Yes, you need to do more than 1 bicep exercise on arm day in order to achieve muscle activation in the biceps. A few sets of conventional dumbbell curls aren't enough for training biceps. Your arm routines should include 3-5 exercises for biceps.
3-4x per week is pretty excessive. There's plenty of studies that advocate that you shouldn't be doing more than 20 sets for larger muscles groups and should keep the minor muscle groups like your arms in the 10-15 set range per week.
Generally speaking, three exercises are sufficient for each muscle group when engaging in weight training. However, the number of exercises can depend on the intensity, volume, and frequency of the workout.
This is the range that stimulates the most muscle growth. This is also the rep range recommended by most body building programs and the reps you'll find listed in most off the shelf magazines like Flex, Muscle and Fitness, etc. The conventional wisdom is 3–5 sets of 8–15 reps.
But, generally speaking, between 2-4 exercises per muscle group is sufficient. This helps stress the muscle from different angles and force vectors, helps reduce overuse injuries, and provides enough variety to prevent you from getting bored.
If your aim is hypertrophy (to build muscle), the sweet spot is 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 12 reps.
Then, gradually increase and work toward three to four exercises per workout that hit all major muscle groups. Three to four exercises can be enough to cover a full-body workout at the intermediate level, but it of course depends on your preferences and the type of movements that you are doing.
Yes, you need to do more than 1 bicep exercise on arm day in order to achieve muscle activation in the biceps. A few sets of conventional dumbbell curls aren't enough for training biceps. Your arm routines should include 3-5 exercises for biceps.
There is a minimum effective dose of 4 sets per muscle group per week for hypertrophy. For increasing strength, both higher volume and frequency contribute. However, results diminish beyond 4 sets per week. There is a minimum effective dose of 1 set per week per muscle group for strength gains.
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.
The Weighted Chin Up hits all three functions of the bicep: elbow supination, elbow flexion and shoulder flexion. We can utilize an intensity technique if we pair up the Weighted Chin Up with heavier weights in a drop set with the Peak Contraction Chin Up.
Ideally, it is advised to work your biceps at least two to three times per week. But the number of days you should train your biceps depends on what you want to achieve (strength or size) and the time frame in which you want to achieve it.
The best exercise for growing the bicep muscle is any variation of the curl. Curls are best done using a barbell and weights or a set of dumbbells. If you're training in the gym, sitting at a bench or using the preacher curl machine can help to further concentrate tension on the bicep muscle, leading to bigger gains.
Within a training session, we recommend including between 1 and 3 different biceps exercises, but no more than that in most cases, as doing more than 3 biceps movements in one session is likely just a needless burning of potential exercise variations you can save for later mesocycles.
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.
Within a single week (microcycle) of training, we recommend between 2 and 5 different triceps exercises.
Is it better to do 3 or 4 sets per exercise? According to The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), 2-3 sets of 12 to 20+ reps will help build muscular endurance, while 3-6 sets of 6-12 reps will build muscular hypertrophy and 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps will build muscular power.
There are two main training errors people make that keep their biceps from growing. These are overtraining the biceps (often unintentionally) and a lack of variation in training techniques. Adding additional biceps focused workouts and trying multiple biceps exercises doesn't work.
So if you really want bigger biceps and triceps, make sure to do 4 sets of dumbbell or barbell rows at least twice a week, and do dumbbell bench presses at least once a week.
'Your whole session should consist of 4-5 exercises per muscle group,' advises Thornton. Your biceps are 'incredibly important muscles for developing grip strength, as training them requires your forearms to be fully engaged. This is important to maintain as you get older,' says Thornton.
To recap, most people can see great results performing 2-4 different exercise per muscle group per training day, and include 4-12 different exercises paper muscle group per week as long as they are getting enough training volume throughout the week (15-20 total work sets for most people would suffice)..
Your rep range doesn't matter nearly as much as you think, so don't overthunk it! Here are some examples: If you're trying to build muscle and get bigger, doing sets of 3 or sets of 5 or sets of 10 will ALL help you get bigger, if you're eating enough to get bigger!
Within a single week (microcycle) of training, we recommend between 2 and 5 different quad exercises. For example, if you train quads 3x a week, you can do a heavy barbell squat on one day, a lighter barbell squat on the next day, and a leg press version on the last day for 2 total exercises in the week.