biceps

When people think of bodybuilding, the first thought that goes through the mind of many people is either someone hitting a biceps pose or a most muscular, which also can feature the biceps. When little kids are asked flex their muscles, the biceps are the first body part they try to accentuate...

The strict curl has been a go-to move for growing biceps for decades. You’ve no doubt seen photos and videos of legends like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno hitting them to grow their peaks. But in the social media era, it hasn’t necessarily been the sexiest lift. You’re more likely to...

Building bulging biceps without dumbbells or barbells seems like a lot of work unless you’re willing to do pullups, pullups, and more pullups. It’s true that when it comes to biceps the path of least resistance comes from using, well, more resistance. But for those times when you’re without...

Ronnie Coleman is on a mission to hulk up his already huge biceps, declaring on Instagram that his guns seem to be shrinking. The eight-time Mr. Olympia’s arms are widely considered some of the best, if not the best, ever to appear on a bodybuilding stage, but he says they're not what they used...

Improvisor / Shutterstock Seems like everyone's out to find a newer, better way to train their biceps. Drop sets, weird splits and awkward exercises are all part of the trial and error guessing game. But novel training methods don’t necessarily equate to shirt-busting results. If you want big...

When I flex my biceps, I have a decent sized gap between where my bicep ends and my forearm. If I push on that area on either side it's not that muscular. Since my biceps aren't going to fill out that area, what should I be doing to make that area tighter/bigger? I've been doing hammer curls...

Alex Ardenti What it is: The Biceps Endurance Workout for Ripped Arms When to do it: After a training session on an upper-body day for a serious pump or as a stand-alone curl marathon to test your mettle. How to do it: Curl an empty barbell for 100 straight reps. Can’t make it to 100...

Peak your biceps with this underutilized move. To truly build eye-popping biceps, you need to focus on building the peak. Dr. Jim Stoppani explains why targeting the long head of the biceps is essential to making your biceps get bigger and stronger. Then he demonstrates how to properly perform...

Chris Lund “THE BEST” IS A REMARKABLY FLUID CONCEPT. Debates rage in all corners of art and popular culture. What constitutes the best movie in a given year? Or TV show, or song? So when a magazine like ours tells you they’re going to give you a listing of the “very best” biceps exercises, we...

Per Bernal William Bonac’s simple recipe for building bigger, more chiseled biceps and triceps: PREFERRED REP RANGE: 12 to 16 reps. TRAINING FREQUENCY: Biceps and triceps each trained once a week in the off-season (triceps trained with back, biceps paired with chest) and typically twice...

chris-cormier-deadlifts.jpg Kevin Horton By incorporating more than one body part in a team effort, you can use more weight than when a muscle goes alone. Generally, the more complex a body part, the easier it is to work with compound lifts. On the other hand, simpler body parts, like calves...

QUESTION Coach Merlin, I have read in articles and seen in videos that you generally recommend training most muscle groups once per week, except in the case of a lagging area, where you suggest one full workout and one “mini” workout. Can you provide an example of how you might set this up if...

It's easy to focus on the 40 or so pounds that separate Breon Ansley from William Bonac and think their physiques share little in common. In fact, both 5'7" bodybuilders debuted, not that long ago, in the 212 division—Bonac in 2012 and Ansley in 2014— before, after one year each, moving on to...

Per Bernal As you’d expect, building huge arms requires a solid foundation of free-weight exercises over the course of years, including moves like close-grip bench presses, dips, and French presses, as well as barbell, dumbbell, and preacher curls. Yet Elssbiay—guided by his trainer, Ahmad...

Per Bernal Morel’s typical triceps/biceps routine consists exclusively of supersets and high volume. But every month or so, he switches up his arm workout and sticks to straight sets on every exercise with lower volume (roughly half the number of sets as usual), short rest periods, and high...

Born in 1957, Francis Benfatto was a man out of time when he made his pro debut in 1988. If he had been born a decade prior, his classical physique may have allowed him to challenge the similarly constructed Frank Zane for the Olympia title. And if he had been born three decades later, he might...

Photos by Per Bernal AKIM WILLIAMS HAS A PROBLEM MOST OF US WOULD LOVE TO HAVE: HIS BICEPS ARE TOO BIG. For a top-level IFBB professional bodybuilder, this is a real issue in terms of symmetry and muscular balance. If the judges’ eyes are continually drawn to your biceps and not your physique...

Nobody proudly declares, “I’m a cheater.” Whatever the context, cheating is something people sheepishly confess to when confronted. In bodybuilding, too, there’s so much emphasis on proper form that few trainers admit to using momentum to hoist heavier metal. But you should feel no shame for...

Moe Elmoussawi liked high reps—did he ever! For a while he cranked out 1,000 per body part in sets of 50 to 100. The routine below was the one he used before placing ninth in the 2008 Olympia—his career high point—and it’s a little less of an endurance test (he alternated it with a...

akim-williams-biceps-7.jpg Photos by Per Bernal Known as one of the strongest bodybuilders in the IFBB, with all-time personal records of more than 800 pounds on both squat and deadlift and more than 500 on bench press, Akim Williams might be expected to throw around barbells and dumbbells...