Muscle Build

Grow Your Biceps

As muscles go, biceps are definitely 'A List' - they're the Tom Cruise to your calf muscles' Noel Edmonds - so you have to give them extra respect.

Here are our three main rules for the best way to treat your biceps:

1) Isolate them - the best way to do this is to use a preacher bench which stops you from cheating and using momentum to help lift the weight.

2) Mix it up - if you only stick to one exercise then your muscles, and you, get bored quickly and stop responding, so switch between dumb-bells, straight or EZ-bar, cables or even resistance bands to challenge the biceps in different ways.

3) Vary your grip - different grips hit different parts of your biceps: a hammer grip targets the brachioradialis; underhand grips targets the biceps brachii; overhand grips will focus on the brachialis.

You must fully stabilise your upper body by anchoring the top portion of the pad against your armpits. You must never extend your arms to full lockout at the bottom of a repetition.

A good working range of reps is eight to ten, but going higher is acceptable for engaging a greater number of endurance muscle fibres. Do one or two sets for each of the three exercises. You'll complete three to six sets per workout, more than enough to activate muscle fibres.