Complete Bicep Training Guide: Science-Based Arm Development

Best Bicep Exercises

While the biceps are involved in shoulder flexion (and can thus get pretty sore from chest flyes, for example), and can be taxed significantly through close grip pulling during back training, their direct work is based on a large variety of curls of different kinds.

Advanced Exercise Selection Strategy

When choosing your bicep exercises, the advanced approach is to potentially choose up to 5 different categories of biceps movements.

You don't have to do all of these exercises once a session, once week, or even once every meso. But every few mesos, you should rotate around to most of them at least on occasion if you'd like full biceps development.

Session and Weekly Exercise Selection

Within a training session, we recommend including between 1 and 3 different biceps exercises, but no more than that in most cases, as doing more than 3 biceps movements in one session is likely just a needless burning of potential exercise variations you can save for later mesocycles. Within a single week (microcycle) of training, we recommend between 2 and 5 different biceps exercises.

For example, if you train biceps 3x a week, you can do a heavy barbell curl on one day, a lighter barbell curl on the next day, and a machine one-arm curl on the last day for 2 total exercises in the week. On the other hand, if you train biceps 6x per week, you might want to choose (though don't have to choose) as many as 5 different exercises, with only one of them repeated in a heavier/lighter arrangement.

When to Change Exercises

How do you know when it's time to switch out a given exercise from your rotation to another exercise in your list of effective choices? The decision is based on answering just a few questions about the exercise you're currently using:

• Are you still making gains in rep strength on the exercise?
• Is the exercise causing any aches or pains that are connective tissue related? And are these getting worse with each week or several weeks?
• Is there a phasic need for the exercise to change? In other words, is the exercise appropriate for the rep range you're trying to use it for? Example: dumbbell curls for 5 seem kind of risky, but doing weighted underhand pullups on your back days can hammer the biceps at such low reps more safely.
• Are you getting a good mind-muscle connection on the exercise, or is it feeling stale and annoying to do?

If you are still hitting PRs on the exercise, it's not causing any undue pains, you're getting a good mind-muscle connection, and there's no other need to change it, then don't change it! If this means you keep an exercise around for up to a year or more, so be it!

Range of Motion and Technique

The truth about bicep curls: Only squats might be more commonly ROM-abused than bicep curls. If you can limit your ROM on curls, you will of course have all the boys and girls vying for your attention in the gym and you'll be the king. Alternatively, if you actually want to grow your biggest arms with the smallest chances of injury, go all the way down for a deep stretch when curling.

Full ROM requirements: Do you have to engage some shoulder flexion at the top of the movement? You can (biceps are also shoulder flexors), but you don't have to. But if you're not at least going close to all the way up and going all the way down, you're likely missing out on the growth-promoting effects of full ROM.

Optimal Loading and Rep Ranges

In general, like all muscles, the biceps benefit from weights in the 30%-85% 1RM range, which in many people roughly translates to a weight that results in between 5 and 30 reps on a first set taken to failure. We can split this range into heavy (5-10,) moderate (10-20), and light (20-30) categories, as there are tradeoffs to make between all of them.

Rep Range Distribution Strategy

The first point on loading is that the biceps, like most muscles, seem to benefit from some training in all three of the rep ranges listed above. Because the moderate (10-20 rep) range often offers the best tradeoff between stimulus, fatigue, injury risk, and slow/fast fiber specificity, and mind-muscle connection, an argument can be made that a first-time program design could have most weekly working sets for the biceps in this range, perhaps up to about 50% of them. The other 50% can perhaps be split evenly between the heavy (5-10) and light (20-30) rep ranges, as loading range diversity has been shown to be a potential benefit in its own right.

Rep Range Considerations

While the 10-20 range can support nearly all types of exercises, the other ranges have some practical delineations. For example, exercises that require a high degree of mind-muscle connection to have best effects may not be optimally effective in the 5-10 rep range, like spider curls, for example. Such exercises are perhaps also not ideal for the 20-30 rep range because the duration of the sets and the physical pain toward the end of them might cause the lifter to focus on just getting through the set or pushing as hard as possible instead of on the mind-muscle connection.

Weekly Sequencing

When constructing a weekly training plan, it's probably a good idea to train the heavy ranges before the lighter ranges. Because both types of training cause fatigue, they all interfere with each other to some extent. However, the muscle and connective tissue damage from heavier training is likely more substantial and presents a higher risk of injury if some damage already exists from earlier training.

Based on your personal responses to each of the main rep ranges, you can adjust how much volume you perform in any of them. For example, if you notice that you get a better stimulus (pumps, soreness, mind-muscle connection, etc.) and lower fatigue (joint stress, systemic fatigue, joint soreness, etc.) in some of the ranges vs. others, you can do more sets in those ranges and a bit less in others, though you should in most cases still include at least some work in the least productive ranges.

Rest Times Between Sets

When determining how long to rest between any two sets in training, our goal is for enough rest to be taken such that the next set is at least close to maximally productive. How can we ensure this? By answering 4 basic questions about our recovery status:

1. Has the target muscle locally recovered to do at least 5 reps on the next set?
2. Has the nervous system recovered enough to remove it as a limiting factor to target muscle performance?
3. Has the cardiorespiratory system recovered enough to remove it as a limiting factor to target muscle performance?
4. Have synergist muscles in the exercise being performed recovered enough to remove them as a limiting factors to target muscle performance?

It might take only 1-2 minutes to recover very well (let's say, 90%) on all of those factors, but because set to set recovery is asymptotic in nature, it might take another 3 minutes to get to 95% recovery and another 10 minutes more to get to 99% recovery. Since you only have so much time to spend in the gym, 10 "90% recovered sets" in 45 minutes of training is a much more anabolic stimulus than only 3 "99% recovered" sets in that same amount of time.

Practical Rest Time Assessment

Here's an example of what can be considered "very good" recovery between sets of biceps training. Before you do another set of barbell curls, ask yourself:

1. Are my biceps still burning from the last set, or do they feel ok again?
2. Do I feel like I can pull hard with my biceps again, and I am mentally ready for another hard set, or do I need more time to rest?
3. Is my breathing more or less back to normal, or is it still very heavy?
4. Are my forearms and lower back still very fatigued, or are they ready to support my biceps in the upcoming set of barbell curls?

If you can get the green light on all of these, you're probably ready to do another set, and waiting much longer will almost certainly not be of benefit.

Expected rest times: You'll notice that depending on the exercise and on the lifter, very different rest times will be generated by this questionnaire. For example, spider curls might not even have synergist muscles, so question 4 doesn't even apply and rest times can be less than 30 seconds, whereas barbell curls might need 2 minutes between sets just to regain normal breathing. While average rest times between sets of biceps training will be between 30 seconds and 2 minutes, the most important consideration is to take the rest time you need.

Training Frequency Optimization

There are two main considerations for determining training frequency. The first is the duration of the increase in muscle growth seen after a bout of training between MEV and MRV. If such an increase in muscle growth lasts 7 days, then perhaps a once a week frequency is optimal. If such an increase lasts only a day, then perhaps 6 days a week for the same muscle group is much better. While direct research on muscle growth timecourses is very limited, it seems that typical training might cause a reliable 24-48 hour increase in muscle growth. This would mean that if muscle growth elevation was the only variable of concern with regards to frequency, we should train every muscle 3-6 times per week.

Finding Your Optimal Frequency

How do you determine what training frequency is appropriate for you? You can start by training your biceps at per-session MEV volumes. After each session, you note when soreness has abated and when you feel recovered enough psychologically to attempt another overloading workout. When you're ready, and no later, go back to the gym and train biceps again, with volumes just a bit higher than MEV (using the RP Set Progression Algorithm).

Starting expectations: Just so that you have some expectation of where to start, most individuals can recover from biceps training at a timecourse that allows for 3-6 sessions of biceps per week at MEV-MRV volumes. However, only through direct experimentation on yourself can you tell where in this range is best for you and if maybe you're even outside of this range.

Frequency and back training: Please note that when you're determining your biceps training frequency, you'll have to juggle it a bit with your back training frequency, as unrecovered biceps can impede your back training, and even back training itself can tax your biceps enough to require a frequency reduction for direct biceps training.

Periodization and Long-Term Programming

There are a few relevant timescales in periodization:

• The repetition (1-9 seconds)
• The set (5-30 repetitions)
• The exercise (1-5 sets)
• The session (2-6 exercises)
• The day (0-2 sessions)
• The microcycle (usually 1 week of training)
• The mesocycle (3-12 weeks)
• The block (1-4 mesoscycles)
• The macrocycle (1-4 blocks)

Mesocycle Structure

A mesocycle is composed of two phases: the accumulation phase and the deload phase. The accumulation phase lasts as long as it takes to hit systemic MRV, which, because fatigue accumulates in MEV+ training, has to happen at some point. For beginners with very high recovery abilities, it can take up to 12 weeks of increasingly more demanding training for systemic MRV to be reached and a deload to be required. For very advanced lifters that have very strong, large, and volume-resistant muscles, it can take only 3-4 weeks of accumulation training to reach systemic MRV and need to deload.

Weekly Progression Strategy

When you begin a mesocycle of training, you should probably begin at or close to your MEV for all the muscle groups you'd like to improve during that mesocycle, for reasons described extensively in our book on the subject of training volume. Week to week, you can manipulate working sets by using the Set Progression algorithm from the Training Volume Landmarks for Muscle Growth article. You should seek to keep reps stable from week to week while letting your RIR decline from a 3 or 4 RIR start until it gets down to 0 (for exercises that don't threaten the bar falling on you) or 1 (for those that do) in the last week of training.

Weight and Rep Progression

The way you keep the reps stable as RIR falls is by adding weight to the exercises you're using. How much weight to add is a matter of an educated guess on your part. You want to add enough weight to get your target RIR with the same reps as last week. For example, if you did 100lbs last week for 10 reps on your first set of an exercise at 2 RIR, how much should you do next week to get 10 reps again but at 1 RIR? Well, you might think that adding 2.5lbs would be too easy, and you could honestly get 11 reps with that next week at 1 RIR, but adding 10lbs might require you to push to 0 RIR to get 10 reps, so you would just add 5lbs and that will probably take you where you need to be.

If you can't realistically add weight, you can add reps. This might happen when, for example, you are using the 25lb dumbbells one week and then having to do the 30lbers next week, wildly slashing your reps. Just remember to stay within your general rep range and not leave it in any given meso.

Training Block Periodization

The training block is a sequence of mesoscycles strung together for one unifying purpose. For example, a muscle gain block may be 3 mesocycles of 6 weeks each, one after another, with weight gain the goal for all 18 of those total weeks.

Advanced Training Modalities

Straight Sets

Straight sets are sets performed to 0-4 RIR, with enough rest time to recover all 4 limiting factors (see the rest time section above for details). The biceps respond well to straight sets, especially for more systemically fatiguing exercises like barbell and EZ bar curls.

Down Sets

Down sets are straight sets, but with less weight (usually 10-20% less) than the previous straight sets. By lowering the weight, you can keep reps over 5 per set, and/or keep the mind-muscle connection high and keep technique excellent to continue to have a high stimulus to fatigue ratio in every set of that exercise. It's quite easy to lose a good mind-muscle connection with the biceps when the reps drop off with heavy weight, so down sets can come in very handy after a few straight sets of curls.

Giant Sets

Giant sets give you a certain weight to lift, an RIR range to hit (usually 0-4 RIR), and a goal of total reps over as many sets as it takes. An example is aiming to do 100lbs for however many sets it takes to get 60 total reps, while taking normal rest between each set. Giant sets can come in very handy for biceps when you're really trying to work on your mind-muscle connection, which rep-chasing can impede significantly on exercises like curls, where "feeling it the most in the bicep" and "making sure to get another rep" can be quite divergent at times.

Myoreps

Myoreps are just like straight sets in that they must check all 4 recovery boxes before doing another set. However, they are different in two ways. First, while the first set is usually between 10-20 reps (0-2 RIR), the next multiple sets only rest long enough to get between 5 and 10 reps each. Myoreps can be excellent for biceps, especially on cable and machine setups where re-racking weight doesn't take a lot of energy. The one thing to watch out for is that the forearm muscles are often the curling synergists last to recover, so make sure your technique or grip attachment involves them the least and that you wait until they are recovered before going again.

Drop Sets

Drop sets are exactly like myoreps, but with even shorter rest times because weight is reduced by 10-20% on average between each set. Drop sets are nearly ideal for cable biceps work. Just make sure you're getting close to true failure on each set, as this gets difficult when the weight is really light. Anything below 30%1RM probably can't reliably bring you to local muscular failure, so this load acts as an automatic cutoff to further drop setting.

Pre-Exhaust Supersets

These supersets begin with an isolation exercise for a given muscle group, and with no rest after taking it to 0-2 RIR, end with a compound exercise to which the target muscle is a big contributor. Tough to do with biceps, but possible. Pre-exhausting with cable curls and then moving into underhand pulldowns or underhand machine rows might be a good idea to try.

Occlusion Sets

Occlusion training is myorep training with the limb occluded just above the muscle. This occlusion causes the local muscle and nerve to be far and away the limiting factors on recovery between sets, and thus allows you to focus in on a target muscle group that might have otherwise been difficult to reach with non-occluded movements. Occlusion training works very well for biceps, with the caveat that your forearm muscle endurance and recovery can sometimes still be a limiting factor.

Lengthened Partials

Direct experimentation has shown multiple times that loading the muscles when they are at their longest lengths is an extra boost to muscle growth. Thus, doing some bottom ½ or bottom 1/3 partials can be an effective training modality, especially when the bottom end is loaded heavily in the exercise in question. You can do entire sets of just lengthened partials, or do a normal ROM set and then finish the set with a superset of lengthened partials.