How the First Mr. Olympia Fixed His Weak Biceps — Transcript

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1. 0:00The biceps of Larry Scott
2. 0:01is perhaps the most famous biceps in the history of bodybuilding.
3. 0:06Except, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
4. 0:08Yet, by his own account, Larry Scott's
5. 0:11biceps was a weak, lagging body part
6. 0:14until he started training with Vince Gironda.
7. 0:17Gironda also trained Schwarzenegger, by the way, and when Schwarzenegger met him,
8. 0:21Schwarzenegger said, "I'm going to be the greatest bodybuilder that ever lived."
9. 0:25Gironda replied, "You just look like a fat fuck to me."
10. 0:30Gironda was certainly a character, but his methods
11. 0:32proved to be quite effective in the case of Larry Scott.
12. 0:35Gironda said that he had lagging
13. 0:37lower biceps development, so he said he should do preacher curls.
14. 0:42It turns out that the functional anatomy there isn't quite right,
15. 0:45but it did actually work and we now know why,
16. 0:48based on new MRI data. A new study had a group of untrained individuals train
17. 0:52one of their arms with incline curls and the other arm with preacher curls.
18. 0:56All other programming variables like volume and intensity
19. 0:59were the same in both arms.
20. 1:00Muscle growth was measured by magnetic resonance imaging, the gold standard.
21. 1:04This is important because ultrasound cannot differentiate
22. 1:07between the biceps and the underlying brachialis. See,
23. 1:11most bodybuilders only think of the biceps when they are training their arms
24. 1:14or their elbow flexors.
25. 1:16But in fact there are more elbow flexors. We also have the
26. 1:19brachialis that lies underneath
27. 1:20the biceps and is in fact the thing that pops up the lower biceps
28. 1:24or what looks like the lower biceps, but is in fact the brachialis.
29. 1:28There's also the brachioradialis, which crosses over into the forearm
30. 1:31and is sometimes considered
31. 1:33more of a forearm muscle, but it is in fact an elbow flexor.
32. 1:36You might be tempted to lump all of these elbow flexor muscles together
33. 1:39and just treat them as biceps.
34. 1:41However, after 12 weeks, we saw that preacher curls resulted in
35. 1:45significantly greater gains in the brachialis and the brachioradialis.
36. 1:49Incline curls, however, led to the greatest gains in the biceps.
37. 1:53Total elbow flexor growth was similar between the exercises.
38. 1:56The brachialis lies underneath the lower biceps,
39. 1:59so when it grows, it pops up the lower biceps.
40. 2:02This explains
41. 2:02why Gironda thought that preacher curls targeted the lower biceps.
42. 2:06These gains are also exactly what you would expect based on the biomechanics.
43. 2:10All of the elbow flexor muscles are strongest around anatomical position.
44. 2:14That means that when your elbow is straightened,
45. 2:17your arm is straight and your elbow is at your side.
46. 2:19That's when the biceps and the other elbow flexors produce the most force
47. 2:23and can be subjected to the most tension, so training them in this position
48. 2:27has the highest potential for muscle growth.
49. 2:29Yet this exact position is the position that is completely neglected
50. 2:33by standard dumbbell and barbell curls.
51. 2:35When you have your elbows at your side with a dumbbell or a barbell,
52. 2:38gravity is pulling straight down, so there's very little tension on the biceps.
53. 2:42The bottom position is very easy.
54. 2:44Incline curls and preacher curls
55. 2:46both solve this problem, but in a different manner.
56. 2:48Preacher curls solve this problem by pushing the elbow forward.
57. 2:51Resistance is now maximal when the forearm is horizontal,
58. 2:55which is very close to the bottom position.
59. 2:57You also readily feel this yourself.
60. 2:59The bottom position is very hard and you experience very high tension
61. 3:03in a relatively stretched position.
62. 3:05However, the biceps is a triarticulate muscle.
63. 3:08It crosses the shoulder as well.
64. 3:10This means that when you push the elbow forward, that shortens the biceps
65. 3:14so you get more tension in the bottom position when the biceps is stretched
66. 3:18at the elbow, but it is shortened at the shoulder, meaning that
67. 3:22the total tension at longer muscle lengths isn't actually that much greater.
68. 3:25But for the brachialis and the brachioradialis, which don't
69. 3:28cross the shoulder, they do experience the most tension at long muscle lengths
70. 3:32when they can produce the most tension, both active tension and passive tension.
71. 3:36So you don't even have to believe in the whole
72. 3:38stretch-mediated hypertrophy or "long length is better for muscle growth"
73. 3:41story for this to be true.
74. 3:43You simply have to believe that mechanical tension drives muscle growth,
75. 3:46which is extremely strongly established in exercise science at this point.
76. 3:50Incline curls don't solve the problem for the brachialis or the brachioradialis,
77. 3:54because in the bottom position,
78. 3:55you're still basically doing a standard curl. For these muscles,
79. 3:58it doesn't matter
80. 3:59whether you're standing up straight or whether you're leaning back.
81. 4:02They don't cross the shoulder.
82. 4:03So for them, it's effectively the same exercise.
83. 4:06However, the biceps gets lengthened at the shoulder by leaning back.
84. 4:09When your elbow is behind the body, you are stretching
85. 4:12the biceps at the shoulder, so it's at longer muscle lengths.
86. 4:15And now, even though in the bottom position
87. 4:17there's still not much tension on the biceps,
88. 4:19as soon as you start curling up the weight,
89. 4:21you have high tension at relatively long muscle lengths.
90. 4:24These biomechanics perfectly explain why incline curls are better for the biceps,
91. 4:28whereas preacher curls are better for the brachialis and the brachioradialis.
92. 4:32Therefore, what I teach to students in my online certification course
93. 4:35is that you need multiple exercises to fully target the elbow flexors.
94. 4:40Standard dumbbell and barbell curls are just not optimal exercises.
95. 4:44The holy trinity of biceps development is arguably preacher
96. 4:47curls, incline curls, and of course, my baby, the Bayesian curl.
97. 4:51All of these exercises subject the elbow flexors to high tension
98. 4:55at long muscle lengths, just in slightly different manners.
99. 4:58So what you probably want to do in terms of practical application
100. 5:01is to have all of these exercises in your program
101. 5:04at some point. You don't have to do all of them in every program,
102. 5:07but these types of exercises are where you will probably get
103. 5:10the greatest elbow flexor gains. For preacher curls,
104. 5:14a practical problem for many people is that they either just don't have a
105. 5:17preacher bench or a Scott curl bench, and they also cannot do it with a dumbbell
106. 5:21on a standard bench, because then the dumbbell hits the bench
107. 5:24and they don't get full range of motion. In this case,
108. 5:26a good alternative
109. 5:27is to do concentration curls in which you lean away from the dumbbell.
110. 5:32Standard concentration curls, in which the upper arm is vertical,
111. 5:35don't have high tension at long lengths, but you can mimic
112. 5:38the effect of the preacher curl by leaning back.
113. 5:41I hope this knowledge helps you get bigger arms.
114. 5:43If you want to implement any of these exercises,
115. 5:45you can find all of them in my MH Physique app,
116. 5:48and you can get a two-week free trial with the link in the description.
117. 5:52It should also be popping up in your screen right about now.
118. 5:55See you next time.