Tip Do This BEFORE You Curl Search Skip to content Menu Menu follow us Store Articles Community Loyal-T Club Loyal-T Points Rewards Subscribe to Save Search Search The World s Trusted Source & Community for Elite Fitness Training Tip Do This BEFORE You Curl Use the first-tension principle to build bigger stronger arms Here' s how by Christian Thibaudeau December 21, 2016August 18, 2019 Tags Tips, Training Recruit and Contract If you want to build your biceps, you must improve your ability to recruit and contract them. When it comes to biceps, focusing on getting them strong often makes it more difficult to get them big. Going heavy can shift the tension away from the biceps. Practicing intense contraction of the target muscle is much harder to do when using heavy weights. So when you're trying to fix lagging biceps, the first thing to do is work on constant tension to maximize the mind-muscle connection. The time spent doing it will be an investment in all the future biceps training you'll do. Do This for 4 Weeks Do every rep of your bicep work like this: Before even lifting the weights, tense the biceps as hard as you can, as if you were trying to flex it. That is the "principle of first tension" – the muscle firing hardest first is the one that'll receive the most stimulation in the set. Then when you lift and lower the weight, use a slower tempo. About 3 seconds up and down. This allows you to tense and flex the biceps as hard as humanly possible during every inch of every rep (during both the lifting and lowering portions). If you go faster it's harder to keep the muscle maximally tensed. During the lowering portion you should actually flex and tense your triceps too. Sounds weird, but it makes the eccentric (lowering) even harder, accentuating the eccentric. The Benefits It's the best way to become really good at recruiting and contracting the biceps and you'll program your nervous system to do it, which will make the future heavier biceps work more effective. It stimulates muscle growth via an accumulation of growth factors and mTOR activation, but there's very little, if any, muscle damage. So you can (and should) do this type of biceps work multiple times during the week. Think 3-4 days a week. This will allow you to become even better at recruiting the biceps. Remember, frequency of practice is the key to motor learning. Once you've spent some time training the biceps like this, you'll be able to switch to heavy lifting, but now the tension won't shift away from the biceps because you improved your capacity to recruit the muscle and keep it tensed. Get The T Nation Newsletters Don' t Miss Out Expert Insights To Get Stronger, Gain Muscle Faster, And Take Your Lifting To The Next Level related posts Training Take Your Pull-Ups to the Next Level Pull ups are the king of upper body exercises. Here are 5 ways to jack-up your performance to levels befitting royalty. Most Popular Pull-Up Articles, Powerlifting & Strength, Pull-Up, Training Ben Bruno August 1 Training Tip Spot the Squat Like a Pro The do's and don'ts of proper spotting. Powerlifting & Strength, Squat, Tips, Training TJ Kuster October 4 Training Tate Talks Hypertrophy - Part 2 Today, Dave discusses something called "the breakthrough factor," how he'd approach bodybuilding today, and a very intriguing training idea: the private warehouse gym. Let's get to it! Training Chris Shugart January 12 Training The Evil Scot An uncensored interview with a martial arts champion turned performance coach. Powerlifting & Strength, Training Chris Shugart August 17