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.
Take care of your body: If you aren't sleeping enough, not giving yourself the proper nutrition, or damaging your body with alcohol and stress, there's no chance of growing those impressive bicep muscles. Lifting weights alone is not enough; a better overall health level will always lead to improved gains.
No Direct Arm Work
Doing pull-ups, rows, bench presses or dips will only get you so far. And if you want your arms to look bigger, you need to have exercises that focus solely on your arms. Either add an arm day to your workout routine or separate your biceps and your triceps and put them into your training week.
Many fitness beginners and even bodybuilders have difficulty in building up their biceps. This is not solely because the biceps is an isolated muscle that is naturally hard to develop, but mostly because they may just be doing the wrong bicep exercises for long-term results.
Adjust Weekly Biceps Volume
Research shows that up to 30 sets per week are the highest you can get while still seeing a benefit in growth. However, you don't want to perform more than 8-10 hard sets per muscle as beyond that becomes junk volume weight training.
1) Training Too Often And Too Much
Though it's a small muscle group that recovers comparatively faster than other muscles, it still needs rest for optimal hypertrophy. Also, your biceps are quite active in your pulling exercises (back workouts), which makes them one of the most active muscle groups.
“But to build bigger biceps and triceps you have to focus on perfect form, moving through a full range of motion and, crucially, never lifting too heavy. The key to adding arm size is to getting a good pump through lifting lighter for longer – and executing every rep as perfectly as possible.”
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!
When you pause or hold a weight so the length of your biceps don't change, you target your type IIb muscle fibers, which are the ones with the most growth potential, he explains. Actively squeezing the muscle during an isometric contraction will also increase your gains.
Through weightlifting exercises, you may be able to put an inch of muscle on your biceps in a week. You may be able to gain another inch in two weeks, but soon your body will plateau and you won't see that kind of growth every week.
The Minimum Effective Volume (MEV) for biceps requires you to perform at least eight sets of direct bicep workouts per week. It means that you need to complete eight sets of biceps throughout the week.
Diet for Big Biceps
You should try to eat at least 1.4 to 1.8 grams of protein daily per pound of body weight, according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Some of the best muscle-building foods include lean meats, fish, dairy products, eggs and beans.
The number of exercises that make an effective arm workout can range from 1-3 movements per session, with any more than that resulting in excessive fatigue and inconsistent form and technique. It is common that an arm routine consists of 1-3 arm exercises per muscle each workout.
What most people don't realise is that arm size is largely genetic. That also goes for the shape and peak of your bicep. Working out your arms will make them grow, but the extent of that relies on genetics.
IS HEIGHT RELATED TO BICEPS SIZE? Height isn't a good marker to base biceps size on. A more accurate relationship to biceps size would be wrist circumference. It's much more likely that someone with thicker wrists will also have bigger biceps than someone tall and skinny.
Build bigger biceps and triceps by packing on the pounds.
Building mass in your arms isn't any different than it is with larger muscle groups like your chest or quads. Like those muscles, your arms respond to both heavy weight and high volume, but they also need time to recover for sizable gains.
The biceps and triceps should be trained using rep ranges between 5-20 reps to best maximize strength, muscle growth, and overall development of the muscles.
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.
Since you'll be doing a fair amount of biceps work daily, you won't do anything else for biceps for 3-4 weeks. You'll get significant growth, and the daily heavy work will increase your biceps' capacity to recruit its fast-twitch fibers, making your bi's even more responsive to training after those 3-4 weeks.