The best exercise for overall biceps mass is the standing barbell curl, and the standing barbell cheat-curl. The cheat curl involves using a heavy weight that you are not capable of lifting in strict form, such that you have to use the muscles of the upper body to 'swing' the weight up, i.e. cheating, but you only cheat just enough so that you can complete the curl: by only cheating just enough to complete the curl, the biceps are forced to work maximally throughout the movement.
If you go over the top in cheating you will only end up defeating the object of the exercise, which is to get the biceps to work 100% and get them accustomed to heavier weights so that you can later increase in strict barbell curls.
The biceps are comprised of two separate muscular heads that require separate training techniques. The biceps peak is actually the outer head and you can confirm this through the following exercise: First put your biceps of one arm contracted as you might in a front biceps pose followed by putting a finger from the other hand on the peak of the muscle. Then, keeping your finger in position on the muscle, you just lower your arm to your side, resulting in your finger being positioned on the outside of your biceps, on the outer head.
Some Effective outer head exercises would include concentration curls that curl inward toward the middle of the chest, narrow grip barbell, preacher curls and hammer curls. Hammer curls are carried out with dumbbells with the thumb facing upward throughout the movement, and should be done in a cross-body fashion so that the dumbbell is lifted across the body and ends up with the thumb uppermost and the dumbbell against the chest. Hammer curls are great too for brachialis development, which is the muscle that is found under the biceps and is visible between the biceps and triceps in a rear double biceps pose.
The are three heads in both of our triceps muscles being the inner, medial (or 'lower' triceps) and outer heads. A really good exercise to help improve our lower triceps is weighted dips and dips with the arms straightened three-quarters of the way, but still keeping tension on the triceps throughout the exercise. The outer triceps will respond to movements only with the hands in a 'thumbs-up' position. A few favorable exercises would be triceps pressdowns with a rope, dumbbell kickbacks, dips, one-arm cable and pressdowns with the palm facing up, but there are a lot more to chose from.
The inner triceps will react to movements when the thumb is turned inward, including lying or standing barbell triceps extensions, one-arm cable pressdowns (palm downward), triceps pressdowns with a bar (palms facing down), close grip bench presses, as well as many others.
It is important that the muscles of the arms are not over trained, since these muscles are used in workouts for other body parts, such as chest and back. The way in which workouts are constructed should have this in mind, such that chest and back workouts are separated by several days from direct arm workouts. In fact, the arms are probably best trained on their own in a single workout, or directly after shoulder work.
The quantity of sets that the arms need in order to see the right results will all depend on how intense your exercises are and what you recovery time is. This really is a personal thing so you will just have to try it out for yourself and stick to what ever produces your best muscle gain results.
If you go over the top in cheating you will only end up defeating the object of the exercise, which is to get the biceps to work 100% and get them accustomed to heavier weights so that you can later increase in strict barbell curls.
The biceps are comprised of two separate muscular heads that require separate training techniques. The biceps peak is actually the outer head and you can confirm this through the following exercise: First put your biceps of one arm contracted as you might in a front biceps pose followed by putting a finger from the other hand on the peak of the muscle. Then, keeping your finger in position on the muscle, you just lower your arm to your side, resulting in your finger being positioned on the outside of your biceps, on the outer head.
Some Effective outer head exercises would include concentration curls that curl inward toward the middle of the chest, narrow grip barbell, preacher curls and hammer curls. Hammer curls are carried out with dumbbells with the thumb facing upward throughout the movement, and should be done in a cross-body fashion so that the dumbbell is lifted across the body and ends up with the thumb uppermost and the dumbbell against the chest. Hammer curls are great too for brachialis development, which is the muscle that is found under the biceps and is visible between the biceps and triceps in a rear double biceps pose.
The are three heads in both of our triceps muscles being the inner, medial (or 'lower' triceps) and outer heads. A really good exercise to help improve our lower triceps is weighted dips and dips with the arms straightened three-quarters of the way, but still keeping tension on the triceps throughout the exercise. The outer triceps will respond to movements only with the hands in a 'thumbs-up' position. A few favorable exercises would be triceps pressdowns with a rope, dumbbell kickbacks, dips, one-arm cable and pressdowns with the palm facing up, but there are a lot more to chose from.
The inner triceps will react to movements when the thumb is turned inward, including lying or standing barbell triceps extensions, one-arm cable pressdowns (palm downward), triceps pressdowns with a bar (palms facing down), close grip bench presses, as well as many others.
It is important that the muscles of the arms are not over trained, since these muscles are used in workouts for other body parts, such as chest and back. The way in which workouts are constructed should have this in mind, such that chest and back workouts are separated by several days from direct arm workouts. In fact, the arms are probably best trained on their own in a single workout, or directly after shoulder work.
The quantity of sets that the arms need in order to see the right results will all depend on how intense your exercises are and what you recovery time is. This really is a personal thing so you will just have to try it out for yourself and stick to what ever produces your best muscle gain results.
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