For many young people, the question of how to pump biceps and triceps is a stumbling block. Even with their good overall athletic shape, working out the aforementioned muscles requires special knowledge and skills. We tried to optimize the presentation in this material.
This article is addressed both to men with a minimum level of sports training, and for those who, for whatever reason, can not attend the gym. Our goal is to show how you can develop biceps and triceps by exercising at home. With such exercises, men achieve the maximum effect, combining the factor of personal motivation in their training with knowledge of the laws of the training process of bodybuilding.
About motivation
Why did we start with motivation? Yes, because the effectiveness of home training depends solely on the ability of the student not only to plan approaches and sets, but also to rigorously fulfill all the planned exercises.
It’s no secret that it’s more difficult to do at home than in the gym. There are many temptations: delicious food, a home-made gaming PC, but what else! Home is home. And then you need to devote one and a half to two hours to power exercises! Let's face it, not everyone succeeds.
A certain amount of perseverance is important here. Therefore, we insist that you, on the eve of planning the training process, convincingly articulate your motivation: why do you want to increase your biceps and triceps. It should be as individual as possible.
So, you have it! Wonderful. This will be your first training log entry.
Minimal set of home training equipment
If you have motivation (and this is the main thing), it’s just right to think about training equipment. Not everyone can afford to buy a machine with a dial-up bar. But almost anyone can buy a horizontal bar and hire a master with a punch to secure it securely.
You will also need a
stacked dumbbell, or better, two. An expander is also useful. If the house has a narrow armchair with sturdy wooden railing, you can also use it as a simulator. Useful for your biceps and triceps exercises and a regular stool.
For further progression in training using a horizontal bar, additional burdening in the form of a regular backpack, inside which there is a plastic bag with sand of the desired weight, may be useful.
Basic exercises
Exercises for biceps and triceps are performed accentuated and separately. As you know, with the help of biceps the arm is bent, and with the help of triceps it is bent. They are called antagonist muscles. Only their harmonious development provides the proper training effect. The exercises that train them are performed with weights, therefore, to avoid injuries, they should be done after an intense warm-up that warms up the muscle fibers.
5 basic biceps exercises at home
First exercise. Body position - standing. Feet shoulder width apart. In the hands, turned palms up - dumbbells. Alternately, on exhalation, the arm bends, on inhalation, it extends. The weight of the dumbbells is selected in such a way as to provide 7-8 repetitions for each arm in the set. The last 1-2 times should be performed with maximum mobilization of the trainee.
Second exercise . The starting position is almost similar to that presented in the first exercise, however, hands with dumbbells with palms turned towards the body. In this position, in addition to the load, the biceps feel a tensile effect.
The third exercise. Body position - sitting. The hand clutching the dumbbell is lowered and rests with the elbow on the inside of the thigh. On exhalation, the arm bends; on inhalation, it slowly straightens.
The fourth exercise . Pulling on a home horizontal bar. Hands are in a narrow grip, palms are turned towards themselves. The exercise is performed without swinging. The number of repetitions is 7-8. If the last pull-ups in the set are easy, the trainee puts a backpack on the shoulders with the corresponding weight. This is the most intense exercise of the four above, training biceps.
Fifth exercise. Stretching the band expander to the biceps. The position of the body - standing, legs - shoulder width apart. You are standing on the expander with both legs. Hands are down, palms are turned up, elbows are pressed to the body. The expander in this position is stretched. Immediately during the exercise, the arms, overcoming the resistance of the expander, are bent at the elbows, while the elbows (if possible) are pressed to the body.
Triceps. Workout at home
First exercise. French bench press. The torso is straight, the legs are shoulder-width apart. Hand position with dumbbell: elbow raised, dumbbell wound behind the back. The other hand insures the dumbbell, but does not support it. On exhalation, the hand gradually straightens at the elbow, while the hand rises from the dumbbell. The trainee emphasizes the load on the triceps. By inhalation, the arm bends again, the dumbbell starts again behind the back.
Second exercise . French bench press. It is carried out similarly to the first exercise. The trainee is sitting on a stool.
The third exercise is performed using a chair with wooden handrails. To do this, the chair is set opposite the sofa, so that the feet are on the sofa, while the hands, brought back, down, grab the handrail of the chair, similar to how it is done on uneven bars. The meaning of the exercise is to bend / extend the arms in focus.
The fourth exercise. A ribbon expander is attached to the home bar. The practitioner turned his back to the horizontal bar. The torso is straight, the legs are shoulder-width apart. Exercise is performed with hands alternately. The hand is brought back, as in the French press, only instead of a dumbbell it holds a stretched expander. Further, with a fixed elbow, the hand straightens up and down.
Fifth exercise. Flexion / extension of the arms in an emphasis lying down. Hands spread apart narrowly. Otherwise, the main effort will be on the muscles of the chest. When performing exercises use a backpack with weights.
Various training accents
Note that for some reason some of the trainees are pumping biceps. Triceps is ignored. Why it happens? (Note that this is short-sighted.) The answer is simple. Biceps are the first to be seen when a man is wearing a T-shirt in summer. However, the power potential of the student suffers from such a deformed training process. Indeed, in harmoniously developed athletes, triceps are almost twice as massive as biceps! In different ways, you can train biceps and triceps at home.
Truly “cool” men, martial artists, train triceps to a greater extent, moreover, with tempo exercises, not overly “clogging” it with weights, but forming special speed endurance. After all, this is a "shock" muscle! The development of the so-called reactive force in it is achieved through the use of expanders in the training process.
When striking, the triceps of such an athlete immediately extends the arm, and the biceps flexes it equally quickly to its original position. Ideally, the master achieves such a sharpness of the blow that the concrete plates break, and during the fight the defender does not notice the moment of its application. However, the topic of our article does not concern this kind of exercise equipment, because the muscle volume in their process grows relatively slightly with respect to classical bodybuilding .
The problem of training effectiveness
It would seem that everyone knows the exercises and special literature that tells how to pump biceps and triceps. So why not everyone is successful in bodybuilding? There may be secrets to effective training.
You can not consider only two muscle groups of the hands in isolation from others. Moreover, the muscular system of the human body is created in such a way that it is impossible to build up only one muscle group for a long time with special exercises without increasing the volume of others. After a month and a half of such narrowly focused activities at home, the trainee with annoyance will notice that his results have stopped. What should he do in such a situation? The answer is simple: first get a competent consultation on how to pump biceps and triceps at home.
Super Recovery Cycle - The Basis of Progress
At first, such an unlucky athlete should understand the basics of the training load and the cyclical nature of classes. You should clearly imagine the main principle that bodybuilders use to increase muscle mass. It is based on super recovery.
Sports medicine has established that optimal muscle growth occurs due to the cyclic performance of each exercise of 5-6 sets so that the training weight allows the trainee in each of his sets, working at maximum, to perform no more than 7-8 repetitions. Moreover, the last two times are made by the athlete through force.
Please note that during intensive exercise, microtrauma of muscle fibers occurs. Do not be afraid of this! This is natural. The paradox is that it is precisely the fibers that are injured by a properly selected training load that maximize their volume. At the same time, one “but” should be maintained.
Attention! The cycle of super recovery implies the presence in it, in addition to training days, from one to several days that occur without training. Injured fibers must recover! That is why men who not only understand how to pump biceps and triceps at home, but who have positive practical experience in this direction, train less often loosers obsessed with daily training.
Comprehensive training and optimal arm muscle development
The second condition for effective training is its complexity. We already mentioned this when it came to stopped results. You do not need to reinvent the wheel at the same time, the recommendations of practicing athletes can serve as an ideal clue on how to pump up biceps and triceps at home. Moreover, the following is considered to be the classic accentuated muscle development for the training cycle in three workouts:
- back - biceps;
- chest - triceps;
- legs are shoulders.
However, for sustained progress, the emphasis should be changed over time. For instance:
- chest - biceps;
- back - triceps;
- shoulders - legs.
The combination of bodybuilding with athletics
For some athletes, the training cycle combines bodybuilding training with training of a different nature, where the load is on the legs. If you are not a professional bodybuilder (specialization is important in this case), then the addition of cyclic loads for the development of the cardiovascular system is only welcome. It can be game activities: football, basketball. Moderate mid-range running is also beneficial for increasing athlete’s overall homeostasis. Be that as it may, trained in this way the heart and blood vessels will provide the bodybuilder with greater potential. The only condition for such additional classes is their auxiliary, warm-up character.
Accordingly, in this case, a purely bodybuilding training cycle can exclude special exercises for the legs. In this case, the accents in the training cycle will look different: biceps-triceps-shoulders-back.
Conclusion
Summing up our review, it should be noted that bodybuilding at home is less effective than training in the gym under the guidance of experienced trainers. If near your home there is a specialized gym and the price of a subscription does not bother you, then there is nothing to think about home training. However, under certain living conditions of a particular person, it is possible to train muscles (biceps, triceps and others) only in the native walls. At the same time, we note that in the presence of strict motivation and a competent training plan, the effect from them can be very impressive.