Dips are a basic bodybuilding movement. Dips work the pectoral muscle and should be included in any routine. We'll...

Biceps exercises
Posted on: 03/03/2016What could be more impressive than big, muscular arms? Many of us came to bodybuilding after seeing Anold Scharzzenegger's huge arms. His shapely, mountain-high biceps had us fantasizing. Later, Ronnie Coleman's biceps became a benchmark for both volume and separation. This separation is a good illustration of the muscle in question: biceps, because it's made up of two muscles.
In this article, we'll take a look at exercises that will enable you to work your biceps from all angles to bring them to full development.
This will be an opportunity to review execution techniques for safe working.
Basic movements
The biceps can be worked as a whole or in more targeted areas.We'll start with exercises aimed at overall development.
Curl bar or dumbbells
Take a straight barbell, held shoulder-width apart. Arms straight down, elbows close to the body. Your knees are slightly bent, and your lumbar and abdominal muscles are sheathed.
The aim is to bring the bar up to chin level while keeping your elbows close to your body. Contract your biceps tightly and then, while controlling the bar, bring it back to its starting position.
What's important in this movement is to keep your back straight, and to avoid using your lumbar vertebrae at the start, which could injure you and take tension off your biceps.
This movement can be performed with a pair of dumbbells. The movement is performed under the same conditions as with the barbell, with the two dumbbells rising simultaneously, using the strength of the biceps, up to the chin. The back should remain straight and the abdominal muscles contracted to stabilize the position. Knees slightly bent, elbows close to the body.
The dumbbells are raised and lowered in a slow, controlled manner.
A variant of the dumbbell curl can be proposed, which is performed by alternating the raising of the dumbbells. The starting position is slightly different, as the palm of the hand is turned towards the thigh and the wrist is rotated on the way up, so that the palm faces the face at the top of the movement. You need to avoid the rocking effect induced by alternating arms.
When the dumbbell reaches chin height, you can rotate your wrist slightly outwards to accentuate the biceps contraction.
The EZ curl bar
The EZ bar curl is, in practice and execution, the same movement as the traditional bar curl. It also targets the entire biceps and builds muscle mass.
What makes it different is that the EZ bar is designed to relieve stress on the wrist joints, by bringing them into less rotation and thus reducing tension.
The hammer curl
Another basic movement for the biceps, but one that will mainly target the outer zone as well as the upper part of the forearm, is the hammer curl.
This movement is performed with a pair of dumbbells. Stand with a dumbbell in each hand, palm facing the thigh. Keeping the wrist fixed, the aim is to alternately raise the dumbbells to the height of the anterior detroitus, keeping the elbows close to the body. Then return to the initial position, controlling the movement.
The back must remain straight, the abdominals are sheathed and the body must not sway.
This movement can be performed by raising the dumbbells simultaneously.
Some of the basic movements mentioned above, and more specifically those performed with dumbbells, can be performed seated on a bench with a vertical backrest. This "variation" will limit back movements and provide a more intense workout for the muscle in question.
Inclining the backrest of the bench at around 70° will provide a more pronounced stretch when lowering the dumbbells and better isolation when raising them.
Isolation movements
The curl desk
the king of isolation movementsFor the biceps is the pupil curl. Once again, this exercise can be performed with either a barbell or dumbbell.
Sitting at the biceps desk, with both arms braced at armpit level against the support and the backs of your arms flat against it, grasp the barbell at shoulder-width and raise it up to your chin, contracting your biceps strongly. Return to the initial position, controlling the descent but not reaching full extension of the arms.
It's more comfortable to use an EZ bar, which will relieve stress on the wrist joint.
The aim of this exercise is to work the lower part of the biceps, the area close to the joint, so that the muscle is developed along its entire length.
The variant of this exercise is performed arm by arm with a dumbbell. The starting position is the same, but more and more exercisers prefer the standing version, leaning against the desk. The advantage of this one-sided version is that you can help yourself slightly at the end of the set, so you can perform a few more repetitions. The free arm relieves the weight of the barbell.
Concentrated curl
This isolation exercise is only performed in a unilateral version. Sitting on a bench, feet apart, dumbbell in hand, arm extended downwards, place the elbow against the inside of the knee. From this position, without pulling with the back, raise the dumbbell as high as possible towards the chest, bending the arm so that the elbow doesn't come off the knee.
From this position, return to the starting position without relaxing the arm to its maximum.
This exercise isolates the biceps, particularly the lower part, and accentuates the biceps peak.
A very useful exercise for isolating the peak of the biceps and shaping it to give it that ball during contraction is the christ curl on the high pulley. From the side and in line with the high pulley, grasp the side wrist of the biceps you're going to work on. As if you were going to perform a double biceps.
With the arm extended, flex the arm to bring the handle up to the ear without moving the arm. It's only a flexion of the front which bouge.Contracter and then return to the initial position. Having the arm at shoulder height causes a stronger contraction of the biceps, particularly the pic.
Isolation movements often come after basic movements, which allow you to handle heavier loads with a view to building more muscle mass. This heavy load will stimulate a greater number of muscle fibres. Then, in a search for curvature or balance in the different parts of the muscle, isolation movements come into play.
However, the latter can be used in pre-fatigue mode, which means that less weight is required, thus avoiding injuries.
Now it's up to you to choose which of these exercises are most commonly used in the gym. There are many other variations, such as bicep pulley work, which offer the advantage of a greater direct voltage.
At work and thanks to these exercises, your desires for massive, shapely biceps will come true!!!!
AuthorAlexandre CARPENTIER
Bodybuilding Champion N.A.C 2012
Alexandre shares his bodybuilding experience with MegaGear blog readers