My extreme elbow FLEXOR workout
To understand the reasons for these exercise choices, you must first know that the biceps, particularly the short head, are involved in both shoulder flexion, elbow flexion and wrist supination, because it is a triarticulate muscle. This means it acts at three joints and as such, different joint positions will target the biceps differently. Supination is simply rotating your palm towards you, and shoulder flexion is raising your upper arm towards your head out in front of you. I did a load of research and believe these are the three most productive exercises for working the forearm flexors.
The reasons for choosing them are bulletpointed below and are somewhat technical. I've basically written everything in my own words to simplify it...
Standing underhand grip drag curls x 3
-This causes the bicep to enter passive insufficiency because the shoulder is hyperextended which means the elbows travel behind the back. This increases the stretch in both heads of the biceps and this increases tension and therefore force production.
-Do these fairly fast in both concentric and eccentric portions to activate the biceps rather than the brachialis. Lowering eccentrically here will still target the brachialis rather than the biceps.
-Tension is also kept on the biceps rather than shifting it onto the forearm bones and front delts by doing normal standing barbell curls. You should be able to use significant weight still with these curls.
Reverse preacher curls x 3
-Since the shoulders are flexed, both heads of the biceps enter active insufficiency which means there is not sufficient contraction in the biceps to fully flex the elbow because they have already shortened to perform weak shoulder flexion.
-By pronating your wrists, you put the biceps at an even greater mechanical disadvantage which shifts all the load onto the brachialis and brachioradialis.
-By doing the curls slowly both on the concentric and eccentric, the brachialis is even further activated because it responds best to slower movements (if anyone wants to know why I will explain)
Incline supinating db curls x 3
-This time you fully hyperextend the shoulders to cause passive insufficiency in the biceps. The pre-stretch which occurs at the bottom of the rep because of this increases tension and force generation.
-By supinating your wrist below 90 degrees elbow flexion you will target the long head of the biceps and then maintain supination to keep tension on the short head.
-By doing these fairly fast, you will minimise activation of the brachialis, but always slow down at the bottom of the rep to take advantage of the stretch.
-If you were to supinate your wrist above 90 degrees elbow flexion, you would target the short head. However you would have performed a hammer curl up to that point which would have meant there would be less overall activation of the biceps. Therefore supination below 90 degrees is much better.
-For this, hold the dumbell towards the top end in the neutral position before you start to supinate. This increases the force needed to supinate the wrist which really helps to activate the biceps further.
There you have it. This workout will kill both your brachialis, brachioradialis and both heads of the biceps.
Alternatively you can drop the reverse preacher curls in favour of slow medium grip overhand chins on back day. The shoulders are fully flexed when you start to contract your arms and so the brachialis and brachioradialis take over from the biceps. By performing these slowly you will further reduce bicep involvement. These type of chins will target your lats of course, but you can emphasise both lat and brachialis involvement at the same time. This type of mass exercise is better than isolating reverse preacher curls. If you were to do underhand narrow chins fast, you would target the biceps more. These compound exercises are highly effective at stimulating growth, but since most people seem to prefer the isolations, this routine is tailored towards them.
I myself would do deadlifts, slow overhand chins, fast underhand chins, maybe db rows, and then just some drag curls and supinating incline dbs to finish off.
In theory this workout is effective, but in practise it may not be. It is up to you to give it a go and it would probably only take a slight variation of your workout to do so...I just did it right now and it felt VERY good
