I've been enjoying films of, interviews with, and essays on this Director the last few days . . .
And now . . . let's get to the "buiishit" as one joyous reader lovingly expressed it in such an inimitably well-fashioned reply in the comments. This line of thought of his must be related to not being able to change the shape or appearance of his biceps, possibly something related to over-training, or perhaps bodybuilding potential's just not this guy's greatest genetic suit . . . tough break for some, but whaddya gonna do other than misspell one simple word, fart loudly, roll over and go back to sleep, confident in your own far-reaching knowledge of all things lifting. I suppose fucking off would work nicely as well. So it is with a heavy heart we wish this gentleman adios, adieu, and so long for hopefully ever.
Looking back, I shoulda gone with this article instead -
This month in my series on exercise tips I've learned over the past twenty-four years from various experts and bodybuilding champions, I move on to arms, specifically biceps and forearms. So put on your learning cap because this is good stuff, some the the real so-called secrets of the champs.
Everybody loves to build big biceps, and everyone loves to do curls. Ironically, many bodybuilders don't know how to curl correctly so that they isolate the muscles and build fuller, rounder, more peaked biceps.
Curling isn't as simple as it may appear. There are lots of things you have to do right with this type of movement in order to activate the target muscles properly. If you don't do these things, you end up working your forearms and delts more than your biceps.
One of the most important factors in curling is wrist position. Your wrists should remain locked and straight at all times. I first learned about the importance of keeping the wrists locked from Frank Zane's mail order courses back in the early '70s.
In fact, Zane said that he had always had a hard time isolating his biceps when curling until Arnold told him to keep his wrists locked. Here's why it's so important . . .
The top of any curl rep is reached when the biceps contract, not when the bar or dumbbell hits the shoulders. If you keep your wrists locked straight and don't move your elbows up, the bar should stop several inches away from your shoulders, at the nine or 10 o'clock position for most men, because your biceps will get in the way and prevent further movement. If you let your wrists bend, however, the weight can fall into your shoulders and your biceps won't fully contract, if at all.
The elbow position is also of paramount importance for making the biceps work hard. Hold your elbows against your body and don't allow them to move up, forward, or out from your body or back.
Try this now. Stand up as if you were holding a barbell at arms' length. Squeeze your elbows into your sides so they can't move. Now curl your hands up as far as they'll go. You'll notice that if you don't let your elbows move, your hands come up only about halfway before the biceps contract at roughly the nine or ten o'clock position, depending on the size of your arms. The bigger your arms, the shorter the distance you'll be able to move the bar up.
Your upper arms should remain motionless when you curl, and only your forearms should move. At least that's the way a true strict curl is performed. Any upper-arm movement at all constitutes cheating even if you don't swing or heave the weight up. Steven Moore, a Toronto-based personal trainer who has worked a lot with Steve Brisbois, recommends this type of strict curling, especially for beginners who don't yet know how to isolate their biceps properly. While it's true that you have to use less weight when you curl this way, the fact is, it's not how much weight you use that matters (within reason, of course, you whiny science-based anal retentive trainwreck of a non-human clod of shite posing as a person) . . . it's how hard your biceps work and how fully they contract.
It's better to use less weight and get a harder contraction than to use more weight and get less.
To increase the intensity on your biceps, start your sets by curling in this elbows-into-the-body, stationary position. Proceed through your reps until you can raise the weight this way anymore. Then switch to what people usually mean when they talk about "strict" curls . . . that is, allowing your elbows to move a little . . . and go to failure again. At that point switch to cheat curls and go to failure again. When you perform your curls this way you can work your biceps into the ground with fewer total sets.
The importance of getting a good biceps contraction is why trainers like John Parillo and Vince Gironda are both advocates of what are called drag curls. These are just what the name implies . . . as you literally drag the bar along your body to a point below your chest. The bar never leaves your body.
When it's halfway up at about the nine o'clock position, you've reached the top of the rep. At that point press your arms into your sides, arch your chest, drop your chest and pause for a count of two while you squeeze and contract your biceps, then lower slowly under tension before pulling up your pantyhose and readying for another set.
Shoulder position is also very important in curling. You should keep your shoulders down and back at all times. If you shrug your shoulder(s) as you curl a bar or dumbbell, your delts and traps assist in lifting the weight, taking work away from your biceps.
To see how much the shoulders can interfere in this movement, stand up and shrug them as high as possible and keep them there. Now try to do a curl. Note that you can't even lower your arms halfway down and that your range of motion is very limited. Note also that your biceps are absolutely out of the movement when you lift the bar. This is why it is important to keep your shoulders down and back.
If you try to use too heavy a poundage for strict form, you'll be forced to involve your shoulders in order to get this weight moving. In the gym you probable see novices doing this with heavy barbells and dumbbells all the time.
Watch a beginner do heavy dumbbell curls. The elbows come away from the body and the shoulders lift the weights the first four or five inches. Then, when the weights are about halfway up, the biceps finally kick in.
It's better to use moderate weights that you can handle in strict form when curling. I've said it before but I'll say it again - go for muscle stimulation and contraction when curling - not to see how much weight you can lift with sloppy form.
Here's a curling tip I picked up from Bruce Roberts of Hibbing, Minnesota. Use the antagonistic muscles (triceps) to make the movement feel as though you're pulling down as you lower the weight. This increases the tension on the biceps at the start of each rep. A basic rule of exercise physiology states that the more stretch you put on a muscle (within reason) at the beginning of a rep, the harder it can contract, and the harder it contracts, the more potential growth stimulation.
Since pulling down with the triceps increases the stretch at the beginning of the next curl, this is something you should consciously do (within reason you idiot!) as you lower the weight.
I find it useful to imagine that I'm doing a reverse-grip triceps pressdown with the bar or dumbbell as I lower it. I pretend that there's a cable attached to the bar from an overhead pulley and that I'm pulling down on it. Try it yourself, and you'll feel your intensity go up a notch for sure.
I picked up a useful curling tip from Lee Haney in 1984 when I attended a seminar he gave, several months before he won his first Mr. Olympia. Here's something from Lee Haney that may be of use here:
According to Lee, you should squeeze hard at the top of the movement and not rest. Most lifters do their curls backwards, he said. They use a lot of effort to get the bar moving up and past the sticking point, and then they relax at the top, using that position as a resting spot. In addition, they usually allow their wrists to bend, letting the bar fall into their shoulders.
Lee's solution was to reverse the procedure. Instead of resting at the top, you squeeze and tense the biceps hard so they contract. Then you rest at the bottom of the rep, when your arms are straight.
To explain this idea more clearly, Lee said to think of the arc that the bar makes as it travels from midthigh to shoulder level and compare it to the speedometer of your car. The bottom is 0, and the top position is 60. As the bar leaves your thighs and your arms begin to bend, start squeezing the tensing your biceps to make them contract. The bar should pick up speed as it approaches the top, and when you get there you should be squeezing the hell (language!) out of your biceps for all they're worth. Then slowly return to the starting position and take a short pause at the bottom.
Another curling variation that can be very effective is 21s, a technique that really blasts the biceps. Vince Gironda has advocated these for more than 40 years, and Mr. Universe/Trainer Charles Glass says they're his favorite way to train biceps. Nearly everyone knows how to do them but for some reason they aren't used very often. Maybe it's because they're just too painful
Okay . . . the name "21s" means 21 reps. Curl a weight from the bottom for 7 half reps, and then without resting do another 7 half reps from the top. Again without resting, finish the set with 7 full reps. Hey, I can feel it just by writing about it although the gainz from the text are nonexistent. I've noticed that when a lot of the top bodybuilders do their curls, the bar never stops moving; that is, there's no deliberate pause at either the top or bottom of the rep. The bar just keeps on moving until they hit failure.
This constant motion type of curling puts uninterrupted tension on the muscle and can be very intense. For variety you might want to curl like this every so often or perform one curling movement per workout in this fashion. Just remember . . . you'll have to use less weight . . . but what a pump you'll get.
I remember Greg Zulak being very open about his PED usage well before the internet became our handheld god and gold was replaced by data. He mentioned two things about GH usage. His aches, tweaks and accumulated pains from years of lifting disappeared in a few days and his pumps were the most outstanding he'd ever experienced, often lasting from the workout one afternoon to the following morning.
When I was in Chicago in 1984 to watch Sergio Oliva train, I noticed that he did his barbell curls with a very wide grip, almost to the collar on an Olympic bar. I asked him why, and he replied that it pulls the biceps down onto the forearm. In other words, Oliva believed that it lengthened his biceps to curl with a wide grip. Since Sergio's biceps were so long that they really did appear to be several inches down his forearm. I experimented and found the wide-grip barbell curls really work the lower outside biceps very hard.
Arnold was a master at curling. While I never had the opportunity to watch him train or to discuss biceps training with him, I noticed from studying photos of Arnold doing one-arm dumbbell concentration curls that at the bottom of the movement he twisted his hand so that the back of it faced forward, as opposed to the normal palm-up position. This extra move at the bottom lengthened his biceps and gave them more stretch so they could contract harder at the top. In addition, as the bell came up, he supinated his hand so that the little finger was higher than his thumb, and his upper arm remained motionless at all times.
By the way, when you're doing concentration curls, your hand should move slightly up and out as the dumbbell travels across your body to the opposite shoulder. The path is not just across and in. The bell should not, however touch your opposite shoulder but should stop 8-12 inches away from it. You'll feel a more intense contraction on the outside head if you curl this way.
In 1969 or '70 Boyer Coe wrote about a form of cable curl that's super for peaking the biceps. It's done from an overhead pulley while you're lying face up on a flat bench.
Place a bench under a lat machine/high pulley and attach a short straight bar to the cable. Lie on your back on the bench with your face directly below the pulley.
Have someone pull the bar down so that you can grasp it, and place your hands about a foot apart. The key to peaking the biceps with this form of cable curl is to keep your elbows stationary and pointing up at the ceiling at all times. Your upper arms should remain still.
Curl the bar in a wide, smooth arc. At full contraction the bar finishes either just under your chin (tilt your chin back to make this possible), or behind your head. Try both and see which works better for you.
Hold to a count of two and return slowly to the starting position.
This is a high-rep exercise, so do at least 10 per set; 12-15 may work even better for you. Your biceps should really knot up if you do this one correctly.
Former Mr. Universe Rick James Lil Bruce Wayne had his own unique way of doing concentration curls that was very effective and that he taught to Mr. Olympia Chris Dickerson. He would anchor his body on an incline bench so he was leaning forward. Then he'd slowly curl a dumbbell up, supinating his wrist at the top.
Because you have to fight gravity all the way up with this technique, the curl becomes harder and harder as you raise the bell higher and higher. The most difficult part of the curl is right at the top, when your biceps are fully contracted.
John Parrillo gave me a very good tip that helps on preacher curls. When curling the bar up, you want to feel as though you're trying to make your elbows touch. While it's obviously impossible to bring your elbows together in this position, doing the movement this way definitely increases tension on the biceps. Try it, and you'll see what I mean.
According to Mr. Olympia Larry Scott , the preacher bench should be arched convexly and rounded, not flat. It should also be heavily padded to cushion the elbows.
You should perform preacher curls, recommends Larry, by placing your elbows in closer than your shoulders and your hands farther apart than your shoulders. He also says that it's important to position the pad of the preacher bench low on your chest, not up near your shoulders. Finally, don't let your shoulders move as you're curling the bar up. Use the strength of your wrists and forearms to start the weight moving, and let your biceps do the rest of the work.
In Scott's mail order course, he gave a very good tip for dumbbell curling that I use to this day. The trick is to "keep the palm up all the time and keep the wrist inside so the inside of the palm is level with the outside . . . don't let the dumbbell pressure turn the wrist in."
To hold the palm level with the wrist, I concentrate on keeping my thumb twisted to the outside until the palm is flat and level. This allows me to really work the lower biceps and the belly of the biceps, especially if my elbow remains against my body and stationary. Forget about supinating your wrist, as this invites lifting with your shoulder. Instead, keep your elbow in, your palm level at all times (hand twisted out, not in) and your movement strict. The difference between this type of curl and a regular curl is like the difference between day and night.
Mohamed Makkawy did a form of cable curl that's seldom seen. Put a short straight bar on the low pulley of a cable machine and squat down, about three feet from the pulley, far enough away so your biceps are under pressure. Place your elbows on your knees to act as a fulcrum, then do a short half-rep type of curl - only the top portion of the lift. The arms never fully straighten out and you squeeze the hell out of your biceps on each rep (again with the language!) Allow your body to rock a little so you can use quite a bit of weight.
Enjoy Your Lifting!
buiishit
ReplyDeleteWonderful!
DeleteWe've had the two-word comment; now the one-word misspelled comment . . .
ReplyDeletehow 'bout a half-word comment.