My Best Bicep Workout

Don’t they? Well, they should, because biceps are involved in most of the workouts for other muscles of the upper body, so the more you train them, the better they will support you in your gym workout in general.

By bicep we commonly mean the muscle that bends the arm, but the term is in fact not very accurate, a better phrase would be “front arm muscle.

Here below is a quick overview of the muscles if the arm:
Biceps (biceps brachii): it’s the big guy, the one that everyone wants to make bigger. It looks like a very straightforward muscle, but its structure is actually very complex, as it has two different bundles that work separately (the word comes from Latin, meaning “with two heads”): one is involved in bending the arm, the other in stretching it.
Brachialis, brachioradialis, coracobrachialis: whereas the biceps take all the credit, these three muscles work in the background (so to speak), helping the biceps flex the arm and allowing its rotation.

...is often a great exercise for the forearm.

Saying that the bicep is not the only muscle of the arm is a self-evident but often forgotten thing, which leads to a common misconception: any biceps workout will do. As a matter of fact, some of the most common exercises included in weight lifting routines are not the best bicep workout. For example:

• Cambered bars will train more the brachioradialis then the bicep, which on the other hand needs to be stretched completely.
• Bar bicep curls, a basic exercise in many bicep workouts, hardly trains biceps. The main muscle involved here would be the brachialis.
• Scott bench curls are often said to be very good for the lower part of the biceps (whatever it means). As a matter if fact though, this exercise trains the brachialis and the brachioradialis muscles, and very little the biceps.

Let’s recap the two main points that we have seen so far:

• The arm in general, and the biceps in particular, are involved in many muscle training for the upper body. This means that you will be doing biceps workouts even when you think you’re not.
• On the other hand, if you follow a standard bicep workout routine, you will think you will be training biceps, but  you won’t. Many exercises that are normally considered best bicep workouts, actually involve more the other muscles of the arms then the biceps. But  this is not bad news at all, after all, a good weight workout should not neglect any muscle.

...one point remains to be answered: what’s the best biceps workout? How to really train this muscle? In order to achieve that, the arm has to be completely extended, in all its parts, from shoulder down to the wrist.

The exercise which I think is the best here is a bicep workout with dumbells. Adjust the incline bench at 50° 60°, stretch the arm perpendicularly to the floor, with the wrists in line. Remember that the bicep will work at its best when it does the full movement, so flex the arm completely before returning to the start position.