When it comes to bicep exercises, there is no shortage of options. However,
which exercises do you focus on? If you're struggling to build your arms right now,
you're going to want to watch to the end of this video because I'm going to give you the
two exercises that you need to focus on if you want to start seeing different results. Now,
others may want you to believe that there's only two exercises that you need,
and all the other bicep exercises just don't even provide any additional benefit. That's
not what I'm saying. But if you don't have these two boxes checked in combination with each other,
you're going to struggle to build your best biceps possible. With this bare minimum approach,
you can be assured of the fact that you're going to have an effective combination of exercises to
use and more so be able to focus on fewer things so you can get to where you want to be faster.
What's up, guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. Look, you might be surprised to hear me say only
two because you know that I've got a lot of exercise options for biceps. However, when I
talk about only two, we have a unique opportunity with biceps that we maybe don't have with some
other muscle groups. If we're talking about the chest where we have to hit the different heads of
the upper mid and lower chest or the functions of adduction or just basic pressing, it's hard
to achieve that in just two exercises. However, with the biceps, the function of
flexion of the elbow, supination of the forearm and then flexion of the shoulder,
that's a function that can actually be built into almost any exercise we do. So, what would
we focus on for our two? Well, the bare minimum right here has to be some variation of a curl.
But what I like to do is start off with a Strict Curl, step away, do a Drop Set into a Cheat Curl,
and there's a reason for this. So, with the Strict Curl here, you grab your weight. And again, if you
have a hard time feeling supination, you could grab this in a more supinated grip. But for now,
I have the more neutral grip here. Your butt is in contact with the wall, your upper back is in
contact with the wall and your head is in contact with the wall. And then I bring the weight up
and come down again. This is really overloading the biceps because I don't have the opportunity
to get that swing that I would if I was stepping away from the wall. So, you take the set all the
way to failure. Okay, Let's say that's it then I walk away. Now we have the Drop Set. So, a Drop
Set gives you the option to go to and through failure. For me, I'm going to put my right leg
up in front. I'll tell you why in a second. But I come up and I get a little swing, focus on
the eccentric. Up and a little swing, focus on the eccentric. Up in a little swing, focus on
the eccentric. For me, I've got this leg up front because I have this torn bicep on my right side.
So, I try to limit some of the extension that I get here from range of motion. You wouldn't have
to do that. But up and then slow eccentric on the way down all the way to failure. Again, when we're
talking about exercise selection, you may want to do the bare minimum. Your bare minimum better
start with some variation of a curl and a heavy one at that. And utilizing the Strict Curl, Cheat
Curl Drop Set is my favorite way to do it. The second thing you're going to want to do
is get friendly with the bar, and I'm talking about a pull up bar. As a kid,
I spent a whole hell of a lot of time up here, whether it be in field day, trying to
do the Flexed Arm Hang Challenge for as long as I could or in my own training because I realized it
allowed me to do something very important that you might be missing right now. And that is to get all
three of those functions of the bicep hit in one shot: getting elbow flexion, getting supination
or in a supinated position, and also getting that shoulder flexion with our arm up high.
Now, guys, I've been able to turn this into some pretty decent bicep development. So,
I'm asking you to trust the advice that I'm giving you here. So, here's what I
did. I get up on the bar underhand position. I'm going to get into this position with my
head just peeking up a little bit. My elbows are in front, so I don't have to worry about
my shoulders. But what I do is I just get into this position right here. My legs are locked out,
so my core is tight and I'm holding the isometric on the biceps. Now I can do this one of two ways,
I could just sit here and do one prolonged isometric into one failing negative on the
way down. Right. Which I could do at the end of my bicep workout or after my set of curls. Or I could
turn it into a more dynamic exercise where I'm trying to rep that out. But what you'll see is the
angle of the arm doesn't really change. I try to keep it fairly open, right? So, if I'm coming up,
I'm down and I'm right up to about here. Okay, I'm just going to the back of my head for the target.
Just like that. If I want, I could come up behind the bar too, but look at how I keep
the angle open. I'm not closing it down because I'll take some of the pressure off of the biceps
and put it onto the lats. In order to build the biceps themselves, make them do all the work,
keep that angle at about 90 degrees. Again, we're talking about bare minimum.
When I say only two, I'm saying at least these two. However, I mentioned in the beginning,
if your bicep development is in a place where you're happy right now, but feel like you could
take it to another level, well, that's where the other exercises step in. And there's plenty of
them to do that, guys. Make sure you check out these two videos to get other options for you.
If you're looking for a program, guys, you can find them over at Athleanx.com. In the meantime,
if you haven't done so, click Subscribe and turn on your Notifications so you
never miss a video when we put one out. All right, guys, see you soon.