Fit and fine by Kamal Singh: How to get that beefy look
Here’s how to build those big biceps the right way
As a young boy, Sunil had worshipped heroes with big biceps. In fact, his admiration for the same started after he saw Arnold Schwarzenegger showing off his huge biceps in a Hollywood film. Since that time, all he wanted to build were humongous biceps. In his late teens, Sunil joined a gym and after reading all about different exercises for the biceps, he hit those exercises with a vengeance. He was convinced that if he worked his biceps extra hard, he would soon leave Arnold Schwarzenegger behind. The resident “gymbros” also encouraged him to try out variations of the standard exercises, since the holy grail of bodybuilding is to attack the muscle from different angles!
Sunil, worked on his “low” biceps with the Preacher Curls, overall thickness with alternate dumbbell curls and cable curls, turning his pinky this way and that way. But the elusive bicep size did not happen. He would get a nice pump in the gym but that would vanish couple of hours late. He could see some definition and tone but that was it! Nothing he did seemed to help him. Unfortunately, this is a very common issue and most beginners go about building their biceps by putting the cart before the horse.
How to get big biceps?
Before I elaborate on a plan to develop biceps, let me give you small lesson in functional anatomy. The bicep is a two headed muscle that lies in the front of the upper arm between the shoulder and the elbow. The bicep brings the hand closer to the shoulder aka flexes the elbow, as well as turns the hand from palm down to palm up, pronation to supination of the palm. The other important function of the bicep is to assist the shoulder in raising the arm up.
This is the reason that the bicep is active in all the movements happening at the shoulder – chin-ups, bench press, rows. You can probably see where I am going with this – a trainee is going to use way more weight when he/she does chin-ups, rows or bench presses than if they just did different types of curls! Not only will you be using more weight, these compound exercises work lots of muscles in one shot. For example – the chin up works the grip, biceps, shoulders, upper back, muscles on the side of the backs – the Lats. Even the Core gets a vigorous workout while doing chin ups. The compound exercises are very important for all trainees, especially beginners as more load can be utilised over a large section of the body. More strength and more mechanical tension leads to bigger muscles all over! Similarly, the row also works the biceps along with the other big muscles of the back.
I have a simple test for my beginner trainees – till you cannot do 10 chin ups, you are not ready to do isolated biceps exercises like curls. Coach Charles Poliquin, a renowned trainer, used to say for the bicep to grow by an inch, you need to put on 4-5 kgs over all. So the easiest way to increase bicep size – put on muscle all over and see the size of your arms increase otherwise all you have is a weak pump which will dissipate as soon as you step out of the gym. Once you have put on 10-15 kgs of muscle, you can utilise different types of Curls to give shape to your biceps, till then don’t waste time and energy isolating a small muscle like the biceps!
To conclude:
•Focus on getting strong on big exercises like chin ups, rows, bench presses.
•Increase the weight on the above exercises in the repetition range of 6-10.
•Eat good quality food and try to put on muscle mass all over.
•After you have gained about 10-15 kgs of lean muscle mass, then start hitting the biceps with specific exercises like curls etc.
Now go out and do it!
Author bio: Kamal Singh is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist who has been coaching for 15 years
From HT Brunch, October 20, 2019
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