• Keep up to date with Ausbb via Twitter and Facebook. Please add us!
  • Join the Ausbb - Australian BodyBuilding forum

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us.

    The Ausbb - Australian BodyBuilding forum is dedicated to no nonsense muscle and strength building. If you need advice that works, you have come to the right place. This forum focuses on building strength and muscle using the basics. You will also find that the Ausbb- Australian Bodybuilding Forum stresses encouragement and respect. Trolls and name calling are not allowed here. No matter what your personal goals are, you will be given effective advice that produces results.

    Please consider registering. It takes 30 seconds, and will allow you to get the most out of the forum.

The top bicep exercise according to a study.

joeblowforshow said:
I could be wrong, but the scale seems to be measuring "muscle activation" as how much of the lift is done by a particular muscle. If I'm right, that means that to do a concentration curl, 95% of the force is exerted by the bicep muscle. Presumably the other 5% is the forearm/wrist.

But that's a very incomplete picture - because it doesn't mean concentration curls will give you the biggest biceps. It means that concentration curls will NOT improve much else.

Take cable curls for instance. Cable curls have a "muscle activation of 80%" - so if you do concentration curls with a 20kg dumbbell (@ 95% muscle activation). Then you get the same effect from doing a cable curl with 23.75kg (@80%)

It's just that with the cable curl, you also work some other muscles a little bit (the other 20%).


So really, the chart is only effective when you compare the weights that can be achieved with different exercises. If, for example, you can cable curl 25kg but only concentration curl 20kg for the same number of reps, then actually the cable curl will be more effective.
Click to expand...

EMG measurements and their outcomes has never been something I've paid much attention to. And yes, there are times when the so called bro science wins over the real scientists...., I'll explain.

Scientist are (falsely) presuming that the whole idea of bodybuilding, and the aim of the bodybuilder is the attainment of more muscle fibre activation whilst performing a particular exercise. That is to say, they automatically think and believe (based on their testing), that the more a particular muscle fibre is activated, the more productive a particular exercise would be. I'm saying that this premise is false to begin with. Why? Because more muscle fibre activation is not automatically better than less muscle fibre activation. I know, it sounds so counter-intuitive what I'm suggesting to you here doesn't it! Well it's not and I'll expand on that point.

If you were to pre-exhaust your biceps muscles by isolating them whilst performing some concentration curls, following that by performing the standing barbell curls, an exercise the scientist ranked number 4 on their exercise comparison scale, you would be very disappointed with the EMG results. Why? Because the EMG machine is there for one purpose and one purpose only. That purpose is to measure muscle fibre activation. Now how would an EMG machine "view" your pre-exhausted biceps do you think? Not favourably, that I guarantee you. It would record that your biceps muscle fibres were less activated than when you performed the concentration curls. And here's the problem: the sole purpose of you performing the pre-exhaust concentration curls, was to make your target muscle (in this case your biceps), the weakest link in the chain (of other secondary muscles involved here). So here the EMG would score high muscle activation if we were to (say) test your front deltoids whilst performing the barbell curls. The reason for this? Your deltoids and other secondary muscles are all nice and fresh, and would show up as such (strong muscle fibre activation) on the EMG, instead of "weak" as your biceps are meant to be at that point in time (and on purpose).

So to a smart bodybuilder, it's the way he achieves his muscle activation that aught to count, instead of simply being the more muscle activation, the bigger the muscles would become.

The above is on the same level as the confusion that occurs between applying maximum muscle fibre recruitment, as opposed to maximum muscle fibre exhaustion.

 
Last edited:
In that manner I guess it's actually useful. Letting you know how to structure those workouts to fatigue the right stuff in the right order.

But again, this measures isolation, not what's "best" for getting big biceps
 
joeblowforshow said:
In that manner I guess it's actually useful. Letting you know how to structure those workouts to fatigue the right stuff in the right order.

But again, this measures isolation, not what's "best" for getting big biceps
Click to expand...
You'll find your solution to what's "best" for getting big biceps within your last sentence, i.e. through isolations. If your aim is to stimulate superior growth in a targeted muscle, (here we're talking biceps), then isolation exercises would be the "best" that you'd want to look for. When I refer to an isolation exercise, I'm not referring to bent over/seated concentration curls (even though that is classified as an isolation movement). By isolation, I'm referring to more than just the exercise, I'm referring to how the targeted muscle is affected by the way you choose to do that exercise and where you choose to place it in the order of other isolation exercises you're performing for that targeted muscle.

A standing/seated barbell curl is an excellent biceps exercise, and it is classified as an isolation when compared to bent over or seated rows or chin ups for example. Still, you would want to eliminate as much as possible the direct assistance of the secondary muscles that would render that barbell curl less effective than it has the potential to be. You do that by applying another isolation exercise that would pre-exhaust the biceps by placing more emphasis on them than any other secondary muscle. The concentration curls or the one arm d/bell preacher curl would fit the bill here. Now once you move onto the barbell curls, you would have eliminated the weak links of that top notch meat and potato biceps exercise, where (not so much maximum muscle activation is at play here as I've explained in my previous post), but maximum muscle exhaustion is at play exactly where you want it, at the targeted muscle. ..the biceps. That in plain and simple English = potential for maximum muscle growth.
 
Like any muscle growing biceps doesn't have to be rocket science. And in my point of view it varies from person to person which proves most effective for them. I personally have trouble contracting certain areas of my bicep.

With biceps I'm a strong believer in training to failure and almost to the point of pushing out forced reps. Full range of motion is also important. In terms of the most efficient exercise as mentioned it's hard to forget the barbell curl, simple and effective.

I always switch my training from week to week with excellent results, it also keeps things interesting. Drag Curls, Reverse Cable Curls, Concentration Curls, Barbell Curls, Hammer Curls, Preacher Curls and Cable Curls are some exercises I put in my workouts.

It's around 7 months since I started bodybuilding, and I've put nearly 2 inches onto my biceps, this is one body part that has really improved rapidly with the help of diverse and well performed exercises.
 
Silverback said:
From what I see, the brachialis is the contributing factor to the results of the tests.

All things being equal, the barbell curl is the real deal, along with chin-ups
Click to expand...

When I first started training about 6 years ago I was doing BB curls. I then switched to chin-ups/pullups because I found them a lot more enjoyable. Got pretty good at them and definitely got stronger.

However, looking back at my measurements over the years my upper arm circumference has increased by about .5cm unflexed in the last 3 years. For the majority of time, I've included plenty of chins/pullups. (only time I don't is if I'm injured and can't) Last year when I did bb comp I started doing some db curls and bb curls (no chins) but obviously no increase in size as I was dieting.

I know the old saying that you have to gain 10kg to add an inch to the biceps. I'm up 10kg from comp weight and definitely not up an inch :(

And yep, progressive overload with whatever exercise I am using. Curls typically in the 10-12 rep range. I do heavy chins down to 5 reps and all the way up to bw for 15-20.

Am I destined to have these 13" pipes forever? :p
 
The bicep is no different to any other muscle.
the amount of time spent exercising the muscle and recovery is key, the only trouble is that most exercises do not single out one muscle group, split routines for most are terrible.
 
....back into working out for a month now, full body every second day.
All I've done for biceps is barbell curls (3 sets per workout) and gained back 1cm so far, with no change in diet at all.
Yeah!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top