3 moves to blast your biceps

Build massive biceps by blasting every angle with these three unique moves — you'll be sore and shredded in no time.

Author:
Men's Fitness Editors
Jul 30, 2021

Variety is key to growth. Repeatedly doing the same workout is not only boring, but will eventually cause your results to plateau. Even though you're training hard in the gym, your efforts aren’t being rewarded because your body had adapted to your current workout.

By targeting your muscles at new angles you'll activate different muscle fibers, leading to new growth. Add these three exercises to your next arms workout and breathe some new life into your routine. Goodbye boring, hello results.

Move 1: Guillotine Curl

Targets: biceps brachii

This unique take on the standard cable curl is a great way to target both heads of the biceps. This exercise will hit your arms from an entirely new angle. During most biceps exercises, your upper arms are parallel to your torso and you curl the weight from your waist to your chest. The advantage of the Guillotine Curl is that your upper arms are perpendicular to your torso, and you're curling the weight from a high cable toward your body. This provides a new stimulus for your muscles, which will yield results.

How to do:

Attach a straight bar to the top of a cable pulley. Grasp the bar with both hands, and slowly lower yourself to the floor or a bench with your feet facing away from the pulley. Lying on the floor or bench with your arms extended, curl the bar to your forehead, squeeze your biceps, and release. Repeat for 3 sets of 12-15 repetitions.

Move 2: Lying DB Curl

Targets: biceps brachii

The lying dumbbell curl is arguably the most isolated biceps exercise, placing nearly all of the stress on the target muscle by stabilizing your torso. With an increased ROM, your arms get a better stretch and stronger contraction.

How to do:

Lie on a flat bench with a light dumbbell in each hand. Extend your arms toward the floor so they're perpendicular to your torso. In a controlled fashion, curl the weight up to your shoulders, contract, then slowly release to the start position. Repeat for 3 sets of 10 repetitions.

Move 3: Reverse-Grip Cable Curl

Targets: brachialis, forearms, biceps brachii

Something as simple as switching your grip can provide an enormous change to your routine. This curl will provide constant tension in the arms muscles because of the cable. In particular, the brachialis will be heavily targeted, as well as the forearms and biceps. The brachialis is a small muscle in the upper arms, but can add width and separation in your arms if trained properly.

How to do:

Attach a straight bar to a cable pulley at ground level. Grab the bar with a pronated grip, and from a standing position curl the weight toward your chest. Slowly lower the bar back to starting position and repeat for 4 sets of 8-10 repetitions.