The Death of Bicep Workouts

The glamour muscles get a lot of good-natured ribbing around here. That’s because most guys focus on pumping up their pecs, biceps, and abs at the expense of building total-body strength.

But all teasing aside, a strong, attractive, and healthy body includes these muscle groups as well.

The problem is most men overemphasize them, wasting time in the gym trying to hit every muscle from every angle, isolating them as much as possible and getting little to show for it, when they could be going to happy hour with friends, having dinner with their families, or watching the James Bond marathon on TV.

If we want a pair of sick pythons, we might as well grow them in the most efficient way we can… but we’re gonna need to kill off bicep workouts as we know them to do so.

Curls Are For French Fries

Eliminate any and all forms of bicep curls from your workout routine.

Barbells, dumbbells, and EZ curl bars. Sitting, standing, and incline. If you ever do an exercise that only works one muscle group, it’s a telltale sign you are probably wasting your time. (Unless you are a professional bodybuilder.)

Yes, curls focus all the force on your bicep muscles, but where’s the benefit? When are you ever going to lift something that way in your life? You are much more likely to use a cleaning movement and bringing your hips into it. Here at LMVM, I emphasize functional movements to reach your fat-losing and muscle-gaining goals with minimal time investment, and curls just don’t meet that criteria.

Well, what are you supposed to do? Surely you’re afraid that by ditching the curls you will end up looking like some freak with flabby and shriveled arms.

Have no fear. You can use the same exercise that humans have used for eons…

Enter the Pull Up

You may not think your biceps are getting much of a workout when you do pull ups, but you would be mistaken. Pull ups and related exercises are the types of movements that our arms are most well-suited to performing. And when you add compound back strengthening exercises such as this to your repertoire, you will AUTOMATICALLY be working your biceps as well!

Climbing is a fundamental movement to humans that involves many muscles, especially the forearms, back muscles, and biceps. By adding or increasing the emphasis of pull ups in your routine, you can kill many birds with one stone, building maximum muscle while freeing your time for more important things.

But if you REALLY want to build your biceps, I’ll give you a tip: close-grip chin ups (with an underhand grip) focus on these muscles more than any other pull up variant and as a result rate as one of the top bicep workouts.

Now, take your newfound knowledge and do one thing you’ve been putting off because you’ve been devoting too much time to working out. You deserve it! By doing compound pulling exercises such as pull ups, you’re still building the big guns you’ve always wanted anyways.

Tagged as: back muscles, biceps, bodyweight exercises, confusion, glamor muscles, pareto principle