Body And Fitness Blog

Wednesday – biceps and triceps

I enjoy training biceps and triceps, it feels a bit like a day off because it’s not a major compound exercise day, it’s more of a narcissistic exercise and ego boosting workout, than a serious training day, like legs or back.

Triceps

I started off with some tricep dips, which is actually a very good exercise for triceps, as it can be done without the need for any equipment, as such is great for travellers or holiday-makers, or those too cheap to pay for a gym membership. I find that doing tricep dips without any additional weight is a bit easy, so I like to add a bit of extra weight onto my frame, in the form of a dumbbell. This would be better with a flat disc, but my gym doesn’t have proper free weights, when it does, I’ll start using 25kg discs in addition to my bodyweight. I only did three, increasingly heavy sets, here’s the details:

• Body weight for 12 reps
• Body weight + 10kg dumbbell for 12 reps
• Body weight + 20kg dumbbell for 12 reps

The last set was starting to get hard, got the triceps nicely warmed up for some cable push downs, which are my favourite for tricep isolation, but only if done with correct form. Read my guide on how to do this exercise correctly, don’t kid yourself into doing this exercise heavy by using the lats and bodyweight to assist the triceps in pushing the bar down, you’ll only prolong any real results and risk injury.

• 22.5kg x 8 reps, done fairly slowly, about 45 seconds
• 27.5kg x 10 reps, done normal speed, about 30 seconds
• 2kg x 8 reps, done fairly slowly, about 45 seconds

I had wanted to do this exercise heavy duty style and take about 10 seconds per rep, but I didn’t have the stomach for this today. There are some days when I feel really up for doing heavy duty sets, and unfortunately today wasn’t one of them! That was it for my triceps today, next onto biceps.

Biceps

As I was already on the cable machine, I went straight into my first biceps exercise, cable curls. I enjoy this exercise immensely, I far prefer this to barbell curls, it just feels like there is more tension on the muscle at the top of the exercise. My aim was to perform three heavy sets, using good form, but not using heavy duty principles. I suspect I performed each set in about 30 seconds.

• 30kg x 10 reps
• 30kg x 10 reps
• 30kg x 8 reps

I was a bit disappointed I only managed to perform eight reps on the last set, but it’s not the end of the world. Next up is hammer curls, which is my favourite dumbbell bicep exercise. My aim was to go slightly heavier than I did the previous week, and aim to do as many reps as possible during each set.

• 14kg dumbbells x 5 reps (don’t think I had completely recovered from the cable curls)
• 14kg dumbbells x 7 reps
• 14kg dumbbells x 6 reps

That was it for biceps, I considered doing some seated concentration curls just to finish off the biceps, but I figured they had already had a decent workout, and I’d lifted more than the previous week, so best leave it at that.