Train Like an Athlete by ATHLEAN-X (Video Podcast)

Have you ever felt that no matter how hard you trained your biceps they just won’t grow. In this video, I’m going to show you the two biggest reasons why I believe your bicep size is not what you want it to be. Between the number of times that you are knowingly and unknowingly training them to the more important concept of hitting them with fewer exercises but more techniques.

First we should talk about the amount of times per week that you are training your biceps. Many people think that more is better however that is not the case, especially in the instance of such a small muscle group. The use of direct biceps training is effective in building bigger arms but you must still include all of the accessory work they get through exercises that bend the elbow (a key function of the biceps).

When you think about all of the back exercises that bend the elbow like barbell rows, pulldowns, pullups, chinups, one armed rows, etc you quickly realize how much extra work that arms are getting even on non bicep days. That doesn’t mean that the volume isn’t still accruing and becoming something that you must consider in your overall ability to recover.

If you are performing a push, pull, legs training split at the moment and performing each of these two times per week then any direct biceps training is going to also wind up adding significant volume to your biceps. The mistake is often to continue to add more and more when you are trying to force a change in muscle size. The right thing to do is to first step back and take away volume and frequency and monitor how your body responds.

Most often, as a natural lifter you will find that dropping this back is exactly what your body needs in order to be able to grow and resume your gains. That said, one of the other big keys to getting bigger biceps (or any other muscle for that matter) is progressive overload. Now this most often comes in the form of adding weight to the exercises that you are doing. Some will also attempt to simply add new exercises as a form of stimulus overload that keeps the gains coming.

In the case of the biceps however, the variety of bicep exercises is extremely limited due to the nature of the elbow joint. Given that this is a hinge joint that functions primarily to flex and extend the elbow, the different variations of bicep exercises often look the same; they are all some form of a curl. Whether it be preacher curls, concentration curls, barbell curls or seated incline dumbbell curls, they are all just bending the elbow.

This is why switching exercises is often not enough of a stimulus to promote new growth. It is here that the switching in of techniques is far more effective. I demonstrate three in particular for you in this video. I show you the In10sity technique for using heavier weights on your curls and getting more high intensity reps completed in a workout. The sliced reps technique for getting more time under tension and peak contraction. And finally, the arc variation technique that allows you to train to and through failure by manipulating the moment arm of the biceps as you fatigue.

All of these techniques and more are built into my Ultimate Arms program available at http://athleanx.com and are designed to help you build your biggest biceps possible in the shortest amount of time. By training like an athlete and taking your intensity to a whole new level, you will be amazed at the impact this has on your gains.

For more videos on how to get bigger arms and the best exercises for building big biceps, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24