Today our article will be devoted to a program aimed at developing the muscles of the arms, in particular, triceps and biceps. Of course, a lot has been written on this topic, however, not every professional trainer can clearly explain the need to perform this or that exercise. Before the athlete, when performing a complex aimed at training arms (biceps and triceps), two goals are set:
- All efforts should be directed solely to training the muscles of the arms. Many athletes make this mistake, not excluding the load on other muscles of the body, as a result of which the load on the trained triceps and biceps is weakened.
- direct the load to the necessary sections of muscle tissue, the so-called bundles.
The photo shows all the muscles in the arms. These goals are achieved through the use of optimal technique. Today we will talk about it. In conclusion, we will also look at all the nuances of exercise complexes for the best possible growth of muscle tissue in the arms.
We will begin this topic by looking at the triceps. Since the triceps are more voluminous and there are more components (muscle heads) in it.
Triceps structure and how to pump it
Triceps is a muscle of the shoulder or lower leg with three heads.
Each of the heads is an integral part of one ligament of muscles, they gradually taper and form this ligament. This muscle ligament is located near the elbow joint and when you do exercises aimed at developing the triceps, all three bundles of the ligament are involved at the same time. However, the load on these heads depends solely on the technique of performing the exercises, since with the other side all the heads are attached to different muscles.
Triceps consists of:
- Small elbow head (medial) Located near the elbow joint, respectively, all exercises performed for flexion-extension are performed by this head. It is also called the middle head as it is located between the lateral and long heads. The structure is distinguished by a long tendon and this head is quite wide.
- External head (lateral).
- The internal head (long), its attachment is located near the scapula, from which we can conclude that without performing exercises with the arms being pulled back, its full-fledged training cannot be realized.
- The triceps ligament is a ligament of muscles that connects all three heads. The triceps ligament can be long or short, it all depends on the genetic predisposition. In the case of a short ligament, the muscle itself looks more massive and bulkier. And if it is long, then the muscle is short with peaks.
Nuance of pumping triceps number 1
When you work with light weight, more work load falls on the medial head, and less load falls on the lateral head. This is due to the structure and location of the medial head. It is worth noting that the inner head is almost never used.
With increasing weights, the load increases accordingly and the internal and external heads will be involved in the work.
Nuance of pumping triceps number 2
- When extending-flexing the arms, there is a load on all 3 heads of the triceps.
- To achieve the ideal shape of the triceps, it is necessary to understand to what extent each of the heads should be included during training.
- The medial head receives most of the load in any case, especially when doing light exercises.
- With increasing load, the lateral head will play the role of an auxiliary head for the medial one.
- The long head is always the last to enter the work at maximum load and only if the exercises are performed correctly with the arms being pulled back.
Nuance number 3. How to turn on the long head?
To do this, when the athlete performs the exercise, he needs to move his hand back in a certain way.
If this is not done, this component of the triceps will lag behind in the development of the muscles.
Move your arms above your head up or back. For example, when performing a French press in a prone position, not from the face, but from behind the head, in this case, your shoulder will receive the necessary load. And when pressing the elbows to the body, the load is distributed to the head we need. When performing exercises with elbows apart to the side, the load is transferred to the lateral head.
Remember when doing the exercises, in no case do not make sudden jerks or jerks, otherwise you can provoke injuries. An important point is also to perform isolated exercises after the basic ones, they will pre-prepare your joints and muscles. Performing exercises in which the load prevails on the elbow joint is quite traumatic.
Therefore, we recommend that you first give the triceps load with the help of basic exercises, and then proceed to isolated exercises, your muscles will have enough small weights and, accordingly, you will perform less traumatic exercises before completing the workout.
The structure of the biceps and how to pump it up
Biceps is a biceps muscle. From its name it is clear that it has two heads in its composition, these are:
- Short, located on the inside of the arms.
- Long, located on the outside of the arms.
Both heads are connected to each other to form the biceps ligament, which is next to the elbow.
The attachment of the ligament is closer to the lateral part of the forearm, this allows our muscle to expand the palm (supination) towards the thumb and bend the arms.
Athletes rarely have difficulty training a short head due to its location; most extension-flexion exercises are similar to it. The second head is often difficult due to its anatomical location. For optimal engagement of the long biceps head, exercises are performed with the elbow as far back as possible.
Remember, the more the elbows are laid back, the more the external muscle bundle is involved, and the greater the elbow extension in front of you will maximize the use of the internal bundle of the arm muscle in question. The load on the muscle bundle also depends on the width of the grip. With a wide grip, the load goes to the inner, and with a narrow grip, to the outer biceps bundle.
Shoulder muscle or Brachialis: where is it located and how to pump
A muscle that plays a major role in arm extension-flexion exercises is located under the biceps. The shoulder muscle is attached directly to the bone, as a result, it does not take part in supination and maximally concentrates the load on the elbow joint during extension-flexion. We recommend that at the end of the exercises aimed at training the biceps to lift the bar using the reverse grip, or as an alternative to using the hammer curls, these two exercises maximize the load on the Brachialis.
Forearms
You do not need to do any exercises that focus solely on the forearms, as all extension / flexion workouts with a load involve the forearms. Professional athletes do not use exercises aimed at training only the forearms.
Hand training: general tips
The mistake of many beginners is the lack of exercises aimed at training the hands in the training program. This is due to the fact that such exercises do not provide your body with bulk.
It is very important to be able to feel the contraction of muscles during training, this will give you full results in them. To do this, you need to learn how to use the secondary muscles. Use light weight early in your workout and pay attention to your exercise technique.
Often, beginners make the mistake of overloading the biceps, in which case they simply overtrain it. Remember the maximum number of working sets for the biceps. For professional athletes and using anabolic steroids, as an exception, the number of approaches can be increased, but with extreme caution and not earlier than a couple of years after the start of training. Otherwise, you can provoke a complete stop of muscle growth.
If you don't see any progress while training biceps and triceps, you need to gradually increase the load. In order to avoid problems in this matter, we advise you to first perform basic exercises, then exercises with a "strong" load on the biceps. Also, do not forget to carefully monitor and increase the growth of loads.
Arrangement of arms in a workout program
There are a lot of options, however, the most common in which you will achieve maximum results in two directions at once are given below:
- Chest + Biceps, Back + Triceps
- Biceps + Triceps
- Back + Triceps, Chest + Biceps
Techniques for training arm muscles
There are a lot of techniques, besides, most of the techniques you know can be applied and modified to arm training. However, we recommend using a technique called Super Series.
- Super series - performing one after another two exercises on the muscles of the antagonists with no rest between them.
- It is also effective to change exercises among themselves and change the approaches of exercises for different muscles of the arms.
- An important nuance is pumping, which contributes to the growth and appearance of your muscles, and also has a number of other advantages.
- For you, we have compiled the optimal hand training program, which is divided into regular and advanced.
Video with advice from Denis Borisov - how to pump up your arms (biceps and triceps) correctly:
