Whilst most gymgoers may be quite passionate about filling out their shirt sleeves with muscle, most are making vital mistakes preventing this very goal from manifesting. Getting bigger biceps does make your physique look more impressive, but it will also help make you stronger. If you think about it, just about every lift involves the biceps in one way or another, so it stands to reason that if you work on them then you’ll get better at just about every exercise.
The following is five of the most common biceps-training errors that you might be doing right now and need to stop immediately. Continuing these ill-advised habits will only hinder your training results further.
1. Using Momentum
If you want a muscle to grow, you must force it to do the work. Bending forward at the waist and swinging so that you can use more weight will only serve to take tension off your biceps, which in turn will hinder your quest for bigger guns.
2. Leaning Back
Leaning back as you curl is not only a great way to injure the lower spine, but to also take needed tension off the biceps. Tension is what makes a muscle grow, so stay upright throughout the range of motion until a perfect rep is no longer possible.
3. Lifting the Elbows/Shoulders
Some lifters think that they will get a better squeeze in the biceps if they raise up the elbows/shoulders at the top of a curl, but this simply is not true. All this will accomplish is to bring your anterior delts into the movement, which once again removes tension from the biceps and lessens the severity of their contraction.
4. Curling With Forearms
For most, this is an issue of technique. Make sure not to initiate curling exercises by first contracting the forearms. Rather, keep the wrists in line with the forearms (or even bent slightly back) from stretch to contraction.
5. Ignoring The Negatives
The eccentric (negative) contraction contributes greatly to anabolism (the processes that ignite hypertrophy) and should never be ignored when blasting the biceps. Lowering the weight over 3-4 seconds on every rep, even if you have to go a bit lighter will manifest into many more inches on your arms than curling and simply letting the weight drop back to the bottom.
