The triceps could be considered the underrated arm muscle, but that doesn’t mean it’s the underdog. Share on Pinterest Mihajlo Ckovric/Stocksy United The general recommendation is at least twice a week. Whatever look you’re going for, it’s best to work it out on a somewhat regular basis to make sure it’s doing everything you need it to do. The biceps is a fairly small muscle that, due to its position and functionality, can be either toned or bulked up. Flexion of the elbow joint: allows you to bring your forearm into your body (flexing motion).Forearm supination: allows you to turn your palms upward.Shoulder elevation: allows you to raise your arms.Your biceps helps you with pulling movements. The muscle attaches to the forearm by way of the distal biceps tendon. Both heads stem from the shoulder blade and insert (attach) on the radial tuberosity, which is close to the elbow. It gets the “bi” in its name because it has two distinct heads - a shorter inner head and a longer outer head. The biceps (aka biceps brachii) is located on the front of your upper arm. Seriously, how can a muscle reach emoji status 💪🏼 and not have some serious bragging rights? But it’s not all talk - there’s plenty of functionality in its flex.

I think I'll use this for a while and see if it gets me better progression than the standard curl.It’s hard to argue that the biceps isn’t the most popular arm muscle. What I was most interested in knowing is if this lift is completely useless for some reason and what other people's thoughts are on it vs. Who cares about telling others how much they lift, I could say anything, especially on the internet, if you really want to be a bro about it you -show- them how much you can lift and anyone who's involved enough in body building will know if your form is ****.

It's increasing the forces on your muscles to be appropriate with that lift, the same way most people don't do the same weight with skull crushers as they do over-head extensions and kick backs.Īnd this 'just don't tell people that's how much you curl!' is a joke. Using more weight because a lift gives a higher mechanical advantage isn't ego lifting or cheating. I also can't perform barbell curls with a straight bar because of tennis elbow, and don't have an EZ bar, so I was playing around the other day with grabbed a single dumbbell loaded with double my one-hand weight and sort of 'rowing' it up while holding the plate with both hands, but with more focus on my biceps and I felt a great contraction from it. I prefer to work in a 5-8 rep range but am forced into a 12-20. This leaves me feeling that I'm stuck in a plateau because only during a small portion of the lift am I under real tension. When I do a standard curl I feel the weight is too easy during most of the lift, but I can't handle a heavier weight during the sticking point. I think a lot of people misinterpret my meaning with big headed pre-judging. So is there anything disadvantageous about Fig 2? I suppose you could cheat it a bit more and there's less time under tension, but you could adjust that by simply doing the lift slowly. If I perform the lift as shown in Fig 2 however I can use more weight as the tension of the lift is spread evenly throughout the movement from point A to B, and if done properly your biceps should be involved the entire time, and ultimately you still end up in the fully-contracted position, no ROM is truly lost. This leaves you with a dilemma that during the other parts of the lift you might feel the weight is not taxing enough, but if you added 5 lb.s you couldn't get past the sticking point. I feel that performing bicep curls this way limits me to less weight because if I do more to make the other parts of the lift more difficult I cannot get the weight past point B. In Fig 1 as anyone who has ever done a bicep curl will tell you, point B is a bit of a 'sticking point' on the exercise where the lift is harder than at other points in the movement. In figure 2 we have the variation where you kick back your elbow as you come up. In figure 1 we have a standard bicep curl. Can't help it this is something that whenever I go to do them I have in the back of my head and finally wanted to bring it up, so I even made this cool little diagram in illustrator to clarify my question.

Dumbbell brag drag curls