The biceps (biceps brachii) is an important muscle for police officers and is fairly easy to train. It is important to understand that the biceps is a 2-headed muscle consisting of a long head and a short head. This is important because there are different exercises that can be done to work each head individually. The biceps is a small muscle that does not need an excessive amount of training to build it. Train your biceps once a week and with a healthy diet your biceps will get stronger in no time.
You should be able to hit your biceps in 30 minutes, which leaves plenty of time for some cardio training, or you may want to work your triceps immediately after your biceps workout. I like to work my biceps and triceps during the same workout each week. First I hit the biceps for 30 minutes and then I hit the triceps for 30 minutes and then there’s no need to work the arms until the following week.
Many people like to work each body part 2 times a week, but I think it’s not necessary for the average person. When you exercise with weights, you’re tearing your muscles apart, which requires plenty of rest for them to recover and grow.
Your muscles don’t grow in the gym, they grow and get stronger when they rest outside of the gym. Because our biceps are tearing, they need protein to grow and get stronger. You will need to eat a fairly healthy diet high in protein and moderate carbohydrates to fuel your muscles so they grow and get stronger.
For the average person, we should ingest about 1 gram of protein per pound of body each day. This means that if you weigh 160 pounds, you should aim to eat 160 grams of protein per day. Eating 1 gram of protein per pound of body each day is not difficult once you see which foods are high in protein. You can easily achieve this by drinking a couple of protein shakes every day along with a couple of meals.
You’ll want to rest between each set for about 60 seconds. In some of the more advanced routines you will rest very little between sets, and sometimes you will perform several sets without rest at all. With the following routine for beginners, I would take a pair of 20 pound dumbbells and curl them for 2 sets of 15 reps. This will warm up your biceps and elbows for training.
As with any physical activity, the key to avoiding injury is to warm up properly. Now that the warm up set is done, I would move on to the working sets. I would load a straight curl bar with a weight that I think I could do 8 reps with. Don’t worry about being precise in your calculation of the weight to start with. If you start your first set with a weight that’s too easy, adjust the weight accordingly on the second set.
I would then make sure to wear a weight belt and then raise the bar straight up and curl it 8-12 times before lowering the bar. If you find you can do 12 reps with that weight, you’ll need to increase the weight on the next set.
If you find that you can’t do 8 reps with that weight, then you need to drop the weight for the next set. Routines with 3-6 reps per set are more for powerlifters and we’re trying to achieve strength gains along with gains in muscle mass, so we’re aiming for 8-12 reps. Ideally, this is how your first set of biceps exercises for beginners should look like.
Let’s say you load 50 pounds on the straight bar and can get 12 reps on the first set. You rest for 1 minute and then you put 60lbs on the straight bar and you can do 10 reps. Then he rests 1 minute and puts 70 pounds on the bar and can get 8 reps. That would be a good set because you increased the weight with each set and stayed within 8-12 reps with each set.
A not so great set would be one where you load 50lbs on the straight bar for your first set and can only get 6 reps. Then you put 60lbs on the bar for your second set and can only get 5 reps.
He then drops the weight to 40 pounds and gets 10 reps on his third and final set. If I couldn’t do 8 reps on my first set, I’d start over and drop the weight 20 pounds. After a few workouts, you will be able to estimate your starting weight for each exercise with ease.
So far we have done the warm up set and 1 working set which was the standing barbell curl. The standing barbell curl is the best exercise for building strength and mass in the biceps, which is why we do it as our first working set.
Because it’s such an important exercise, we want to do it like the first set when we’re fresh and rested. Now, for our second set of work, we’ll do dumbbell preacher curls. The preacher’s bench can be either a sitting or standing piece of equipment, depending on the manufacturer.
I prefer the sitting preacher’s pew because the standing preacher’s pew is uncomfortable for me. In this exercise we are using dumbbells instead of the bar. You’ll want to grab a pair of dumbbells that you think you can curl on the preacher’s bench for 8-12 reps.
With the preacher’s bench, you want to make sure that your elbows are not hanging over the end of the pad. The preacher curl is excellent for shaping the biceps and this movement should never be left out of a biceps workout. Do a total of 3 sets on the preacher’s bench using the same principles we used with the standing barbell curls.
The third and final set of work in the biceps routine for beginners is the hammer curl. The hammer curl is a great exercise that will work your lower biceps. The hammer curl is performed with dumbbells using the same weight principles described above.
Do 3 sets of hammer curls and you will be done with your biceps for the week. Now would be a good time to do some cardio or work your triceps to round out your arms workout for the week. Your goal each week will be to increase the weight for each of these exercises. Do not get discouraged, you will get stronger and you can gain weight in no time.
After 4 weeks of this routine, you will be ready to move on to beginner biceps routine #2. Our muscles are smart and learn to adapt to the routines we put them through, so we have to change our workouts from Occasionally.
The addition of new biceps exercises means we’ll be working them from different positions and angles, leading to more muscle growth and development. I recommend adjusting your biceps workout every 4 weeks for beginners. Adjusting your biceps workout can be as simple as removing 1 exercise from your routine and adding something new.
For the beginner workout, I would stop doing the hammer curl in week 4 and start doing the dumbbell concentration curl. She would then switch from the dumbbell preacher curl to the barbell preacher curl and then switch from the standing barbell curl to the standing cable machine curl.
After a few months of the beginner routines, you may be ready for the more advanced bicep workouts listed below. He may be tempted to work his biceps more than once a week as he starts to see some gains, but don’t. He can easily overtrain the biceps which will severely reduce his strength and mass gains and lead to injury.
bicep workout for beginners
Warm up with 2 sets of standing dumbbell curls for 15 reps each set
Standing Barbell Curl: 3 sets of 8-12 reps each set
Preacher bench dumbbell curl: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps each set
Dumbbell hammer curl: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps each set