STOP, You’re Training Your Biceps Wrong!
Are you training your biceps wrong? You are about to find out in this video on how to get bigger biceps by implementing a biceps workout strategy that may be completely new to you. We look to the teachings of the late great Mike Mentzer to give us clues as to how we may want to switch up the way we
[Video of Mike Mentzer] And it just so happens to be true, audience, the close grip palms up pull down is the best bicep exercise in the world, better than any curl you can do.
Well, shit, now what am I supposed to do? You might be having the same thought as me, especially if your current bicep workout looks a little bit like this: a hefty dose of barbell curls, if you ve been watching this channel any length of time, probably some chin ups in there too, and of course, a variety of other curls that we’ve known to be shown effective here. Well, maybe it’s time to change it up, at least if you’re listening to what Mike Mentzer has to say. See, Mike Mentzer is somebody that I’ve actually listened to and admired for a long time. This is Mike from his Heavy Duty book from about 30 years ago.
The idea, though, is, is there merit to what he’s talking about and are you training your biceps wrong? Well, I have a story to tell you that might blow your mind here. As a matter of fact, three times in this video, Mike Mentzer might blow your mind. But I want to first hear what he thought in full of why he thinks that exercise was so good. Let’s hear that clip again.
[Video of Mike Mentzer] And it just so happens to be true, audience, the close grip palms up pull down is the best bicep exercise in the world, better than any curl you can do. Here’s why. When you do a curl, whether it’s a Barbell Curl, a Nautilus Curl, a Dumbbell Curl, whatever, you’re working this muscle around a single joint axis, the elbow, which is why the stress is limited exclusively to the lower bicep if you’ve noticed. When doing a close grip, palms up, pull down, on the other hand, you’re working the bicep around the joint, the elbow joint and the shoulder. The muscle is contracting more uniformly from both ends.
And so there you have it. But is he right? Well, let me bring it back to that story of mine. So, about a year and a half ago, I was walking my son into school, and he slipped on the ice. And when he slipped, I went to go catch him and at the same time, I actually successfully caught him, I unsuccessfully kept my distal bicep tendon intact because I tore it 99%.
The only part that was still intact was something called the aponeurosis. That’s the tendinous encapsulation of both heads of the bicep as it enters into the forearm. Well, needless to say, I was kind of screwed, There’s a lot of things I couldn’t do. I couldn’t lift a heavier weight, I couldn’t do anything pain free, I couldn’t lift without cramping up. I couldn’t feel that my muscle connection that I had known for a long period of time, a lot of things were instantly gone.
And because of that, a lot of exercise choices were instantly eliminated from my workouts. Right away I was not going to do any Incline Bicep Curls because that would place that bicep in too much stretch at the bottom of every single repetition. Also, no Preacher Curls and for those of you who are wondering, well, how come? Well, here’s your three second warning, and yeah, mind you, it will be gruesome. Three, two, one.
[Video Clip] I did warn you, and that’s probably largely why I didn’t want to show up as the next guy to be in that type of video, so, no Preacher Curls. But I did think about those Chin Ups that we talked about before. And remember, I told you that what I learned here is going to be serving every single one of you, no matter whether you’ve been injured or not. I went to the chins because I know that it does exactly what Mike was talking about on that exercise. It applies the stress to the biceps from both ends because we’re going into that flex shoulder position and bent elbow.
And it’s the reason why I told you for all these years why it’s such a great exercise for you to be doing. And I did it until things went wrong. And that is, I developed elbow pain, a lot of medial elbow pain. And I’ve done a whole video that I’ll link for you at the end of this one about why you get medial elbow pain, particularly if you don’t have enough strength in your biceps. And now we’re talking about the compromise strength I had, so I was feeling too much stress on that inner elbow and the chin ups themselves weren’t working too much body weight for me to have to handle and pull up on every repetition.
The biceps couldn’t handle it alone, so they were forcing the forearm to do more of that work. Again, detailed explanation of why that happens and how to avoid it in the other video. So needless to say, now that’s off the table too. And the Bicep Curls was just not really where it was at for me because I wasn’t able to really manage too much weight there anyway and I did feel that cramping I mentioned before, But I do remember that clip from Mike Mentzer. Again, this is someone I watched from childhood, and it stuck in my brain, and I thought to myself, I know there’s something else I could do that would unweight the whole weight of my body that wouldn’t force me to have to do assisted pull ups and use the underhand close grip pull down.
And so, I ran my ass right over to a pull-down bar and started to do the exercise as part of my recovery back. And guess what happened? My biceps grew a lot. Why? Because I could apply good tension in that shortened position with the arms up elevated into shoulder flexion and having that flexed elbow.
And the safety of the exercise was actually unmatched for me because the eccentric part of this was actually occurring at the same time that I was flexing my shoulder. So, while I was getting lengthening of the bicep at the elbow, I was actually getting a shortening of the bicep as the bar raised up. So, it was actually very safe for me, unlike those inclined curls that would have actually put that under a great amount of stress. And as far as the exercise itself utilizes, some of those Mentzer intensity techniques, I could either self-spot myself by going to failure and then applying a couple of negatives by just dropping down into position by holding on to the bar and then concentrating on the slow ride back up. Or I could actually have Jesse here who could help me with the concentric portion of the lift after I was fatigued and then help me as I slowed it back up to the top.
Either way, I was able to apply a lot of intensity to the exercise, again, making sure that I was making it a curl variation and not just a lat driven exercise. And if you do the same thing and stop overlooking that exercise, I guarantee you that you will also see something start to change. Number one, that my muscle connection that you may not have right now and your ability to control the bicep contraction, to actually feel discomfort when you do it is going to be instantly solved. But that’s not where I stopped because I still wanted to curl. And one of the other things about Mike Mentzer is he talked heavily about volume and making sure you don’t do too many sets.
As a matter of fact, you might be shocked to hear how many sets he thinks is actually good. [Video of Mike Mentzer] On occasion, I’ve had a phone client ask, Mike, would it make a difference, would it be the mistake to do a second set? You keep making such a big deal about doing one set. And I respond something to the effect that doing a second set is neither necessary nor desirable. In fact, it would be the biggest mistake you can make.
Going from one set to two sets is literally the biggest mistake you can make, because going from one to two, audience, is not merely a linear increase of one unit, one to two, it represents a doubling. A 100% increase in the volume o