The Fastest Way to Build Muscle: Bicep Edition

Apr 28th, 2008 by Gorilla Man

Biceps! Yes, you know what they are, and if you’re a guy, you would like to have a couple of big ones. You may have also been trying for a while to get bigger biceps with little or no results. Well, I’m here to tell you the reason you aren’t witnessing any gain is probably due to overtraining your biceps.

By training too hard, I don’t necessarily mean you’re pushing your workouts too far.A good heavy, intense workout is great. What I’m saying is you’re probably working your biceps too often. How many times a week do you work your biceps? Two, maybe three times a week? If so, then you’re overtraining. I’ll explain the fastest way to build muscle to you.

Overtraining happens when you don’t give your muscles enough time to recover after a workout. This can be disastrous for your biceps, hindering muscle growth and possibly causing injury.

You may think that working your biceps more than once a week is the fastest way to build muscle, but in reality, once a week is all it takes to get grapefruits for bi’s. Biceps are small muscles compared to a lot of your other muscles, so when using a lot of weight, your smaller muscles get stressed pretty quickly and need ample time to recover.

In order to stimulate new muscle growth, you need to constantly change your weight training routines (which is the fastest way to build muscle). This means you can’t go heavy all the time, and you can’t stay with the same routine all the time either because your body will adapt to your workout, meaning you will plateau and won’t witness any more muscle growth.

Changing your routine is as simple as dropping the amount of weight by 10-15 pounds on alternating weeks. Also, don’t limit yourself to curls every week; you can also do a little something called 21’s.

21’s (Arnold’s favorite bicep exercise) is a great bicep exercise that will really give you a deep burn. For 21’s, you need dumbbells or an EZ Curl bar. Start with a lower weight than you would normally use for curls. Start at the bottom and lift up halfway for 7 reps, then starting at the halfway point, lift all the way up and back to halfway for 7 reps.

Finally, go from the bottom all the way to the top for 7 full reps. After 2 sets of these, your biceps should be screaming aloud.

When you do regular curls, you may want to drop some weight if you’re not using perfect form. An easy way to ensure perfect form is to lean up against a wall or sit down on a slightly inclined bench while holding the dumbbells pointed in towards your body.

Then, raise the weight all the way up, twisting the weight around so that your thumbs point away from your head. Pause at the top, flexing your muscle hard at the top for about 3 seconds, then lowering all the way back down slowly for about 3 seconds until you reach the bottom, then repeat. 





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