They may not be the most influential or strongest muscle group in your body, but the biceps are the most spectacular. These muscles are the ones that catch the eye first, especially if you like to wear tight t-shirts. Let’s take a look at the 10 best biceps-building exercises that can help you achieve your workout goals.
1. Chin-up
Using just a pull-up bar and your own body weight as resistance, you can build biceps and back. How? The answer is a chin-up. A chin-up is a strength training exercise that involves using your full body weight, emphasizing the upper body. Unlike pull-ups that primarily work your back, chinups will help you focus on your biceps while also working your forearms, shoulders, and latissimus dorsi while doing chin-ups. The exercise also activates your abdominal muscles.
Benefits
Chin-ups are number one in the list of available exercises. No expensive additional equipment is needed here. You can do it anywhere – at the gym, at home, or outside on a sports ground. All you need is a horizontal bar and the weight of your body. However, this exercise is not the easiest. The athlete will have to lift all of his body weight, straining many muscles. But great efforts always yield better results.
During the whole exercise, your forearms and hands are put under stress, which helps to strengthen your grip. Chin-ups, as well as many other workouts, need a strong grip. This ability is critical for anybody, whether a professional athlete or an amateur.
There are many chin-ups variation to choose from. Athletes may target various body areas with each version. You can also change the focus of which on different heads of the biceps by making your grip wider or narrower.
How to do a chin-up:
- Grab the bar with an underhand grip. Tighten your core and your legs to prevent your body from swinging.
- Pull yourself up. Avoid swinging side to side or forward. The aim here is to stay in a straight line.
- Go down, trying not to lose muscle tightness. Keep the same tension you started with.
2. Barbell Curl
This biceps-specific exercise may significantly increase muscle mass and strength when done correctly. Because you’re using both hands to lift a single barbell, the barbell curl allows you to raise more weight every time. If you already have a home gym, you should get a curl bar appropriate for your weight. And one more tip – if your curl bar has 2-inch bar ends, make sure your Olympic weight plates do as well.
Benefits
It’s straightforward and efficient. The barbell curl has a low learning curve, making it ideal for novices, while more experienced lifters benefit from the fundamental mechanics.
You’ll grow stronger biceps faster if you load your muscles with greater weight. Furthermore, the barbell alternative allows lifting heavier weights.
In addition to the biceps brachii, the barbell curl targets the brachialis muscle, responsible for the elbow bending.
How to do a barbell curl:
- Grab the barbell using a neutral grip.
- Curl the weight up, keeping your elbows in front of your body. Maintain a neutral spine and keep your wrists straight.
- Come down, making a slow controlled movement. Don’t let your arms fall; keep tension on your biceps.
- Use a straight barbell to maximize both a full flex at the top and supination of the forearm on every repetition.
3. Dumbbell Curl
Bodybuilders like these bicep curls because they are a superb isolation workout. Bicep curls primarily work the biceps brachii, a big muscle on the front of the upper arm. Secondarily, the exercise targets the forearms and wrists.
Benefits
Dumbbell curls will assist you in developing larger biceps. It also helps you build strength in your arms by working both the long and short heads of the biceps brachii.
This exercise may help you improve your elbow flexion. Dumbbell curls help increase the functional mobility of your elbows for daily tasks by engaging the brachialis muscle.
Strengthening your grip is one more benefit. Dumbbell curls strengthen your grip by activating the brachioradialis muscle in your forearms.
How to do a dumbbell curl:
- Grab the dumbbells using a neutral grip.
- Begin the exercise standing straight with your feet shoulder-width apart. Don’t lock out your elbows to avoid injury; keep it loose.
- Breath out and curl the weight up. Squeeze, and go back down.
- As you control the down movement, rotate your hands back to the start.
4. Resistance Band Curl
Bicep curls with bands are great for building muscle in the upper arm. The biceps aren’t given a rest between repetitions because of the continual stress provided by the resistance band. The bicep muscles are strengthened during the exercise’s concentric and eccentric phases.
Benefits
A resistance band bicep curl keeps your muscles engaged at all times, resulting in a more intense workout.
Using a resistance band instead of weights enables a larger range of motion and offers more safety. Resistance bands make it harder to overextend your joints since the elastic naturally restricts your range of motion. It’s far less likely that you’ll injure your foot if you use bands.
The imbalance, higher strain, and changing resistance force your muscles to work harder and grow more than they would do with weights.
How to do a resistance band curl:
- Lay the band down on the floor. Step into it about hips-width apart.
- Stand up straight and adjust your feet so the resistance is the same on both sides. Make sure that the band gives you enough resistance. If the band is too long, you can wrap it around one foot.
- Bend your arms with palms facing forward until your hands are right at the bottom of your chest.
- Come down, maintaining a slight bend in the elbow.
- Try to keep your elbows stationary throughout the whole movement.
5. Spider Curl
Performing the spider curl is a unique workout seldom seen in a gym. However, this does not imply that it’s a waste of time. Take a chance on the spider curl if you’re hoping to build larger, more powerful biceps.
Benefits
This exercise doesn’t allow any of the surrounding muscles to help you with the curl. In other words, it’s making your biceps do all the work.
Spider curls require the full range of motion, which means the movement loads your biceps to the maximum.
Because your arms are extended from their original position when you practice spider curls, you can hold the strain for a longer time.
How to do a spider curl:
To perform this exercise, you’ll need a preacher curl station.
- Position yourself on the front side of the preacher curl station to lean over. Use the vertical side of the pad to keep constant tension on your biceps.
- Pick up the curl bar and place your elbows on the pad. Stay low enough so you can maintain neutral shoulders.
- Curl the barbell up and come down. Maintain neutral shoulders, don’t let them roll forward. Fully extend arms on each rep.
6. Incline Curl
Incline curl is a great isolation exercise to build your biceps muscles. You can also use this exercise when trying to rehab the area as well. To practice this movement, you are going to need an inclined bench and a pair of dumbbells.
Benefits
If you perform this exercise correctly, you’ll quickly get full biceps isolation and fatigue with the right weight. The longest muscle in your arm, the biceps brachii, gets a good workout from this exercise. The slope definitely helps focus on the whole muscle and maximize the biceps peak.
This dumbbell curl targets the long head of the biceps brachii muscle more than any standard dumbbell curl because of the specific body posture. The position also adds safety to your back.
The incline dumbbell curl is a great home workout for building upper-body strength for more advanced complex exercises such as the deadlift, bench press, and barbell row.
How to do an incline curl:
- Grab two dumbbells and lay on an incline bench with your chest down.
- Let your arms hang down, stretched out. Be sure to get a firm and wide stance with your feet not to sway on the bench.
- Curl the dumbbells all the way up. Feel the muscles contraction. Ensure you pull your shoulders back while maintaining a neutral spine. Don’t move your head around because then it would be hard to keep the cervical spine safe.
- Return to the starting position.
7. Waiter Curl
Waiter curl is one of the most beneficial workouts to put into your program if you want to create a larger biceps peak. The workout suggests solitary up and down hand moves with a dumbbell.
Benefits
Performing this exercise properly removes the forearm’s participation in the curl, putting additional stress on the biceps.
Unlike chin-ups and pull-ups, which mainly target the back, this exercise isolates the biceps, allowing you to put your whole effort into strengthening them.
The tremendous pump that waiter curls produce makes them an excellent ending exercise. The best approach to get a massive pump in your arms at the end of your workout is to do high-rep waiter curls.
How to do a waiter curl:
- Stand tall, your feet shoulder-width apart. Pick up the dumbbell, paying close attention to the grip. Hold the dumbbell with your hands right below one side of the plate, like you would if you were a waiter carrying a plate.
- Pull your elbows back to enhance the outer head stretch of your biceps. Pull the weight up.
- Lower the dumbbell slowly and then return to the starting position. The tightness that you feel at the top of your biceps is the clearest indication that you are doing the exercise correctly.
8. Drag Curl
What makes this exercise special? By holding the bar close to your body, you take the deltoids out of work. It means you can target biceps brachii more. Make sure you follow the proper form, and soon you’ll see bigger peaks on your arms.
Benefits
The barbell drag curl is a great exercise to increase your arm growth and strength. Drag curl emphasizes your biceps keeping front deltoids out of the lift.
Your elbows are behind your body during the most intense part of the contraction, so the drag curl actually makes the biceps work more.
One more benefit is several variations you may try to achieve your workout goals—for instance, reverse-grip drag curl or drag curls with the help of dumbbells or a smith machine.
How to do a drag curl:
- Stand straight up and hold the barbell outside of shoulder width.
- Curl the barbell while keeping it as close to your body as possible.
- Bring the barbell up and over your chest into the bottom of your neck. Pause for a second at the top of the move.
- Slowly return to the starting position. It would help if you squeeze your biceps hard throughout the entire movement.
- To maximize the effectiveness of the movement, extend your arms fully in every rep.
9. “No Money” Curl
The “No money” curl is also known as the inner biceps curl. It primarily targets biceps brachii and works brachioradialis, brachialis, forearm flexors, and infraspinatus. To perform this movement, you need a pair of dumbbells.
Benefits
The No money curl requires you to supinate your wrists more, which increases the intensity of the biceps’ peak tension. Additionally, they have you curl with your arms fanned out to the sides, which places particular focus on the short head of your biceps throughout the workout.
The motion biomechanically places the strain on your biceps’ inner muscle fibers. In this way, it’s the polar opposite of waiter curls, which stress your biceps’ long (outside) head.
Furthermore, the fact that you’re using dumbbells means that it’s beneficial for ensuring that your biceps expand in proportion.
How to do “No Money” curl:
- Take an underhand grip on your dumbbells and hold them by your sides.
- Position your shoulders in external rotation by pointing your elbows inward.
- Curl the dumbbells up.
- Contract your biceps, then slowly drop the weights down until your elbows are fully extended.
10. Australian Chin-ups
Everything is upside down in Australia, right? Australian chin-ups are named from the notion that everything is exactly like that in Oz. Read on to know everything you want about this effective biceps exercise.
Benefits
Inexperienced athletes will benefit greatly from this training. You don’t have to be an expert rower to practice Australian chin-ups. However, it’s suitable for any fitness level. Beginners might use this exercise as preparation for more challenging workouts. As for advanced athletes, they may use it as a warm-up.
The Australian alternative targets more of the upper body than a regular chin-up. When you begin exercising inverted rows, you’ll notice a greater emphasis on your biceps.
Australian chin-ups are a compound exercise. In addition to the biceps, it involves the lower bodywork.
How to do Australian chin-ups:
- Find a bar that is about hip height.
- Lie down underneath the bar. With your hands shoulder-width apart, grab the bar with an underhand grip. Straighten your wrists. Engage your quads and your glutes so that your body is in a straight line.
- Pull yourself up till your chest touches the bar. The further back you go, the simpler it will be.
What Muscles Do Biceps Consist Of
The biceps is a big muscle placed between the shoulder and the elbow. When you’re flexing, you’re probably staring at it a lot. The biceps brachii is its Latin name. The principal function of this muscle is to bend the elbow and rotate the forearm. The biceps is one of four muscles that make up the upper arm, along with the brachialis, brachioradialis, and coracobrachialis.
The biceps muscle is divided into two heads. Tendons are connective structures that link the muscles to the bone at either end. Let’s take a closer look at the bicep’s two heads.
- The long head is formed by a hollow in the scapula known as the glenoid. It goes from the shoulder joint to the upper arm through a groove in the humerus.
- The coracoid, a protrusion on the scapula, gives rise to the short head, which runs alongside the long head inside the arm.
Both heads work together to help you curl and pull weight by allowing you to bend your arm at the elbow joint.
How Often Should You Train Your Biceps
If you’re looking to create some serious muscle, you’ll need something more than spinach. Repetition, dedication, consistency, and patience are all necessary to build biceps. To get the most remarkable results, it is recommended to do 1-2 arm exercises every week. Increasing your arm strength is likely one of your primary motivations for doing biceps exercises. Make sure you’re doing the proper amount of sets and repetitions. An average number is 3 to 4 sets of 6-12 repetitions per exercise.
A lot depends on your fitness level. Let’s say you are a beginner. How often should you train your biceps? When starting out at the gym, you need to establish a solid foundation before attempting more challenging exercises. Like any other muscle, the biceps will require a solid foundation before being used at greater frequencies. As a result, exercising the arms once a week might be an excellent place to start.
New bodybuilders sometimes make the mistake of attempting to optimize their strength by exercising every day, but this backfires and does more harm than good. You must not overtrain since your body requires time to repair the small breaks in your muscles with stronger fibers to grow efficiently. So you will really be making improvements when you take a break from training. To get the most out of each biceps exercise, wait at least two days in between each one.
Conclusion
Strong biceps are vital for developing a well-defined arm, protecting it from injury, and increasing its pulling capacity. It takes time, expertise, and clever programming to build biceps. However, it’s not impossible to have larger biceps if you have a goal and the will to achieve it. There are many practical bicep exercises, and we did our best to show you the good ones. We hope it was helpful, and now you may customize your workouts to your preferences. Train your biceps at least once a week to get started. And results won’t take long!