Bicep exercises
The biceps are the muscle on the top of the upper arm that are responsible for lifting the forearm up, pivoting at the elbow. The term bicep comes from the latin and refers to the fact that there are two muscles on the upper side of the arm.
Most people who are new to weight training get hung up on building big biceps to the detriment of other, less visible muscles. This is a mistake, largely because without an overall increase in size and strength throughout the body, it will be hard going to increase the size of the biceps individually.
As with tricep exercises, it is best to concentrate on the major muscle groups first of all, and only when you have trained them hard should you switch your attention to the smaller muscles of the arms. The reason for this is two-fold.
Firstly, to achieve gains in the arms, the rest of your physique needs to be balanced, so you need to have a strong chest, back and legs.
Secondly, to achieve an increased resting metabolic rate (needed to burn off excess fat and keep it off), you will have far more success by working the larger muscle groups primarily, and the smaller muscle groups (biceps, triceps, calves etc) secondarily.
Bicep exercises can be split into compound and isolation exercises, where compound uses both arms simultaneously and isolation uses each arm individually. You may find that if you are right handed, your right arm will take more punishment than your left arm during isolation exercises, don’t worry this is normal.
Here are some good compound movements for the biceps:
Here are some isolation exercises that can be done with dumbbells:
