BIGGER BICEPS: 5 Techniques To Speed Up Growth

There's nothing that can shatter your confidence more than having twig leg arms. Trust me, I've been there and I know exactly how it feels. But the good news is that growing your arms into big sleeve hugging biceps is possible. You just need to get smarter with how you train them. There's five techniques in particular that the latest science suggests can help speed up biceps growth dramatically. Today I'll share what those are and how to use them to get your biceps growing faster than they ever have before. The first technique actually has to do with your back training. Whenever you train your back with exercises such as rows, lat pulldowns or pull ups, your biceps will be heavily involved. Because of this, some people say that's all you really need to grow your biceps. A 2021 study put this theory to the test. They compared the growth of the biceps from dumbbell rows versus dumbbell curls after eight weeks. Although the dumbbell rows did lead to significant growth of the biceps, d dumbbell curls led to over double the growth. These findings mean two things. One, you will still experience a lot of your biceps growth from your big back exercises, so don't overlook their importance for big arms. Get stronger with your back training and your biceps will grow as well. Two, to maximize biceps growth, it's important to train them directly with 12 exercises after your back training. This is especially true because, as we'll explain in the next tip, back exercises have a downside when it comes to biceps growth. That said, it's important to pick the right bicep exercises. Recent evidence suggests that certain bicep exercises may be better options than others. This is where the next tip comes in. One of the most exciting areas of recent research has to do with something called stretch mediated hypertrophy. To explain what this fancy term means, let's take a look at a recent 2021 paper. Researchers had two groups of subjects perform the preacher curl twice a week, but either only the bottom half or the top half of the curl. After five weeks, they assessed the growth in the biceps. The subjects that performed only the bottom half of the curl experienced almost three times the biceps growth as those who only performed the top half. The reason for this seems to be the result of a powerful muscle building stimulus that happens when a muscle is fully stretched under load, such as at the bottom position of a bicep curl. Although I will admit this study design does have its flaws, the findings are consistent with other similar studies on the biceps as well as with research on other muscle groups like the hamstrings. As for how to apply this to speed up your biceps growth, there's three things you can do. First, you need to use a full range of motion on all your bicep exercises, especially at the bottom position. This means fully extending your arm at the bottom position to get a full stretch in your biceps each rep. Next, you should choose bicep exercises that challenge the biceps the most when it's in a fully stretched position, which is especially important because it's something that the back exercises we mentioned earlier just can't do. The best options here are the slight incline dumbbell curl and the behind the body cable curl. Later on in this video, I'll explain how often to do these exercises and lastly, for an even more powerful muscle building stimulus after your last set for these exercises we once you've reached failure or very close to it, perform half reps of just the bottom part of the curl. This will allow you to push past your normal point of failure and will further prioritize this all important fully stretched position. The next tip has to do with your workout volume. There's a good chance that as long as you don't overdo it, a small increase in your weekly bicep volume will be met with faster gains. Illustrating this phenomenon is a 2015 paper. Within it, subjects all trained three times per week, but were split into groups that performed a weekly total of either three sets, nine sets or 15 sets of bicep curls. After six months of this, there is a clear dose response relationship with 15 bicep sets per week providing the most bicep gains. However, you don't want to overdo this, especially if you're a beginner. My recommendation is to use 15 sets of direct bicep training as more of an upper limit instead of jumping straight to that. Take a look at how many weekly bicep sets you're doing right now and add a couple sets to that. If you don't feel overworked and your performance stays high, then great, keep doing that increased volume and in the future consider increasing it even further to see if it helps speed up your gains. I would however, recommend splitting these sets up so you're not doing it all in one session. This could, for example, look like three sets of two bicep exercises on one day during the week and and then another three sets of two bicep exercises on another day during the week. That said, as you perform these sets, it's important to apply the next tip if you want to experience the most growth out of them. I think the biggest mistake is that you go to the gym and you go through the motion, but you don't really have your mind inside the muscle. Old school bodybuilders have long preached the benefits of focusing on feeling your muscle working as you train it. Not until fairly recently in a 2018 paper has this method been put to the test. Researchers had one group of subjects perform the bicep curl while really focusing on squeezing the biceps and really feeling the muscle work. The other group was simply instructed to lift the weight. After eight weeks of this, the group that focused on feeling their biceps working experienced almost double the bicep gains. To apply this method to potentially speed up your bicep gains, which whenever you do curls, try to really feel your biceps doing the work. It can help to think about pulling the bar or dumbbell into your body rather than just lifting the weight up. However, as you apply this tip, it's important that you don't end up sabotaging your biceps growth in the process. This leads me to my final tip. In order for a muscle to grow, you need to continuously challenge them with more than they're used to. It sounds simple, but most people don't do this when they're training their biceps. They they forget about this concept completely and only focus on getting a good pump instead. To force your biceps to grow every week, first pick two to three bicep exercises that you'll stick to week after week. Here's a few that I recommend based on what we talked about earlier. Then whenever you do a workout, write down how much weight you used and how many reps you did. Use these numbers as a goal to beat during your next workout by trying to do one to two more reps than you did last time or add a little bit more weight compared to your big compound exercises. Progression with your bicep exercises will be slow, but focus on tracking your progress and making small improvements week after week and over time, you'll notice a huge difference in your biceps growth. Apply these five techniques and you'll notice faster biceps growth almost immediately. But guys, it's important that you take the same science based, detailed approach to every single muscle you train, not just your biceps. That's exactly what I show you how to do in my step by step programs over@builtwithscience.com these programs have worked for thousands of others and it'll work for you. So head over there and take the quick analysis quiz and I'll let you know which program is best for you and your body. I'd also highly suggest you give this video a watch next for some training tips for wider shoulders. Or give this video a watch if you'd like tips to grow a bigger chest. Hope you enjoyed this one. Leave a comment down below as to what muscle you want to see me cover next. Don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you next time.