You should do 3–12 sets per muscle per workout and train your muscles at least twice per week. The more often you train your muscles, the fewer sets you need per workout. For example, if you're trying to do 12 sets per muscle per week, you can spread your volume out like this: 6 sets of biceps curls 2x per week.
12 sets per workout is pretty much OK but training biceps 3 times a week is the not best approach I would never recommend it. At the most, you must do it just twice a week. You must train other body parts as well.
The current science shows that somewhere between 10--12 sets per muscle group per week is a great place to start to build muscle.
The study showed optimal results using 18 sets per week, 9 sets were not enough and 27 appeared to be overtrained by the end of the study.
For optimal results when starting out, consider training your biceps no more than twice a week. Two sessions a week gives your muscles enough post-workout recovery to perform at their maximum capacity during the next session.
The biceps are a secondary muscle in compound exercises like underhand grip rows or chin-ups, therefore they are still working. As a secondary muscle in a compound lift, the biceps encounter even more volume and muscle breakdown than during a biceps curl. Avoid overtraining the biceps after an entire workout.
Because the bicep muscles are proportionately small, at least in relation to your chest and back, you should always use a weight that allows you to flex and release with isolation (meaning that no other muscle is involved), but heavy enough to cause fatigue at the end of the set.
Referring to a more recent systematic review, it found: The best hypertrophy results came from 30-40 sets per muscle per week. A minimum effective dose of 4 sets per muscle group per week. Somewhere around 10-20 sets per week still delivered good hypertrophy results.
In theory biceps, back, calfs, and so on respond “better” to higher reps than triceps, pecs, and so on. This is thought to correspond with their real life usage.
This holds that regardless of whether you're trying to build muscle, strength, power, or endurance, performing three sets of 10 reps per exercise is a good place to start. The scheme mostly works, especially if you're just starting out with strength training—because everything works in the beginning.
This could include 3 exercises targeting the quads, with 3 sets per exercise. Increasing from there will likely deliver enhanced results, however, the same review found that there are diminishing returns beyond approximately 12-20 sets per muscle group per week.
4 to 8 sets per muscle per week is now your minimum. If that's what you were doing as a beginner, you'll want to aim for 8 to 15 sets per muscle per week. At this point, your weekly volume will be much more manageable if you train three to five days a week, working each muscle at least twice.
For beginners or those “untrained,” performing 5 sets per week can maintain muscle, while 10-20 sets are generally recommended for growth. It can go up to 20 sets per muscle group for advanced individuals.
Twelve sets a week per muscle group is enough unless you've trained for several years. If you have, you might want to do between 15 and 20 sets to continue getting results. For beginners, 12 is a good number to aim for.
Typically, it takes around 6-8 weeks for you to start noticing changes in the appearance of your arms. At around the 12 week mark, this is typically when you can expect to see more significant changes, especially if you didn't already have a large amount of muscle mass in the area!
A bicep size that is considered big is subjective to personal opinion and preference. However, as we saw above, young adult men's average biceps range from 13–15 inches, and women's range from 12–13 inches. By these standards, biceps measuring 15+ inches for men and 13+ inches for women are generally classified as big.
If you are training the biceps directly for strength, it is recommended that you train in the 5-10 rep range, or the 8-10 rep range to minimize overloading the tendons and ligaments of the elbow joint due to the single joint nature of most biceps isolation exercises.
There is no set weight to start with when using dumbbells, some people may feel comfortable beginning at 5kg and others at 15kg. It is important to start with a manageable weight, nothing too light or too heavy, as you want to be able to feel some impact.
One of the most common ways to build arm muscle is to lift weights, but you don't have to bench press hundreds of pounds to strengthen your upper limbs. Light weights can also do the trick, especially if you use the right strategy and have realistic expectations.
Bicep Weekly Training Frequency for Intermediate and Advanced level. It is recommended that intermediate lifters should do 12-20 total training sets per week. The weights used to exercise the biceps can vary, but heavy weights (less than 8 reps) should be avoided because they might cause damage.
Rest between set durations should be based on sets/exercise (volume), and not load or training goal. General recommendations include moderate (2 min) rest between sets if performing 2 sets/exercise, long rest (3 min) if performing 3 sets/exercise, and very long rest (> 4 min) if performing 4 sets or more/exercise.
Research suggests that hitting a muscle group 2-3 times per week yields the best results for muscle growth. Therefore, you should aim for 12-20 sets per week for optimal biceps development.
So, which is better? It really depends on your goals. If you're looking to build bigger biceps, then you should focus on bicep curls a bit more than hammer curls. However, if you're just looking to tone your arms and don't really care about building bigger biceps, then either exercise will work just fine.
Myth #1: A Muscle Should Be Hard.
Muscles should always be soft, uniform and consistent. The only time a muscle should be hard is when it is in a contracted state (i.e. when it is actively flexed). If you feel the muscle fibers of a highly developed body builder, you'll notice that the muscle will actually feel soft.