Compound exercises for biceps

u_e_s_i

u_e_s_i

Well-known member
Awards
3
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
What are some good compound exercises for hitting biceps?
I believe that rows and lat pull downs are meant to be good but after my back workouts whilst my lats are usually sore, my biceps very rarely are and don’t even feel pumped usually. I’d assume that this is a sign that I’m isolating my lats well. So right now I’m not sure what to do in addition to isolated bicep work
 
love2liftkat

love2liftkat

Board Sponsor
Awards
4
  • RockStar
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
Changing the grip in your pulldowns and rows are how it will hit your biceps more...is there any particular reason why you don’t like the isolation work for the biceps?
 
Smont

Smont

Legend
Awards
5
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
  • RockStar
  • Legend!
Weighted pull up/chin ups. Reverse grip bent over rows
 
GreekTheBrick

GreekTheBrick

Active member
Awards
1
  • Established
Weighted pull up/chin ups. Reverse grip bent over rows
No better than this. 5 chin ups, 5 pull ups, 5 with neutral grip. Lats, biceps and forearms will thank you. 3 days later the rows, 10 sets with barbell, 5 sets with dumbbell. Keep it simple heavy and frequent.
 
Whisky

Whisky

Well-known member
Awards
4
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • RockStar
  • Best Answer
Weighted pull up/chin ups. Reverse grip bent over rows
Yep yep yep

Sure i recall reading that chins created more activation in the biceps than any other exercise
 
EMPIREMIND

EMPIREMIND

Well-known member
Awards
4
  • RockStar
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
Weighted pull up/chin ups. Reverse grip bent over rows
This is it right here. Absolutely will torture your biceps, especially if you drop the weight after failure and do bodyweight or asited chins right after
 
Smont

Smont

Legend
Awards
5
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
  • RockStar
  • Legend!
Today I did rack pulls and weighted pull ups for sets of 3-5, pulldowns for 10-12 and bent rows in a Smith machine for sets of 10-12. Hammer curls for 6-8 and machine preacher curls for 15 No rest drop sets 1 stack at a time till I was burnt out. Great workout for back and biceps in my opinion
 
EMPIREMIND

EMPIREMIND

Well-known member
Awards
4
  • RockStar
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
OP you can always just add in some bicep work before or after back. Some barbell, DB, machine or cable curls. Also you could do it before you workout back to pre exhaust them
 
muscleupcrohn

muscleupcrohn

Legend
Awards
3
  • RockStar
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
Why not just add in some direct bicep work? I do weighted Pullups all the time, and there’s still no replacing Curls for building biceps and getting a crazy bicep pump.

I feel that if you focus your entire back workout around working biceps, you’ll just end up hitting neither of them ideally. Much better to hit your back ideally, as well as you can, and then do at least a little direct bicep work after that to hit them sufficiently.

Your arms are getting hit doing compound back movements, so don’t worry about that, but hitting them with some additional direct work is good to help build them more.
 
Smont

Smont

Legend
Awards
5
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
  • RockStar
  • Legend!
Were not talking about focusing your back workout around biceps. Weighted pull ups and bent over rows are great back moves. They also hit the biceps with heavy weights. I'm sure the op is doing direct bicep work and is just looking for some heavy lifts that also hit biceps. From what I read that seemed pretty self explanatory. Op correct me if I'm wrong
 
muscleupcrohn

muscleupcrohn

Legend
Awards
3
  • RockStar
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
Were not talking about focusing your back workout around biceps. Weighted pull ups and bent over rows are great back moves. They also hit the biceps with heavy weights. I'm sure the op is doing direct bicep work and is just looking for some heavy lifts that also hit biceps. From what I read that seemed pretty self explanatory. Op correct me if I'm wrong
And what I’m saying is that if he feels he has a solid back routine, and is making solid back progress, the logical thing to do to bring up the biceps isn’t to alter his back routine but to add some (more or different) direct bicep work.

He says that his biceps are very rarely sore, and that his lats often are. Why not just keep his back routine that seems to be working and add some more or different direct bicep work to hit those muscles a bit more while not fixing something that isn’t broken with his back routine. Unless he’s time limited, just doing some more/different bicep work is the easiest solution.

Weighted pull ups are good for biceps, but I’d be lying if I said that my biceps aren’t much better as the result of adding in a good amount of direct arm work as well. You CAN get big biceps focusing almost exclusively on compound movements, but there’s a reason every pro bodybuilder who has had success and good biceps also does direct arm work.

Anyway, let’s have OP clarify. Are your biceps lagging behind what you’d like them to be size wise? Are they a weak point? If it’s just soreness you’re worried about, progress is more important. If they’re getting bigger and stronger, that’s what matters. If they’re a weak point, what does your routine look like so we can make relevant suggestions instead of just shouting out exercises that are good.

If he’s doing any decent weight compound movements for back, he’s of course using his biceps too. I doubt he’s doing a back workout consisting solely of Dickersons.
 

BlockBuilder

Well-known member
Awards
3
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
Reverse grip bent over rows will hit the biceps a lot harder than a regular grip. Give those a try
 
AlexPowell

AlexPowell

Well-known member
Awards
1
  • Established
Try activating the biceps before doing the exercises
To do this, put your wrist under something that will not move with your arm in the curl position. Curl up as hard as you can then move your body so that you're forcing a negative. A partner can also do this by pulling your fists down as you curl upwards
 
u_e_s_i

u_e_s_i

Well-known member
Awards
3
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
Thanks for the feedback guys.
So, I had some difficulties last year impaired by injuries and a bad reaction to MK-677. As a result I lost 25% of my strength all over from June2017 to September2017.
Then in September I made great progress whilst in Spain, recouped my lost strength and hit a new PB of 49kg for 10 reps on cable bicep curls.
I then hit a patch of fluctuation between October2017 and February2018 whilst in Thailand, then another patch of fluctuation between February 2018 and May2018 in China. Each time, I lost some strength on bicep curls before eventually recouping my strength.
49kg for 10 is an approximate plateau I’ve hit for the third time now.

Since returning to England four weeks ago, I’ve seemingly inexplicably lost 10% of the strength in my biceps and they’re noticeably weaker. AGAIN. My supps regimen has stayed the same as has my diet and the fluctuations in strength aren’t consistent with deficit and maintenance periods. The most probably difference may be (I just started keeping a precise log of workout days, used to be only PBs) that the peaks in my bicep strength come after periods of training arms specifically twice a week, getting sunshine (thought I’d list it), doing more neutral grip lat pulldowns and bicep curls as opposed to underhand, and also having a ‘w’ bar for cables.

These last few weeks I’ve been hitting arms specifically once a week normally and have only lifted 45kg for 7.
I used to do biceps after my back workout and tris after chest twice a week apiece but then realised that I can lift more with my biceps and triceps if I give them their own day, so I switched to boost efficacy.
For the past year I’d try to do as follows but would need to miss a day sometimes.
Back or chest (my chest is stronger relatively)
Back or chest
Arms
Legs
Back or chest
Back or chest
Arms
[front delts and abs with chest, rear delts with back, side delts with arms]
And at times that gets me good weekly gains all over
Bicep exercises on arm days would ideally be underhand, w and rope curls alternating.

I recently received a reminder that triceps need to be mindfully hit with both heavy compound stuff and lighter isolated exercises for the best growth. As my arm days don’t have compound exercises, I made this post


My apologies for the length of the post, things need some explaining. Thank you for reading
 
muscleupcrohn

muscleupcrohn

Legend
Awards
3
  • RockStar
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
Thanks for the feedback guys.
So, I had some difficulties last year impaired by injuries and a bad reaction to MK-677. As a result I lost 25% of my strength all over from June2017 to September2017.
Then in September I made great progress whilst in Spain, recouped my lost strength and hit a new PB of 49kg for 10 reps on cable bicep curls.
I then hit a patch of fluctuation between October2017 and February2018 whilst in Thailand, then another patch of fluctuation between February 2018 and May2018 in China. Each time, I lost some strength on bicep curls before eventually recouping my strength.
49kg for 10 is an approximate plateau I’ve hit for the third time now.

Since returning to England four weeks ago, I’ve seemingly inexplicably lost 10% of the strength in my biceps and they’re noticeably weaker. AGAIN. My supps regimen has stayed the same as has my diet and the fluctuations in strength aren’t consistent with deficit and maintenance periods. The most probably difference may be (I just started keeping a precise log of workout days, used to be only PBs) that the peaks in my bicep strength come after periods of training arms specifically twice a week, getting sunshine (thought I’d list it), doing more neutral grip lat pulldowns and bicep curls as opposed to underhand, and also having a ‘w’ bar for cables.

These last few weeks I’ve been hitting arms specifically once a week normally and have only lifted 45kg for 7.
I used to do biceps after my back workout and tris after chest twice a week apiece but then realised that I can lift more with my biceps and triceps if I give them their own day, so I switched to boost efficacy.
For the past year I’d try to do as follows but would need to miss a day sometimes.
Back or chest (my chest is stronger relatively)
Back or chest
Arms
Legs
Back or chest
Back or chest
Arms
[front delts and abs with chest, rear delts with back, side delts with arms]
And at times that gets me good weekly gains all over
Bicep exercises on arm days would ideally be underhand, w and rope curls alternating.

I recently received a reminder that triceps need to be mindfully hit with both heavy compound stuff and lighter isolated exercises for the best growth. As my arm days don’t have compound exercises, I made this post


My apologies for the length of the post, things need some explaining. Thank you for reading
Your arm days don't "need" compound movements if you're already doing compound lifts that work your biceps ~2x per week, which it seems like you are doing in your back workouts. Think about it; if you did biceps directly after back, you wouldn't be asking this question about compound lifts for biceps. You're doing compound movements either way. You just moved your biceps to a different time, so you don't need to do any compound movements on an arm day really IMO. As for triceps, they're worked a good bit on presses (chest/shoulders) too, but dips are an amazing exercise for triceps that is also a compound movement. The difference, IMO, is that dips, if you do them focusing on triceps instead of chest, are a triceps dominant movement with some chest work, not a chest movement that also works the triceps (like bench pressing is). Similarly, I'd argue that chinups are a back dominant exercise that also work the biceps. Even if it works the biceps well, it's still a back-primary movement IMO, if you're using a full ROM.
 
D3x

D3x

Active member
Awards
1
  • Established
Chest dips and chin ups always burn my biceps right out
 
D3x

D3x

Active member
Awards
1
  • Established
I do them at the end of my workout for chest and bi's.. so they are prefatigued a little
 
muscleupcrohn

muscleupcrohn

Legend
Awards
3
  • RockStar
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
I do them at the end of my workout for chest and bi's.. so they are prefatigued a little
Ok. That makes more sense. I was thinking you were somehow doing them as a bicep exercise haha.
 
AlexPowell

AlexPowell

Well-known member
Awards
1
  • Established
Ok. That makes more sense. I was thinking you were somehow doing them as a bicep exercise haha.
If you look at the function of the biceps then yeah, the biceps do contribute to the load - however I don't see it as a good way of getting in biceps work lol.
 
muscleupcrohn

muscleupcrohn

Legend
Awards
3
  • RockStar
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
If you look at the function of the biceps then yeah, the biceps do contribute to the load - however I don't see it as a good way of getting in biceps work lol.
Yeah, but as a practical matter, they're a chest/tricep exercise, of course.
 
u_e_s_i

u_e_s_i

Well-known member
Awards
3
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
Forgot to add this in. Recently I’ve often only been able to put in 5 or 6 session a week at the gym and so I usually do
1or2 back days
1or2 chest days
1 arm day
1 leg day

Back when I was doing arms specifically twice a week as in the routine given earlier, I was getting good arm gains. It’s because I’ve only been having 1 arm day that I’d like to find other ways to hit them hard
 
AlexPowell

AlexPowell

Well-known member
Awards
1
  • Established
Back: 6-20 reps, 14-22 sets, 8 sets maintenance
Biceps: 8-15 reps, 14-20 sets, 4 sets maintenance
Triceps: 8-20 reps, 10-14 sets, 4 sets maintenance

The sets are the sets per week, maintenance is the number of sets per week to not lose gains

Do maintenance sets for 2 weeks to resensitize you to volume.
Then, organise your split so that you're doing the lower end of the volume. Add a set each week until you're at the point that you're simply are doing too much volume that the next session you haven't recovered and can't use the same weights any more

Then do maintenance sets for 3-4 weeks. You should be doing 8-12 weeks of adding volume for every 3-4 weeks of maintenance deloading. If you hit overtraining sooner, add sets slower. If you're not overtraining and do not need a deload after 12 weeks then add volume quicker

This is basically all you need to do to get gains. Aim to increase the weights you use each week as well as the volume. Eat to win and you will not go wrong
 
u_e_s_i

u_e_s_i

Well-known member
Awards
3
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • Best Answer
What order do you guys usually do overhand pull ups, neutral grip pull ups and bent over rows in and what’s your thinking?
 
AlexPowell

AlexPowell

Well-known member
Awards
1
  • Established
What order do you guys usually do overhand pull ups, neutral grip pull ups and bent over rows in and what’s your thinking?
It does not matter
 
AlexPowell

AlexPowell

Well-known member
Awards
1
  • Established
Depending on the strength of the person, if they can only do 5-6 pull ups I'd do them first or there not gonna be able to later in the workout.
Yeah I suppose, but there is always pulldowns
 
Whisky

Whisky

Well-known member
Awards
4
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • RockStar
  • Best Answer
Yeah I suppose, but there is always pulldowns
I assumed the question was more linked to the specific exercise rather than the overall workout.

I.e most (not all) people are weakest at wide grip overhand pull ups, then close grip oh, then neutral, then chins, then rows (obviously). Thus that’s the order I would do them in......
 

Similar threads


Top