Bicep exercises to train lower head

[dubcanuck1]

Hi all,
I had reconstructive surgery on both my lower biceps tendons; the most recent being the right one. I'm interested on some exercises that train the lower head and "pull" the muscle back towards the elbow. It currently sits much closer to the deltoid, but doesn't look symmetrical to the other one, which has a more "regular" contour.

I notice that whenever I pronate my hand, then tendon pulls the bicep down a bit so I've been doing reverse grip curls. I was wonder if anyone else has any other exercises that could help with that.

Thanks in advance.

 

[George Spellwin]

Welcome to the forums dubcanuck1! I'm interested in what others have to say about this one, but I'd say dumbbell preacher curls for one.

 

[supbraz]

dumbbell preachers are great for this as above!

i love doing single arm standing cable curls aswell.

put the cable on the lowest height setting so its as close to the floor as possible.
grab the handle with one hand and stand with your back to the machine and walk a couple of steps away until you feel the stretch across the bicep.
keeping your elbow in a fixed position, contract your bicep and curl the handle up
you should feel a great stretch across your bicep

notes:
to make sure im not half repping, i tense my tricep briefly at the bottom the rep before engaging my bicep again
make use of mind/muscle connection and really squeeze the bicep at full contraction of the rep
if im struggling with mind/muscle then i also use my non working hand and just place my fingers on the peak of my bicep to ensure full contraction
to increase bicep isolation try and keep your elbow position just behind your shoulder

good luck with your recovery my dad tore his bicep off the bone - nasty stuff

 

[H_T_]

I don't think this is possible. Some people have a gap between the elbow crook and bicep. Look at Larry Scott, long, thick bicep and Franco Columbo, short, knotty bicep. Just genetics...

 

[karateguitar]

I think you can at least improve it, even tho it may not catch up to the other bicep. EVERY time you do dumbbell curls, and especially barbell curls, you should be watching the bicep and forearm muscles, you can see what happens as you do them, try different things, etc.

But every single time, barbell curls help the most, at the "end" of the lift, as your arms come back to the starting point, DO NOT relax those arms, keep the barbell raised to keep pressure on the lower bicep, and stay there for a bit, you can almost SEE the lower bicep lengthen! I never had good biceps, especially the lower bi, but as I watched my muscles being worked, I would try different things, and I eventually had some decent bi's for someone who had almost none before! But the lower bi's lengthened and it was pretty muscular. Do those other exercises the others said, but always watch the lower biceps and keep pressure on the muscle AFTER each set. I would sometimes keep the pressure on for about 20, 30 seconds after I saw how mine were improving.

ALSO, a pet peeve of mine is someone doing barbell curls and on the "top" of the lift, they keep going and let it touch their chest, essentially stopping the weight pressure on the bi's! I've seen their biceps flatten! You don't want that! Keep the weight pressure on the muscles completely until you put the bar down. Go up just enough when you see the biceps at the top of the top of the muscle, unless you're going super heavy, do a 2 or so second count there, then lower it to what I said above. You should never rest the weight pressure on any muscle, but especially bi's! As you do the top of the bar curls, you will see where the muscles start to flatten, back off a bit. I'm not conceited, my bi's went from nothing to where strangers stared at my arms, and a lot of that was the muscled lower biceps. I think my curls never went as far as my pecs, that was the top of my biceps before flattening out.

 

[karateguitar]

Also I forgot to say, while you keep resistance on the lower head, after the set, I also did tiny low-head curls, only about an inch or so, it works that part of the muscle. So after each set, lower the barbell, but don't relax the bicep, keep the resistance on, stay like that for 20, 30 seconds, and do the tiny curls ONLY at the lower head. It just may help!

 

[muskate]

The biceps tendon has two insert points from the femur. Your left and right biceps heads (sometimes called inner and out bicep heads)

You can not isolate upper and lower portions of your biceps because that's not how the muscle tendons insert. You can however focus the tension and emphasis of the movement on the lower portion of the bicep muscle.

The best thing you can do to get lower bicep activation is to really stretch the bicep out at the end of the movement. A lot of people rock and use momentum when doing bicep curls and they loose that deep stretch.

The best exercise is the single arm dumbbell preacher or concentration curl where you really focus on the stretch at the bottom of the exercise.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[karateguitar]

Cool!