammer curls,
make sure you do eight to 10 reps per side.
And if you guys have any questions about these movements,
or if you want to ask a more specific question of how to incorporate it into
your workout,
you can comment down below with your workout that you're doing in the gym,
and I'll do my best to respond and help you fill in the gap.
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And to be honest with you guys,
I plan on starting to make more videos in this format.
This is how I used to do it back in the day.
And I really want to start getting back to my roots because that's when I had
the most fun with my channel. So comment below,
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See you guys next time.