“I'm Going To Show You How You Can Add Inches To Your Biceps!”

3) Exercise Periods

The thing you have to remember about biceps is that they are a small muscle group. It doesn’t take much work in order to stimulate growth but there is a very fine line when it comes to doing too much for the biceps.

Biceps overtraining is a common thing and what people fail to understand is that any pulling motion involves the biceps. This is probably one of the main reasons why hard working weight trainers can’t seem to get their biceps to grow.

Your biceps are constantly being worked from other exercises and really, they only need brief, intense workout sessions to cause growth. For this reason, I would say to train them once per week. Yep, only once per week. Trust me, if your doing everything right, once per week is all you need and you will see the results your looking for.

When you structure your training program, just make sure that you give your biceps enough rest periods to cause muscle growth. Training back a day after you’ve trained biceps is not a smart thing to do. If you’re doing it now, stop immediately. What you want to do is give your biceps at least two to three days rest in between each training session. See the above sample weight training routine.

I’m going to tell you right now, that compound movements such as barbell bent over rows, and chin ups provide just as much muscle stimulation, if not more, than regular biceps exercises. I’m going to discuss this shortly but just remember, indirect exercises are the main biceps builders in your training program.

Alright, now that you know about exercise timing, let’s move onto the next point about how to get big biceps.

4) Exercise Selection - Direct Exercises

I’m going to tell you right now that you don’t need 25 sets for biceps. Doing 5 exercises for 5 sets is not a smart way to train. Drop the Arnold workouts and cut down on the amount of sets and exercises your doing for biceps.

Really, your only need 3 exercises for the biceps and that’s plenty. Here is a sample biceps workout to do:

Biceps Exercise #1 - Standing Barbell Curls

Warm up: 1 x 20 repetitions
Set one: 1 x 8 repetitions with 50% of your maximum
Set two: 1 x 8 repetitions with 60% of your maximum
Set three: 1 x 8 repetitions with 70% of your maximum
Set four: 1 x 8 repetitions with 80% of your maximum

Biceps Exercise #2 - Seated Dumbbell Curls

Set one: 1 x 10 repetitions with 60% of your maximum
Set two: 1 x 10 repetitions with 70% of your maximum
Set three: 1 x 8 repetitions with 80% of your maximum
Set four: 1 x 8 repetitions with 80% of your maximum

Biceps Exercise #3 - Preacher Curls

4 sets of 12 repetitions

For preacher curls you should be using moderate weight for this exercise since you really want to do this exercise nice and slow.

This is all you need to really stimulate your biceps. Anymore is overkill and you might be doing more harm than good. Remember, less is more!

Here's a very important point that I'd like to make. With each workout, you must improve. You can either use more weight, more reps, or do the workout faster. If you don't improve from workout to workout, there is no reason why your body needs to grow. You see, improvement means growth. Understand this principle and you'll build huge muscles.

Now that you have an idea of what you should be doing for your biceps workouts, let’s move on to the next point about how to get big biceps.

5) Exercise Selection - Indirect Exercises

Alright, this is very important so you may want to listen up. You absolutely must have compound pulling movements in your weight training program. If you want to build big biceps, your going to have to start doing these exercises. What I’m talking about are bent over barbell rowing, T bar rows, seated pulley’s, single arm dumbbell rows, dead lifts and chin ups. What you want to do is incorporate these exercises into your back routine and not your biceps routine.

Let’s take the above noted sample training schedule. On day 4, you will train back and shoulders. I want you to train back first and really concentrate on moving some heavy weight. The majority of your back exercises should be compound movements.

Here's a page you may want to take a look at for the importance of doing compound movements:

Importance of compound movements

Whenever I need to add some size to my arms, I add in core compound movements. Believe me, your biceps will receive much more muscle stimulation doing a heavy set of reverse grip barbell bent rows than they will with concentration curls.

Here’s a sample back routine that includes compound movements:

Exercise # 1 - Chin Ups
3 x 12 repetitions

Exercise # 2 - Reverse Grip Barbell Bent Over Row
4 x 8 repetitions

Exercise # 3 - Seated Cable Pulley Rows
3 x 10 repetitions

Exercise # 4 - Standing Dumbbell Shrugs
4 x 12 repetitions

Nothing fancy about this back routine but it is very effective for building a big back and especially effective for building big biceps.

Now, you should be spacing your back workout about 3 days apart from doing your main biceps workout. See the above noted sample workout routine.

Ok, now that you know the importance of core, back movements, let’s move onto the next point about building big biceps.

6) Muscle Building Exercises

These exercise are not directly involved in your biceps routine but they are pure muscle builders. The two main exercise you may want to incorporate into your training routine are squats and dead lifts. Your probably thinking, what does squats have to do with biceps training? Well, everything. Doing heavy squats has a magical way of making your whole body grow. The reason is that they require so much effort and intensity to do them that it causes a huge surge of growth hormone and testosterone release in your body. As you may or may not know, these hormones are responsible for muscle growth. The more natural production of these hormones you have in your body, the better.

So remember, do your squats in your leg sessions.

Let’s move onto the next point about how to get big biceps.

7) Diet

In order to get big strong arms, you need to build muscle mass. In order to build large muscles, you need to increase your intake of nutrients. If you're thinking that you can add two inches of muscle to your arms while trying to get a six pack of abs, it's not going to happen. Building muscle mass required calories, and lots of them. Drop the six pack abs diet and get on a diet that's loaded with plenty of calories, protein, carbs, and quality fats.

I’ll be very honest here, you want to actually add body weight here in order to start building big biceps. If you want to get big and strong, you have to start eating to get big.

To structure your optimal weight lifting diet, please visit Building muscle101's weight lifting diet page. Check out the following page the get an idea of how to add muscle mass:

Building Muscle Mass

Ok, now that you understand that you need to gain lean body weight to build big biceps, let’s move onto our next point.

8) Rest

I’ll keep this nice and simple. Get at least 8 hours of sleep each and every night. Late nights and parties will kill your progress and should be avoided at all costs if you want to build big biceps.

It is very important that you get into the habit of getting quality rest every night. What you have to remember is that your body actually grows and builds muscle while you are sleeping, not while your weight training. If you can get the necessary rest, your body will use that time to repair and build muscle tissue, which is what you want.

9) Supplements

Supplements have there place in sports and weight training. However, the most important point to remember about supplements is that they only work once your have your diet and training in place. Supplements help to enhance a weight training program that's already working. I'd only suggest that you use supplements after 6 to 8 weeks of steady weight training. This way, your body will make the most of these sports supplements. If you feel you are ready to use supplements and are interested in using them to help with your weight training program, please see the following page:

Supplements To Increase Size

Weight Lifting Supplements

Alright, there you have it, a formula that shows you how to get big biceps. If you can implement the above mentioned points, I’m sure you’ll build the kind of biceps your looking for.

Good luck and always stay postive

Blake