If you look at all the vitamins out there, you’ll see there’s a pretty long list. Making things even more complicated is the fact that some vitamins in the alphabet (easiest way to follow all of them) are split into groups, where there is more than one. Whereas you can have Vitamin C or A, when it comes to Vitamin B it is called a complex because there’s a bunch of different vitamins that fall under it. Imagine thinking you can get all of that from your daily meal routine, it’s highly unlikely.

Besides making it easy for you by grouping them all into one single pill, a multivitamin supplement balances each of the individual vitamins based on what each one requires when ingested by an individual. For example, zinc is a copper antagonist as is iron and manganese. Taking vitamin supplements individually may cause vitamin imbalances and a multivitamin takes all of the guesswork out of “how much and what to take” out of the way. That, in and of itself, is a multivitamin benefit, no?

Furthermore, a multivitamin is essential to help recovery and provide your body with the necessary dosages of vitamins it needs to function and repair. If you weight lift, are part of any type of athletics, or do any type of physical activity, a multivitamin should be an absolute requirement. There is no excuse for not taking a multivitamin each day to keep your body strong. Technically, this statement applies to everybody, but it’s extra important for those putting their body through physical stresses. A multivitamin makes sure your body is not mineral or vitamin deficient, so this is especially necessary and relevant for those who engage in physical activities (especially taxing your muscles in the gym).

As a tip, I would like to add that men and women are not biologically the same. I think we all know this, so it should come as no surprise that the multivitamin you take should not be the same one either. We may be from different planets, but that’s not why we should take different multivitamins…more so for the fact we have different bodily requirements. There are versions for men and women, and those are the ones you should pursue. Universal brands focused on attempting to please everybody usually always fall short, as do those that require only 1 pill a day. Some vitamins require higher doses than others, and if one pill can really give you everything you need and not be the size of your thumb, well…link me to it. Make sure to choose a good brand, not a generic as well. It’s worth it. Good Luck!

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Scientifically speaking, a calorie is the amount of energy that is required for 1 gram of water to rise 1 degree Celsius.  Err, great, right?

That doesn’t tell us too much, or at least tell us anything matters. Instead, what you need to keep in mind when you think of calories is energy. That is the guiding principle, calories are energy. As a result, everything will turn on how much energy goes into your body (through food) and how much energy goes out (through activity).

Every individual expands a certain amount of energy per a 24 hour period (we’ll use this time frame, because it’s the easiest to deal with), however, that obviously varies depending on how much activity you perform in that time frame. People who work in an office all day will not have the same activity level as someone who is working construction. Nonetheless, here’s the good part…every second you are burning calories, yes, even while sitting and reading this article (your basic bodily functions require them). The bad news? It’s not a whole bunch of calories, so don’t get too excited.

What’s important to grasp is that our body is constantly going through an energy process, where we feed it energy in the form of calories from food, and it then uses that food to expand energy to let you do whatever it is you want to do. Depending on your activity levels per day, your energy expenditure will differentiate or stay relatively identical each day depending on whether your days follow a regular routine.

Keeping this in mind, it is easy to see (at least conceptually) how an individual wishing to alter their body weight can do so through the manipulation of calories. If they’re trying to lose fat, they’ll keep their calorie amounts lower than their daily caloric expenditures (‘dieting’), while those trying to put on some muscle mass will up the amount of food they eat in order to make sure they feed their bodies enough to grow. How can you know how much you should be eating in order to lose fat or gain muscle? Check out our maintenance calories article, where we discuss how many calories are required to maintain your weight. Once you know your maintenance, you can then begin your journey and use calories to your advantage in order to achieve your results.

Calories are the building blocks, they’re what allow you to function. However, they also make you put on unwanted weight or keep you skinny because you don’t want to eat. Figure out your maintenance, and you can begin your journey towards achieving a great body. Good Luck!

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If you are trying to build muscle mass by properly progressively overloading, there are only two things you need to keep in mind. It is not the volume of your routine, the type of routine, or training frequency that matters for the purpose of overtraining. What matters is a two-pronged analysis that is composed of the two fundamentals: diet and sleep. The diet prong supplies the resources, and the sleep prong supplies the time. With time and the proper resources at its disposal, your body can build. The heck with all else. Under the diet prong, if you are properly providing your body with the nutrients it requires to recover and grow, your body will welcome the process. This means, of course, that the amount of calories you consume each day is above your maintenance calorie count (the amount of calories necessary for your body to maintain your weight). Depending on whether you’re attempting a lean, regular, or strong bulk, the amount of calories you need to consume above maintenance may range anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand. Whatever the amount, based on your goals, the main point to keep in mind is that your body has the nutrients it needs for its adaptation process. Under the sleep prong, you have to give your body the necessary rest it requires to engage in the adaptation process. Because your body recovers and grows most when it is asleep, ensuring that you provide it with the right amount of sleep is essential. Optimal sleep range is anywhere from 7-9 hours. If both diet and sleep are present as the building blocks on top of your progressive overload workouts, overtraining will not be your problem.

Notwithstanding the above, there are some things to keep in mind as the devil is always in the details. For example, if you are the type of person that is hitting a muscle group 2-3x a week, staying barely above maintenance and sleeping 6-7 hours on the dot, this might not create the most optimal environment for avoiding overtraining and maximizing progress. In this context the details become very individual-dependent. I mentioned above that things like routine, volume, and frequency are not what matters. Although this is true, these things do matter for people on the peripheries. In other words, if you are an individual that loves high training frequency to the point of often going twice a day, you eat only right around maintenance, and are getting the bare minimum of optimal sleep, you might want to up the calorie intake a bit and sleep a little more if you start to tire. Although this is an extreme example, the advice applies to everybody. Any time you feel you are tiring too much, a diet and/or sleep uptick is likely to cure the problem. The whole concept revolves around where you, as the individual, fall within the circle of training coupled with optimal diet and sleep. If you feel you are approaching a periphery and it is impacting your strength, energy, or results, play around with your diet and sleep. Of course, sometimes sleep is not something we can control based on the circumstances. At that point, the best thing to do might be to evaluate your routine or diet. However, as long as you ensure that your diet and sleep are somewhere along the optimal range, overtraining might as well be a myth. Very often, I hear people are scared of overtraining so much that they preemptively limit their workouts, routines, or training frequencies at the cost of greater progress. Don’t be that person. Understand these fundamentals, feel out your body, and you won’t have to worry about overtraining. Good Luck!

P.S.: For those who are in a caloric deficit, overtraining is more likely due to the deficiency in the amount of calories consumed. To ensure you avoid it, work on your training frequency and your routines, but most importantly, do not cut out excessive amounts of calories below your maintenance. That is the one thing you can completely control. Aim for a few hundred calories below maintenance, and adjust from there based on how your body is progressing and feeling. The more calories you cut and the greater your body’s exhaustion from progressive overload and training frequency, the likelier it is that your progress might stagnate. Again, play with the variables (training, diet, sleep) and overtraining will not be an issue even if you are trying to lose fat.

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Drinking a cup or two of green tea a day can help speed your metabolism, helping you burn more calories throughout the day. As a result, green tea is often a wonderful supplement to your diet that can help keep your energy levels up while at the same time give you a little extra in your fight with fat loss.

Green tea has been a staple of Asian cultures since we’ve kept track…well, of whether it was being brewed. However, only recently has it seen a large influx over in the West. Green tea has many amazing benefits, such as anti-cancer, anti-viral, and most notably high anti-oxidant content. However, for the focus of this quick tip we’ll concentrate on how it can help you stay lean or shed off the pounds.

Green tea is rich in a particular plant-based substance (polyphenol) called a catechin. In a variety of studies it has been linked to weight loss reduction, and perhaps more importantly, body fat reduction (we don’t want any muscle going to waste!). The overall thermogenic increase isn’t substantial (80-90 calories), but we’ll take what we can get. If we drink a serving or two of green tea a day, those extra calories burned will start adding up over time. Why not take advantage of that extra fat loss boost with green tea?

Next time you’re at the market, consider adding this to your shopping list. There’s decaff available for those who don’t want the caffeine naturally found in tea. Whether you fill up a pitcher and drink it throughout the day, or sip a cup freshly made before you head out, it’ll help give a slight boost to that metabolism so it can work a little faster, while you take care of business. There’s also green tea pills available, if you’re not fond of drinking green tea. Either way, it really is a waste not to add it to your diet if you’re looking to shed off the pounds. For more nutrition facts, check out our interview with Alan Aragon. Good Luck!

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Weight-lifting is what we’re told to do. It’s what we read grows the muscles and transforms our bodies. The more weight you lift, the bigger you are. Bodybuilding is only the name of what people who compete in shows do, not the casual lifter. Of course, that’s what we’re told and that’s what we come to believe. Nobody ever tells us all of this is completely wrong.

If you’re trying to build a great body, you have to sculpt that body. You have to train in the gym in a way that maximizes your ability to build that muscle. That method of training is vital to your ability to build an aesthetically pleasing physique, and weight-lifting simply won’t cut it. It’s not about the weight you can move with your muscle, it’s about your ability to tax the intended muscle to a point it has no choice but to grow. In other words, to reach muscle fatigue.

Now, can weight-lifting give you what you need to reach muscle fatigue? Of course it can. However, the problem with weight-lifting isn’t its ability to tax your muscles. After all, if you load up on the weight and push yourself to the limit, it’s hard to imagine you wouldn’t destroy your muscles enough for them to grow. The problem with weight-lifting, then, is the sloppy set of consequences and unnecessary complications that come with it. All of which do nothing but impede an individual’s goal of attaining an aesthetically pleasing physique. Let’s examine a few of the things weight-lifting promotes:

1) Muscle Asymmetry – to be aesthetic, you require symmetry and proportionality. Flinging weights around and simply “doing the movement” brings all sorts of troubles. It allows any muscle group involved in the exercise to take over, and hinder the primary muscle group from getting hit the way you intend it to be hit. Let’s take a very common example to illustrate this point. If an individual is bench pressing, they are doing so presumably to develop their chest. Considering both the triceps and shoulders are heavily involved in benching, an individual who loads up as much weight as possible will be using all 3 muscle groups to push the weight up. Their ability to control how much shoulder/tricep involvement is present is severely limited. As a result, not only are those other groups getting more stimulation than is necessary, but they will also be trained on their own. When you do them, however, your chest is not involved (Close Grip Bench excluded). With this then, the shoulders and triceps are worked much more than the chest on a particular individual’s weekly routine. Unless their triceps and/or shoulders are lagging behind, this will only stimulate that individual’s muscle groups to grow at a different pace instead of equally. Instead of muscle symmetry, there will be muscle asymmetry. The exact opposite of what someone looking to build an aesthetically pleasing physique wants.

2) Inefficient Muscle Fatigue – for the same reasons stated above, often individuals struggle to develop a particular body part. Weight-lifting is the root cause of this failure because other stronger body parts overpower the weaker body parts and do not lead that muscle to muscle fatigue. When that happens, you walk out of the gym thinking you had a great chest day, when in fact your chest wasn’t as punished as you thought it’d be. Your shoulders and triceps did too much of the work. This insufficient level of stimulation of that body part in the gym means there’s going to be no growth, and over time the muscle group will lag behind. This is especially the case when people use a certain routine long-term, their inability to realize they’re not taxing that body part enough to grow is compounded over time as they stick to the same routine happy that they are increasing in weight. Those shoulders or triceps could be handling that extra weight increase, while that chest stays struggling and isn’t growing. They’re left to wonder why!

3) Injury – nothing quite like pulling a muscle because you wanted to push more weight. Can’t get the weight up in a controlled manner? No problem, jerk your body, use every muscle imaginable to get it up. Besides running into the two problems mentioned above, this obviously also creates a much greater risk of injury. If that risk is realized, you’re not building any physique for a while. Keep that in mind.

In order to avoid these problems and focus on aesthetics, the most important component of body building is using the mind muscle connection. Instead of grabbing the most maximal weight you think you can do with your body, use a weight you can do solely with the body part you are targeting. Exclude every other body part as much as you physically can, and do your exercises in a slow and controlled manner. No jerking, no pushing of weight. If you can’t get the weight up on your last rep or two, either get a spot or stop. Take a couple seconds rest, and go back up and do an extra rep to finish off the set. In other words, if you wanted to get 8 reps but only got 6 on your first try, wait a few seconds and try to get 3 more reps (last one to make up for the time-off you took).

You have to understand, if your goal is to be aesthetically pleasing, your goal is to develop and sculpt each and every muscle in your body. The best way to do this is to target that muscle, and that muscle only on its specific training day. If you come in to do chest, you’re not coming in to do bench press, incline press, and chest flyes just do to them. You are coming in to do chest, chest, and more chest – hitting it at varying angles and in varying ways. Do not let your shoulders take over, try to minimize tricep involvement. Your objective for that day is chest, that’s it. All those other muscle groups have their own time. With that said, I don’t want to confuse people into thinking they shouldn’t be doing compound movements that hit multiple muscle groups. They are fantastic and should be an integral part of your workout, however, each and every one of those compound exercises still has the main muscle group it is supposed to target. So when you do bench press on chest day, use that chest. That’s what you came in the gym for, even though the exercise as a whole will benefit more than just your chest. For more information on how you can hit your muscles in different ways to help achieve muscle fatigue, check out our Weight Training Tips article. Good Luck!

*Common Mistakes During Certain Exercises

1) Bench Press – minimize shoulder/tricep involvement

2) Lat Pulldown/Pullups – minimize bicep involvement

3) Squats – minimize lower back involvement

4) Lateral Raises – minimize trap involvement

Also for those interested, here’s a list of the best exercises based on an EMG study.

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To begin our free weights vs. machines battle, let’s knock the most absurd claim out of the way first.

You can’t grow using machines. – I don’t really understand how this even became such a raging inferno in some parts of the training community, but it does provide a few laughs for those educated in even the most rudimentary understanding of fitness. In order to grow muscle, an individual must challenge that muscle to its limit. They must overload it with stress, signaling to the body that it is time for that muscle to get bigger in order to handle that new stress. This is an ongoing cycle which a successful trainee engages in on a weekly basis, called Progressive Overload. As long as the individual’s diet is on point, what causes that stress (whether it is a dumbbell or a machine) is largely irrelevant. Therefore the bottom line is, if you are constantly moving up in weight on a machine from each training session to the next, and eating above your maintenance calories, you will grow.

The problem with machines in this regard, however, is that they only allow for a single range of motion (ROM). This causes several issues:

a) Your stabilizing muscles are thrown out of the equation – to understand this best, imagine using a machine aimed at working your chest in the same manner as a flat bench press. The machine is only going one particular way based on its wiring, which means that you don’t have to worry about making sure it doesn’t veer off to the side or anything of the sort, like a dumbbell or barbell. That means that those stabilizing muscles which allow you, during a flat bench press, to keep your barbell stable enough for you to do the exercise are not required when using a machine (since the machine does it for you). These important muscles are not used, and therefore, this is the single greatest reason why doing a ton more weight on a machine is irrelevant when speaking of how much you can ____ (insert exercise here).

b) Higher risk of injury – due to the severely limited range of motion on a machine, a person is forced to do the movement only that particular way. If a supporting muscle falters even slightly during a regular bench press, your arm and chest have a free range of motion to recover. On a machine, there is no such free range which means that the weight can override that muscle and force your body to jerk to finish the rep, under the weight’s strain applied in an unnatural manner to that same muscle. Essentially, if you are dying out on a last rep or two of a set and you’re using a machine, you can’t help yourself to finish those reps without changing the way you’re applying the force to move the weight. Whereas with free weights, you adjust without obstruction, it is the opposite on a machine that can only move the weight in one specific way. If your chest gives out, this may put unnecessary stress on your front shoulder to finish the rep, the problem with this is that now that your shoulder becomes the primary mover for a second or two, it is still in the position of a supporting muscle as this weight comes over it. You, unlike when using free weights, cannot adjust because of the rigidness of the machine.

Due to these limits of machines, it is easy to see that although one can certainly grow using them, they are not exercises that you should be doing as your primary movers for the day. Leave them as a supplement, thrown in during the middle or towards the end of your workouts. To get the most out of a machine exercise, you have to double up on your Mind Muscle Connection and make sure you really focus hard on using that particular muscle that is being targeted to push the weight. Anything less and you’re setting yourself up for trouble as discussed above, and not using the machine to your advantage by hitting the muscle as hard as you can since other muscles will come in to help out and ultimately lesson the load on the primary mover you’re targeting for that exercise. (Although this is important for any exercise, it is even more so when on a machine with such a restricted range of motion).

In the battle of free weights vs. machines, machines certainly have their place. The individual using them, however, must know of their limitations and understand they should be nothing more than a supplement (outside of an odd day when you decide to switch it up). They certainly can help your goals, but they are not essential. They are, however, very convenient and with the right Mind-Muscle Connection all that machine weight can be easily transferred onto the muscle you’re targeting, hitting it very well (as even the stabilizers have been taken out of the movement). It’s all about putting them into use in the ways they were meant to be, and not just sitting down on them, doing the movement, and hoping for the best.  Good luck!

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Now you may be asking: “2x per week? Isn’t that enough recovery time? Surely I hit my chest hard enough on chest day that it needs a nice long rest before I can fully hammer it again. In fact, if you train too frequently without allowing your muscles to recover you will wind up overtraining, and delayed onset muscle soreness will not be your only problem!”

One word: false. There is a common misconception around the industry that is pervasive and somehow finds its way to everybody. That misconception is the idea that it is quite easy to overtrain a muscle group. As a result, it is actually better to provide your muscle groups with longer rest periods to ensure “full” recovery and allow you to hit them again for maximum growth when they are fully rested and at their peak performance levels. This is simply not true. Well, you certainly want to make sure your targeted muscle group for any particular training day is fully rested and at its peak performance, but you certainly do not need to limit yourself to training each body part 1x per week to make this happen. You can devise a schedule that works well enough to provide you with the ability to hit your muscles 2x per week yet allow the appropriate levels of rest necessary. The most important component of this, of course, is understanding how long it takes muscle groups to recover.

The concept of recovery times is not complex. The bigger the muscle group, the greater the amount of time necessary to ensure proper recovery after a successful day at the gym. When working out your chest, back, and legs you will naturally require a greater period of rest and recovery than when working out a mid-level muscle like the shoulders or the small time biceps, triceps, and calves. A good rule of thumb is to allow the large muscle groups 3 days in between training and the shoulders and smaller muscle groups 2 days of training before jumping to train them again. This is a rule of thumb, however, because recovery is based on a multitude of factors that cannot all be accounted for in every individual situation. Assuming you have a successful workout by causing your day’s targeted muscle group to achieve muscle fatigue, factors that may influence recovery rates include hours of sleep, diet, genetics and daily activity levels. I don’t think it is unreasonable to assume an individual who hits the gym, goes to work performing manual labor, and follows that up with a party after work that cuts into his sleep will probably require more rest time between hitting the same muscle group again than an individual who hits the gym, goes to work at a desk, and follows that up with tv and bed. On average, at least, the second individual will probably need less recovery time because his lifestyle allows his body to simply rest more. However, this does not mean the first individual cannot hit each muscle group 2x per week. He just needs to make sure he develops a training schedule that provides at least his bigger muscle groups with a greater interval of time between training sessions. To see which muscle groups work well together, visit our Best Workout Schedule article.

Hitting each muscle group 2x per week has pretty obvious benefits. With a proper diet, increasing the frequency with which your muscles are torn and rebuilt naturally allows an individual to spark some new growth. This does not mean that hitting each muscle group 2x per week will suddenly double a person’s results, but it may certainly help break plateaus and increase your results because the muscle has more stimulation. After all, proper stimulation through muscle fatigue is the key to starting the process of building muscle, and if you are eating above your maintenance calories, the nutrients will always be there to maximize the potential growth of that stimulation.

Example Routine:

Day 1: Shoulders/Arms

Day 2: Legs

Day 3: Chest/Back

Rest

Repeat

The key when increasing training frequency like this is to make sure that you distribute the volume of work you do on each particular muscle group. This is not necessary, but it is also not necessary to stick with the same volume because you may wind up trying to handle too much volume in a weekly span of time. For example, if you handle 5 exercises for shoulders of 4 sets each every time you go workout shoulders, and 3 exercises of 3 sets each every time you hit biceps or triceps, you can easily see doing this twice a week may have drawbacks. Again, you have to adjust for your individual response to the increase in training frequency. As a suggestion, try lowering the amount of shoulder exercises to 3 or 4, or lowering the set numbers. This goes for any muscle group. With double the frequency, you will still wind up with more volume. To add, also remember that the most important thing is to train efficiently, not to just plow through exercises because that is your goal and you want to make sure you do x number of exercises or sets for a particular muscle group. Your goal should always be achieving muscle fatigue for your targeted muscle group, that’s it. You may need more volume to do this, but most likely if you really focus on hitting the muscle group correctly and not just moving the weight, you can lower the volume and still reach that objective. In the end, it is all about experimenting, but taking your training to the next level with an increase in frequency may be your next step towards success. Try it out. Good luck!

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The first thing you need to keep in mind is that growing any body part requires not only a solid diet, but progressive overload. Without providing your muscles with the stimulation necessary to induce growth through progressive overload, and not following that stimulation up with a nice dose of nutrients necessary to repair and grow those muscles, which exercises you choose to do means very little, if anything at all. With that said, if those two things are in order, picking particular exercises to target a particular muscle head is essential to growing and developing a symmetrical physique. This is true even for a small muscle like the biceps. Because the biceps are made up of a long head (outer part of the bicep) and a short head (inside part of the bicep), and the brachialis (located right under the bicep), although each bicep exercise may affect all three of these parts to a certain extent, each exercise will often affect each part to a different degree. Therefore, making sure you’re not only doing the type of exercises that favor one part over the others is essential in achieving maximum bicep growth and shape.

The following are taken from Target Bodybuilding, by Per A. Tesch, who examined which heads are most battered by which variations of biceps exercises. Like explained in the triceps parallel to this article, these exercises are ranked on a rating scale of 1 or 2 asterisks (with 2 naturally meaning that particular part of the bicep receives more stimulation). There are exercises that can hit 2 of the 3 parts maximally, or even all 3. Let’s check out the findings:

Standing biceps curl with straight bar and wide grip:
Long Head: *
Short Head: **
Brachialis: *

Standing biceps curl with ez bar and wide grip:
Long Head: *
Short Head: **
Brachialis: *

Standing dumbbell curl with palm up:
Long Head: *
Short Head: **
Brachialis: *

Standing dumbbell hammer curl:
Long Head: **
Short Head: *
Brachialis: *

Standing supinating dumbbell curl:
Long Head: **
Short Head: **
Brachialis: *

Incline seated supinating dumbbell curl:
Long Head: **
Short Head: **
Brachialis: *

Incline seated dumbbell hammer curl:
Long Head: **
Short Head: *
Brachialis: **

Incline seated dumbbell curl with palm up:
Long Head: **
Short Head: **
Brachialis: *

Standing ez bar curl with arm blaster:
Long Head: **
Short Head: **
Brachialis: *

Standing biceps curl with straight bar and arm blaster:
Long Head: **
Short Head: **
Brachialis: **

Standing biceps curl with straight bar and narrow grip:
Long Head: **
Short Head: **
Brachialis: **

The exercises that include “supinating” refer to the Arnold-style curl where you start at the neutral position (like a hammer curl) and turn the palm inwards as you move towards completing the curl (at the top, your palm is facing you). Keep in mind these are the examples that were tested, there are more exercises out there. For example, this little known, yet effective, bicep exercise can be a useful addition to your bicep workouts. In addition, switching up your arm grip on any particular exercise can have an immediate change to the stimulation of any particular part. As always, make sure to use the Mind Muscle Connection. Without the MMC, you’re just throwing weight around. Remember, what really matters is the effective targeting of the intended muscle. For the bicep, this means focus on form rather weight when curling (outside of an intended cheat curl). For a solid article on developing overall arm growth, also check out How to Get Bigger Arms. Now get those biceps (and triceps) growing!

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Warming up:

1) Increases blood flow into the muscles – enhanced circulation and an increased muscle temperature (due to the greater blood flow) allows for better performance. The increased temperature increases the rate of muscle work (contraction/relaxation), allowing the muscle to be more efficient (therefore, you’ll get more use out of it as you’re doing the movement). If you’re ready to go heavy in order to accomplish muscle fatigue, you’ll certainly get a rep or two more out of your set if you begin when you’ve already warmed up and increased circulation to the muscle group you’re targeting. If you try to go heavy before you get that blood pumping, well…let’s just say it’s almost guaranteed you won’t be getting the greatest performance. Compare it to moving your broken car manually, it’s hardest when it’s stationary or moving very slowly, and it becomes easier and more effective once it’s in full motion. Substitute the car for your body and the motion for your blood flow, it’s pretty simple!

2) Allows for Mental Readiness – if you’ve ever had a successful workout, you’ll agree that mental strength is just as important as physical strength. Warming up for gym allows you to mentally prepare for the tough session ahead, and with mental alertness and preparedness comes better focus and improved form on your sets. For more on being able to enhance training check out our article on the Mind Muscle Connection.

3) Prevents Injury – perhaps the greatest no-brainer, but it’s easy to see how getting the muscles prepared by increasing blood flow prior to your strong sets will prevent injury. Stone-cold muscles being subjected to extremely heavy stress (a heavy set) right off the bat are more likely to get injured. Think about it, your tendons, joints, and muscles are all in need of proper stimulation to get themselves into the optimal zone for performance (as explained in point 1), without this stimulation, you’re practically asking for some type of problem.

A good way of warming up for gym prior to hitting the weights hard is to simply start with the first exercise you expected to do that day, and grabbing a light weight (40-50% max of what you regularly do). Do 12-20 reps with slow and controlled form, and get the blood flowing. If you feel that wasn’t enough, do another set. Then proceed to doing your particular exercise. Remember, this doesn’t take long, but it goes a long way towards making sure you’re injury free and getting the most out of your workouts. Good Luck!

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Before we hit the ground running, it’s important to understand some basic anatomy. The bicep has two heads – the inner and outer heads. The inner head is the short head, and the outer head is the long head. That’s why it’s called a bicep (“bi” = two). There is also a small muscle called the brachialis to the side towards your elbow which we’ll touch up on a bit later. Similarly, a tricep has three heads – the lateral, medial, and long heads. Again, that’s why it’s called a tricep (“tri” = three). The bicep heads are self explanatory, there’s a head on the inside of your bicep (short head) and one on the outside (long head). The triceps can’t be identified by name, so the best way to remember which head is which is to differentiate between the lateral and long heads. The lateral head is the head closest to the outside of your arm (if someone was looking at you from the side), while the long head is the head closest to the inside of your arm (hugging your lats/chest). Interestingly, the lateral head is considered the inside head while the long head is considered the outside head (this is so because the long head wraps around the outside of your tricep from the inside). From there, the medial is the small head in between the two in the middle.

Now, often an individual notices that their biceps don’t look very “wide” standing front side or one of their tricep heads is lagging behind. Punishing your biceps or triceps in these situations will help, but it will not maximize the chance of achieving a size balance between the different heads. Why? Well, your current tricep and bicep work couldn’t do it, what will change now? One head grows better than another for you, so it is essential you switch to prioritizing the ones that do not. This is where hand grip comes in, as it can make a big difference in development. We’ve already covered how different tricep exercises help develop a particular head, but here we’re focused specifically on how grip can aid this goal even further.

Triceps:

1. Palms Down (downward motion) – the most common exercise with a downward motion for the triceps is tricep pushdowns. There are many variations of this exercise, especially when you factor in the different handles you can use to perform it (v-bar, rope, one-arm, bar). Most often the exercise is associated with prioritizing the lateral head. However, that’s not always the case, it depends on the grip. A regular palms down grip for tricep pushdowns (obviously, to have a proper palms down grip on this exercise you’ll need to use the bar or one-arm) actually prioritizes the long head if done properly (using the mind-muscle connection). However..

2. Thumbs Pointing Up (downward motion) – if you’re doing tricep pushdowns or any other exercise with a downward movement, simply using a rope instead of a bar (therefore, forcing your thumbs to point up) will switch priority to the lateral head. This is also the case with the v-bar, which naturally places you in a thumbs up position. Of course, suddenly the lateral head isn’t doing 90% of the work the long head was just doing with the bar, but there is a shift in focus that takes work away from the long lead and places more emphasis on the lateral head even though both are still getting worked.

3. Palms Up (downward motion) – if your hands are reversed so that your palms are facing up, sticking with tricep pushdowns as the example, you’re going to prioritize the medial head. Again though, any tricep exercise is still a tricep exercise, so each head is getting some work. The goal is to use grip to change how much of the work any one head is actually doing in relation to the others.

*Anytime you go over your head for triceps exercises, grip doesn’t make as much of a difference because your long head is so dominant that grip alterations play a negligible role. However, as you can see, for a large portion of your tricep movements (those that are not over your head), grip changes can allow you to shift focus even within particular exercises. This remains true for exercises that you may do at a different angle (instead of straight downwards). Switch your grip, and the same rules apply for any tricep exercises that are not over your head.

Biceps: there isn’t as much potential for variation between bicep exercises that there is for the triceps, but specifically for barbell exercises:

Inner Head – grab the barbell wider than shoulder grip.

Outer Head – grab the barbell closer than shoulder grip.

Shoulder grip refers to a grip on the barbell that is parallel to your shoulders. Where your shoulders are, that’s where you grab the barbell. Now, this may seem a little weird. Wouldn’t the inner head be worked with an inner grip, and vice versa for the outer head? No. When prioritizing bicep heads, the grip you should use is opposite to the head you are working. Therefore, if you want to bring out your outer head to be thicker standing front side, work your biceps with a narrow grip.

*The brachialis mentioned earlier is worked by using a hammer grip on bicep exercises. A hammer grip is also known as the neutral grip, because your palms aren’t facing up or down but are neutral (the way they are when you are standing with your hands hanging at your sides). Good luck!

P.S. – to increase the work your bicep or tricep handles by taking away forearm involvement (especially during bicep training), try a thumbless grip. Put your thumb with the rest of your fingers under the bar, you’ll feel the difference fast. It can also be used to prioritize particular heads. For example, using a thumbless grip when performing tricep pushdowns with a bar shifts priority to the lateral head depending on the angel with which you perform the exercise. The best thing to do is to play around and see what works. Remember, these are micro-changes to your arm workout, so they are not meant to make your arms blow up in size. Use this to help you even out any inconsistencies to the extent it is possible. For information on how a thumbless grip can help your lats grow, visit our Lat Pulldown: Maximizing Lat Width and Size article.

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