Fadi
...
I was just reading Andy's comment in this thread Bar Curls - Core Stability
Post #17 01-09-2010 12:49 PM
OK, so you increase the resistance over time and voila, you’ve got yourself some bigger biceps, right? Well yes, that’s how the theory tends to go. But a time comes when the growth stops, and you try to coax your biceps into some new growth, utilising all the methods and principles at your disposal; a variation on sets and reps and all in between in order to kick start a spur of new growth.
It’s time for a change; it’s time to take a seat. You’re going to need a new kind of stimulation which would kick-start the new growth process. After all, our motto here as bodybuilders is to work the muscles, not just lift the weight.
With that said, we need to go back to basics and light some fire deep into those biceps. That means few things:
1. We need to increase the resistance by increasing or maintaining the center of gravity on our biceps instead of lessening it. Hence, you won’t see me recommending any preacher curls over here. Not only the center of gravity is taken off the primary biceps muscles and shifted to secondary muscles, but we’ve also added leverage...keep reading to find out the consequences resulting from taking such action.
2. We need to do what top gymnasts do; by reducing and/or shifting leverage, making an exercise harder, in our case that means placing more stress onto the biceps instead of reducing it..., reducing it by transferring the force to our assisting stabiliser muscles: the much weaker brachioradialis and anterior deltoid would do us a disservice if our main aim is to rock the biceps into new growth. Some may feel awesome by lifting more weight (say) in the preacher curl and seeing their forearms swell up with blood and veins popping all over the place creating a road map. That to me is called confusing the issue and losing sight of why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Great, so we want to focus and blast our biceps, not serve our ego nor pretend we’re training the biceps as our primary muscle when in fact our wrong choice of exercises have made it our secondary working muscle. We need exercises that would help us maintain stress throughout the range of curling motion.
For our first exercise, I’ve picked the incline dumbbell curls. The late Steve Reeves in an interview had this to say: “For biceps I ended up doing only incline bench curls, which I invented. At one time I would do regular curls, but I found that incline dumbbell curls were so effective, I dropped everything else and did this exercise exclusively. So this is where I changed my routine. Instead of doing three sets of three exercises for the biceps, I would do nine sets of one exercise”.
![arnold24[1].jpg](https://ausbb.com/data/attachments/9/9612-64dd4835f146ec4e7cb1d6a72412f7f5.jpg "arnold24[1].jpg")
Now before continuing, I’d like to make something clear here. Everything I wrote re the preacher curl exercise, I wrote with the modern preacher bench in mind, and not the proper old school preacher bench, which in my opinion should have been called the concentration curl bench, as it helps to place your arms more in a straight concentration curling position, placing plenty of stress on the biceps muscles. It's like your arms are positioned at a 90 degree angle to your torso, and not at 60 degree angle as we commonly see today.
![old-school-preacher-bench[1].jpg](https://ausbb.com/data/attachments/9/9610-9d0fc1fef971e5b34249c2572cc24f2b.jpg "old-school-preacher-bench[1].jpg")
Yes to the above proper old school bench.
![preacher-curl-bench2[1].jpg](https://ausbb.com/data/attachments/9/9611-a57186c5c803e1e773b77874c839ef34.jpg "preacher-curl-bench2[1].jpg")
No to the above modern 60 degree angled bench.
The only thing the above video is missing is that round old school bench. However you may have noticed that the boys are using the side that is usually reserved for the torso to rest upon, which is a step in the right direction.
Moving on to our second exercise, here we’ll do seated barbell curls, as opposed to standing. Again, reducing the focus on the forearms and placing it more on the muscle we’re supposed to be stressing, the biceps.
![LEAD16[1].jpg](https://ausbb.com/data/attachments/9/9613-25a880964e39cb709893bc350f1b364c.jpg "LEAD16[1].jpg")
![Seated-BC[1].jpg](https://ausbb.com/data/attachments/9/9614-08e6955a30692f3460d17e46b3d2500e.jpg "Seated-BC[1].jpg")
From here, you keep that same barbell with the same weight, but this time you stand up and take advantage of the cheating principle, and if you’re game and wish to take the set to a totally hellish level, you can extend the set by performing a total of 10 rest paused reps.
Wouldn’t standing barbell curl stress my forearm muscles? Of course it would, however your biceps have been plenty fatigued by now, that (even though the brachi is stronger than the brachiodalis), for the duration of your standing barbell curl the reverse would be true now that we’ve pre exhausted our primary muscle with the seated barbell curls.
You may use the EZ curl bar instead of the straight bar if you prefer. In the long run, what minuscule loss you get from doing so, far outweighs the risk of injury or pressure placed on the wrist area as a whole using the straight bar. It's a preference thing, and for me, I prefer the EZ curl bar over the straight one.
Post #17 01-09-2010 12:49 PM
And it gave me an idea to write few words on the subject, since I agree with Andy re that ridiculous modern preacher bench; ridiculous because of its wrong design. With that said, here goes...
OK, so you increase the resistance over time and voila, you’ve got yourself some bigger biceps, right? Well yes, that’s how the theory tends to go. But a time comes when the growth stops, and you try to coax your biceps into some new growth, utilising all the methods and principles at your disposal; a variation on sets and reps and all in between in order to kick start a spur of new growth.
It’s time for a change; it’s time to take a seat. You’re going to need a new kind of stimulation which would kick-start the new growth process. After all, our motto here as bodybuilders is to work the muscles, not just lift the weight.
With that said, we need to go back to basics and light some fire deep into those biceps. That means few things:
1. We need to increase the resistance by increasing or maintaining the center of gravity on our biceps instead of lessening it. Hence, you won’t see me recommending any preacher curls over here. Not only the center of gravity is taken off the primary biceps muscles and shifted to secondary muscles, but we’ve also added leverage...keep reading to find out the consequences resulting from taking such action.
2. We need to do what top gymnasts do; by reducing and/or shifting leverage, making an exercise harder, in our case that means placing more stress onto the biceps instead of reducing it..., reducing it by transferring the force to our assisting stabiliser muscles: the much weaker brachioradialis and anterior deltoid would do us a disservice if our main aim is to rock the biceps into new growth. Some may feel awesome by lifting more weight (say) in the preacher curl and seeing their forearms swell up with blood and veins popping all over the place creating a road map. That to me is called confusing the issue and losing sight of why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Great, so we want to focus and blast our biceps, not serve our ego nor pretend we’re training the biceps as our primary muscle when in fact our wrong choice of exercises have made it our secondary working muscle. We need exercises that would help us maintain stress throughout the range of curling motion.
For our first exercise, I’ve picked the incline dumbbell curls. The late Steve Reeves in an interview had this to say: “For biceps I ended up doing only incline bench curls, which I invented. At one time I would do regular curls, but I found that incline dumbbell curls were so effective, I dropped everything else and did this exercise exclusively. So this is where I changed my routine. Instead of doing three sets of three exercises for the biceps, I would do nine sets of one exercise”.
Now before continuing, I’d like to make something clear here. Everything I wrote re the preacher curl exercise, I wrote with the modern preacher bench in mind, and not the proper old school preacher bench, which in my opinion should have been called the concentration curl bench, as it helps to place your arms more in a straight concentration curling position, placing plenty of stress on the biceps muscles. It's like your arms are positioned at a 90 degree angle to your torso, and not at 60 degree angle as we commonly see today.
Yes to the above proper old school bench.
No to the above modern 60 degree angled bench.
The only thing the above video is missing is that round old school bench. However you may have noticed that the boys are using the side that is usually reserved for the torso to rest upon, which is a step in the right direction.
Moving on to our second exercise, here we’ll do seated barbell curls, as opposed to standing. Again, reducing the focus on the forearms and placing it more on the muscle we’re supposed to be stressing, the biceps.
From here, you keep that same barbell with the same weight, but this time you stand up and take advantage of the cheating principle, and if you’re game and wish to take the set to a totally hellish level, you can extend the set by performing a total of 10 rest paused reps.
Wouldn’t standing barbell curl stress my forearm muscles? Of course it would, however your biceps have been plenty fatigued by now, that (even though the brachi is stronger than the brachiodalis), for the duration of your standing barbell curl the reverse would be true now that we’ve pre exhausted our primary muscle with the seated barbell curls.
You may use the EZ curl bar instead of the straight bar if you prefer. In the long run, what minuscule loss you get from doing so, far outweighs the risk of injury or pressure placed on the wrist area as a whole using the straight bar. It's a preference thing, and for me, I prefer the EZ curl bar over the straight one.
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