Biceps Training | ETP#159

In part seven of our Training Series, we are covering the Biceps. Bryan covers some of the anatomy associated with bicep training. Then we provide our top exercise picks and our reasons for effective training of the short and long heads of the biceps. Then we break this down into our three equipment availability tiers, a commercial gym setup, a garage gym of CrossFit facility, and then DB / Bands only.

Timestamps
0:00 - Life/episode updates
24:08 - Training your biceps
28:52 - Commercial gym training
59:24 - Garage gym/CrossFit gym 
1:08:33 - Training on dumbbell/bands-only program

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Transcript

0:28

What's up guys? Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is episode 159 and we are talking biceps. So this is one of the final episodes in our training series. I believe Brian, we decided that we were going to do an abs and calves potentially. I know we said we weren't going to do forearms, but we felt that there was enough warranting to put together at least a helpful episode on that because abs is something that I mean, we see people botch all the time. So I think it's worth talking about. Yeah, we, we had enough requests from people to do the abs and calves episode. I don't think for I think we can just kind of lump forearms into biceps today. But I think abs and calves, whatever there, it's enough that we can create an episode out of it. Definitely. And so you guys can look forward to that. And for potentially the first time in the history of Eat, Train, Prosper, I will be kicking us off with our updates because in Brian's words, not mine, mine are more interesting this week. yeah. So it has been two weeks since we have last recorded. And the reason being for that is two Thursdays ago, so I mean, I guess I can pull up the date here. I guess it was Wednesday, June 12th, I was training. I had my best leg session that I had had in easily five or six weeks. It was wonderful. And then about a few hours later, I had my shirt off and I'm like looking at myself like we always do when we have our shirts off. And I'm like. Why does my belly button look that way? I do not have a belly button that looks like that. And then after doing some, you know, digging with my finger, realized that I had a hernia. Fortunately, I was already in Bangkok, Thailand as I was doing some fertility things with my girlfriend, Jenny there, and just decided to get the surgery right away. Went in and talked to a surgeon and he was like, you don't need it because there was no pain or anything like that. He's like, but it will only get bigger and get worse over time. And the way that I train in those sorts of things, like I didn't want some disaster where it like busted open. And then you run into that emergency scenario where your intestines push through and then the blood supply gets cut off. And I was like, I don't want to deal with that living on an island with not the greatest health care access. So I just decided to take care of it right away. Had surgery this past Monday. And it's been a different wrinkle as a lot of things immediately changed kind of overnight. So. The biggest being a no competing for me this year, there's just not enough time. I'm out six to 12 weeks of real real training. It's a pretty big. Delta there is at six is at 12. It's really going to find out. Twelve will be the latest. Six will be the earliest depending on how I heal, how I respond, pain, discomfort, etc, etc. And then by the time that those weeks are in, it's not only the time to return to where I was, it's the setbacks and the body weight down, which we can get into a little bit. So no training, making the best of it, double down on business. And I guess just being fortunate and grateful for a lot of the other very, very positive things in my life. I've been here before. I told myself after my patellar tendon repair in 2017 that we're doing no more. surgeries and unfortunately that was not the last surgery. So this was the most recent one and this time hopefully no more. So the thing I think is most interesting and maybe most relatable to the audience is sort of the question of what are you doing to replace that time and that structure that working out has provided you. We've been on here numerous times in these updates talking about how working out structures our day, it provides us. the mental clarity and focus that we need to optimize our work. I mean, there's just like an endless list of things that working out gives us. And when we kind of compare and contrast this surgery and recovery for you against prior ones, and I'm thinking about, you know, your patella in 2017, your Achilles in 2012. And so, yeah, so in both of those, it was relegated to the lower body. So, As your motivation returns, you could train upper body, which I assume you did. This one is different because you actually can't lift heavy weights on any part of your body because you can't brace in that manner. So how is this different for you? Obviously, physically we know the differences. Emotionally, psychologically, kind of how are you managing all of these variables right now? I mean, I would say fortunately, I'm in a much better mental state than I was during those times. And I think as potentially cliche is to say, a lot of the trials and issues that you are presented with being self-employed and going from, you know, like Aaron, the software engineer who sits behind, who's faceless to things like being the front of a business and in a modern day online business, you... you grow personally to be able to handle like a lot of adverse events. And I really just feel a lot more like qualified and capable now as opposed to whatever seven years ago and 11 years ago when I had those other ones. And something that I've really been, there's kind of two other facets. One is, I've really started looking at my life in maybe the last year, year and a half. It's really just like a game of up leveling in different aspects of your life. And that might be business, the nutrition and training is one side in your personal relationships. And I'm sure with you being a father, there's all these different facets of where you can improve. And it's really just like, I mean, life is, you can really think of it as a game of up leveling. you know, in the things that you care to up level about, right? And I'm really just looking at it as like, okay, well, I can't train. That is what it is. Like I can up level as a business owner in my service delivery. I have more time in the day. Like I can comfortably take on more clients now because I have effectively four hours of my day back five days per week. So I've really just kind of, I'm focusing on filling it with things that I can control. and just staying kind of positive about it. And then I was briefly chatting with someone on Instagram and this person probably has the best outlook on life of anyone that I know. And when we were speaking about the injury, I was like, you know, life's just, what did I say? It's like a wild adventure. And she said, I like to think about it like a roller coaster. And I think that's such a good analogy because I'm in a low point of my life, right? So fortunately, I know that and I know that what that means is like the uphill climb is coming, right? And then one thing that I've personally connected to in the past, more out of a, you know, from a place of fear is when those high times are like, you know, business is pumping, you feel great. Everything seems to be like peaking. You know, the bad times are coming, you know, and that's always kind of soured it for me. Like I think back to like when I first had my like first biggest successful month with the business and stuff. I was like, I didn't, I couldn't even really celebrate it because I knew that like the dark days are now coming. Cause it's not like this forever, you know? So it's like when you're riding high, you know the downhill's coming, but then when you're sitting in like the gutter per se of a temporary low, like you know the hill is climb, it is coming for the better times ahead. And I just think that's such a really, really good analogy. At least for me it is. Yeah, I think perspective and framing kind of one in the same are both really important. And then also, I think remaining like Arthur Brooks in his happiness writings would call this character, this character type the judge. But it's the person that never gets too high when things are good and never gets too low when things are bad, they just stay much more even keeled. And so there's obviously different personality types that are going to react differently to different. challenges in life. But I do think that that mentality that you're manifesting is that of the judge, which is the one that I usually try to find, or I usually find myself aligning with as well. When these situations come, like I also try not to get too high or too low, given, you know, life circumstances. And, and if you can remain even killed in that way, maybe you get a little bit less joy when things are great. And as an alternative, you get a little bit less sadness. and agony when things aren't as good. So I guess there's, there's, you know, positives and negatives there for sure. How have, how have you noticed the impact of not exercising on your cognitive ability throughout the day as you're doing work and stuff? Like I could see one argument where it's positive because you've expended less energy and you have more to power your brain. But I see the other argument, which is more probably where I would bias myself. in that without working out, I feel like my brain would not function as well. But maybe that's a learned trait where over the last two weeks, you've been able to kind of curate an environment where your brain can function in the absence of exercise. Yeah, so I mean, fortunately, during the times in Bangkok, like I was still walking so much, I was still getting like a fair amount of activity in. I've only been back Thursday, effectively Friday, you know, it was Thursday night, got back to Bali. I got some decent activity in like a walk, you know, today's the first day where I really did very minimal things. I went to the grocery store and that was effectively it. You know, when I didn't walk there, I took my took my. My scooter there, I walked very minimally, but that's because today's Tuesdays are my busiest days. The most amount of check -ins we record the podcast, you know, a lot of client communication back and forth. So I just kind of know that like my Tuesdays are stacked anyway. What I plan to do, I get my stitches out tomorrow and then I think I have to keep it covered like one more day. And then I think I can start getting like sweaty without concern. I was terrified if I'm being completely honest about infection risk here, cause it's like. OK, you know, common and obviously I've no Jackson's horror stories with it. So that's always in the back of my mind. So I was perfectly fine being like, yeah, you're not going to be too active because we need to get out of the woods of infection first and then we can deal with like those sorts of things. But I think by about the two week mark, I should be fine to like ride a stationary bike. And I might just like put that in, you know, on Mondays and pretty much every day, but not Tuesday is like I'm going to go ride it for 30 minutes in the morning. that sort of thing. think that'll be helpful too. Yeah. Cool. So what else you got on your update front? That's it, I guess. Lastly, I'll put it, if you're interested in coaching, now is a wonderful time to apply and reach out before I before I cap out. So I've ironically this past week was the best onboarding of business that I've had in in months. But it's kind of when life gives you both, you get you get the good with the bad. And there is definitely a lot of that. So. Yep, I have some extra time so I think like I said can comfortably take on on more clients. So if you've been on the fence or interested, ping me, reach out. My application is up on my website. All my pricing and everything is up there and very transparent and potentially we will talk. Sweet. Sounds good. That's awesome. All right, cool. Well, jumping in to some of my updates, I'm kind of all over the place here. Nothing really too significant, but I'll just kind of brain dump some thoughts for you guys. So I've been talking a bit about my body weight in the last few episodes and how in last year, comparing to last year, I just could not keep body weight on and it plummeted from starting point of mid 190s when bike season started all the way to 180 179 at one point for the end of bike season. So we're talking from like March to October, you saw my body weight plummet, you know, 15 pounds over that period of time, despite feeling like I was eating as much as I could. This year, for whatever reason, not only has my body weight not declined, it has increased and Based on satiety and what perceptively it feels like I'm putting in my body calorie-wise, it feels similar to last year. And I know that that cannot possibly be the case. Like, there's no way I can gain weight this year and lose weight last year and be eating the same amount of calories and doing a similar amount of activity. I guess if we were nitpicking, I was doing more activity then because I was trying to lift five days a week and bike six days a week. And this year, I've changed that and I'm biking. five days a week and lifting two to three days a week. So I mean, there's a little bit less activity in there, but not enough to move that needle in that way. So obviously I'm eating more food than I was last year in some capacity. And so I am now at a point where I'm kind of acknowledging that, like I kind of thought this body weight increase was a facade of some sort that I was just waiting for the scale to be like, oops, and kind of turn around and start declining. But it's not. So I've literally woken up the last four days in the low 200s, which is the highest I've been in years. Years, I'm telling you. And I have a series of pictures. I posted some onto my story the other day. I've been talking with Dave McConie about it as well, because he finds these types of things pretty interesting. But I have legitimately a picture of me at 194, right at the beginning of bike season. in my mirror with my towel around my waist after a shower. And I emulated that exact same picture a couple days ago at 202. So eight pounds heavier than than 194 a couple months later. And honestly, I think I look better. I definitely don't look fatter. If anything, I look the same leanness and I just look way more filled out in my like upper chest, shoulders, arms, stuff like that. So I find that really interesting. And It reminds me of back in the CrossFit days, like I used to hold the low 200s all the time. And I think I looked very similar to how I look now. I think if you would have asked me a few months ago, like what would 202 look like on your body? I would have been like, my God, I'd be sloppy fat. Like I couldn't imagine being that big right now. But in reality, like I'm holding 202 really well and it feels really good. I have good energy throughout the day, good focus. My lifting has been amazing. like I'm only lifting two, I'd say three times over eight or nine days. So two to three times a week and everything's improving every session. Like I'm getting stronger. Even movements that have been in my program, like the hack press for years without changing are, I'm literally setting PRs on these things. And this is along with my biking performance being better than it was last year when I was a lower body weight. So there's something like really cool happening right now in my body with all of these adaptations, like the fact that I'm getting better at lifting and I'm getting better at biking and I'm feeling none of these degenerative effects that, you know, occur as your body weight plummets and you do too much cardio and stuff like that. So I'm really happy with how it's going. And I do think I need to rein the food in a little bit. Like I don't want this to climb to two five and then two 10 and have this kind of become a runaway train. so I am going to try to stay in that 200 to one 90 ish something or other range. So I'm going to rain it in a little bit and we'll see if that has any negative impact as I'm doing all of this activity. but ultimately I'm just really happy with where performance is and how I feel across the board with all of this stuff. And then let's see. I've had, I've been talking about this a lot, but I just like, I keep having these back to back days off that are a result of life. So I did a concert with Kim two weekends ago and didn't train that entire weekend. And then last weekend we had father's day, I guess that was two days ago. And I was planning, I didn't work out at all on Saturday. I was planning on going on this really long bike ride with a couple of the other dads. You know, we got the, the hallway pass to go out at like 6 a and go do a bunch of mountain biking on Sunday. And as soon as I biked to the mountain biking place, which was almost an hour from my house, I was hyped, got there and my tire was flat. So we filled the thing up and I had to basically bike home. I missed the ride with the guys. My tire got flat again on the ride home. So I basically dropped it at my dad's house and walked five miles home. So what was supposed to be like a two or three hour bike ride turned into a one hour bike ride with a one and a half hour walk. So it didn't quite go as planned, but I did, I guess, get my movement in. And that's the way it, yeah. how you're like, huh, well, you know, I got five miles left. I'll just walk like, instead of like someone who's just like, I'm just gonna call an Uber or something like that. Like, no, I'll just walk the extra five miles. I had I had negotiated for Father's Day from 6am to 10am for like my hangout with the dads and biking and stuff. And by the time I realized I had a flat and stuff, it was only 815, 8 o 'clock. And I was like, well, I still have two hours left. I don't want to go home and start dadding again at the moment. So I'm just going to hang out on this beautiful day, listen to some podcasts and go for a walk, you know. get that and I do understand that for sure. Yeah, yeah. So that's that situation with body weight and performance and stuff all being good. The last update I'll add here is there's just been some weird stuff with heart rate and all positive. I think if you look at it from like a global perspective, things with my heart rate are like insanely good, but it almost seems like they're outlier good. Like, like I, Makoni was saying the same thing. He's like, man, you have some really weird metrics with your heart. And so, It's just, it's wild to me, just three things. One is Andy Galpin just released his first podcast in a series that he just dropped called Perform, where he talks about all the different aspects that go into performance. And the first one was about heart and cardiovascular. And so he was talking about HRV a little bit and he was talking specifically about the RMSSD HRV, which is... We've talked about this with Mike Nelson on the podcast and stuff like that, but it's one of the ways, one of the algorithms by which you can calculate HRV. And it's the one that pretty much all devices use across the board except Apple Watch, which for whatever reason does not use RMSSD. But Galpin was saying that like really good scores on RMSSD are like 150, 160. Like he's like, maybe the highest I've ever seen would be like high 190s or 200 for RMSSD. Literally, I was texting with Anders the other day, because I just had a series of RMSSD readings over like three days that were all in the low 200s. And Galpin was like elite athletes are in the high 190s or high, high 100s. And I'm sitting here, this fucking normal ass dude, just in the low 200s of HRV, which is insane to me. And then add to that, Attiyah was just on one of his AMAs talking about heart rate recovery as one of his favorite metrics. And this is also one of my favorite metrics. It's basically how fast your heart rate drops when you stop working out 60 seconds later. So your heart rate might be at 170 after you do an interval 60 seconds later, ping your heart rate. Where is it? A Tia was saying that on a really, really good day, he gets 40 beats in the first minute. And 40 beats for me is like a bad day. I would say most days a good day for me is like I'm getting a 50 % drop. So if I'm at 170, I'm going down to 85. in the first minute at a really good day, maybe 40 % would be like a normal day. So I'd be from 175 to a hundred, but that's a 75 beat drop or 70 beat drop or whatever it is. And a T is talking about 40 being a really good score. So now there's this other thing where I'm like, man, what is like, what is the deal? I have this high HRV. I have this crazy heart rate recovery. And then I'm looking at resting heart rate this last week as well. And we've talked about how when you diet and you get leaner, resting heart rate goes down. And that's normal. Everybody I know, this is the case. Every time I get into the one eighties, my heart, my resting heart rate, it goes down into the high thirties. I'm 202 pounds right now. And my resting heart rate is 36, 37, 38 when I wake up in the mornings. And even throughout the day, like end of day, it's 44, 45, something like that. We're talking after living a whole day and exercising and eating food and moving around and all this stuff. So these three like, crazy heart rate metrics. Like I, I don't know what to make of it. Like I think I'm just really lucky and maybe genetically I'm predetermined for this stuff. Maybe it has something to do with all the exercise I'm doing. I don't really know, but that's, that's my last update. I have two parts to that. Part one is, have all of these data come from the same device, or have you verified this with other data, other instrument collections? all of the data has been with the Polar Chest Strap H10, but I've cross analyzed it with my Apple Watch. And if anything, the Apple Watch actually gives me better readings. Like because it doesn't use RMSSD, it gives me a higher HRV score. And my resting heart rate is usually one or two beats lower on Apple Watch than it is on the chest strap. So yeah. answer there. And then my second thing is maybe you've just been like wasting the last 20 years lifting weights and you're just this like closet endurance athlete this entire time and you should be spending way more time doing cardio. Like maybe you're this dude who's like in his 40s and his dad turns out to be like this insane endurance athlete and you just have never known. it's interesting because based on my heart rate metrics, you may think that the case, but I compare my performance to myself like a golfer would or an N of one, right? Like how am I doing on my biking this year compared to last year? And yes, it's better. Where I was doing rides at 16 and a half miles per hour last year, now I'm doing them at 17 and a half miles per hour, which is crazy. That's a really significant increase, right? But when you compare what I'm doing at, 17 and a half miles per hour, this dude is crazy good. The guys that I watch on gravel racing and stuff that I emulate that I'm trying to be like, these guys just did Unbound, which is a 200 mile gravel race with 10 ,000 feet of elevation. And they did 200, the winner did 200 miles in just over nine hours. So we're talking an average of like 22 miles per hour for 10 straight. hours. And I'm doing 17 .5 miles per hour for two hours. So there's a bit of disparity there still. don't know, I don't know, B, I think we suck an extra 30 pounds off you and you get one of those pro bikes, you're right there. Yeah, I wonder how much body weight would change. I mean, it would, the thing with body weight is that it allows you to have higher power output. So the amount of Watts that you're doing are going to be higher if you're stronger human. But then there's the argument of you have to power your body, which is a larger body. You go up hills, you have more weight to carry up hills. So, I mean, I think ultimately, yes, losing weight will be helpful. I do think that sometimes losing weight is overblown though as something that can really help performance because you do tend to lose power when you lose weight as well. Anyways, that's it, we're 25 minutes into updates, so we should probably talk about biceps now. Yep, let's do it. So the really interesting thing with biceps is... it on the surface level, it seems really simple, right? Because we have a, well, I mean, I guess it is a, is a, is a, is a bi -angular muscle, but you basically have one method to, to, to train it, you know, elbow flexion. However, it really isn't that simple. It can be one of the more complex ones, you know, from, from what I've found, which is oftentimes still blows my mind. Something I find myself kind of learning something new. quite regularly as I come across something or as CAS or yourself put something out. So I think it's one of those things that gets. kind of like maliciously oversimplified when there is a lot to really learn if you do want to really, really understand it. And I'm sure we'll dive into some. Yeah, that's a good way to frame it because I guess I could play devil's advocate on that point before we get into the nitty gritty nuance of things. But there's one argument out there that you don't need to train arms at all, that you can just get arms through compound movements, which you and I have discussed through CrossFit years and stuff. We didn't notice a ton of loss of arm size or anything along those lines through not training arms for a number of years. And then there's the argument like kind of getting a little more nuanced. That's like, Hey, elbow flexion is elbow flexion. And you hear this a lot from Paul Carter, like it doesn't matter what bicep you're doing. Is it behind the body? Is it in front of the body? Or is it a neutral curl? Is it a cable? Is it a blah, blah, blah? Like it doesn't matter. You're just, it's elbow flexion. And if you curl your arms, you're going to hit every part of your biceps. And so I, I do think that more hits the nail on the head than, Hey, just do compounds and you'll be fine. Like do pull -ups and dips and you're will be great. But even Paul Carter's approach or the just do elbow flexion, it does miss the boat in some ways. But man, as we've gotten like deeper into this game, I also don't want to get lost in the nuance. And I think it's important that people realize that I think I personally would say that you can get 95 to 98 % of the bicep growth you're going to get by just curling. And I think it's almost the same argument as like, if you just do some like vertical pulling and some horizontal pulling, you'll get 95 to 98 % of your back. And then maybe you can change elbow positions, you can do single arm across the body stuff, but maybe there's only like, there's a few gains to leave on the table there. I don't know, is that oversimplification? What are your thoughts on that? Bicep potentially back, I would say no chance in hell. I mean, what about all the guys over the years that literally just did bent over rows and pull ups that until the 90s maybe like even until the 90s or the early 2000s, there wasn't really much thought to back training aside from add do a vertical pull to a horizontal pull and do a lot of it. And there were great backs out there. I mean, it's not like I guess I would want to see like examples, you know, like specifically because I mean, you can the thing that I strongly dislike and I'm sure someone will probably poke holes in this. A lot of those arguments are made with like Ronnie Coleman and Dorian Yates. And I mean, you're picking the genetic freaks who are on gear and people are saying like the gear doesn't really change anything. It fucking does. Right. As someone who this year entered those waters like my for really good example. My biceps blew up once I started taking gear, blew up. I never even trained them. I couldn't train them because they blew up. And it's like these, it's, I feel like you're, it changes things and it's not a fair argument. And it's like, I mean, I take it with some clients, you know, who they have like kind of shitty backs and I'll be like, all right, well, what have you been doing? And they're doing like the most basic training. Like, okay, we're going to put in like a high row. I take them from like a pull -up. to an assisted chin where we can actually get a lot better stimulus. And like, there is nuance in there, but I think it's a little bit of like a strong man to be like, hey, that guy has a really big back and all he did with this, like it's like the Tom Platts thing. Tom Platts has the greatest legs in the world and he just squats. Like, yes, that's not false, but I think that's correlation, not causation. Yeah. No, I think that's a really good point. And I think that's why it's great that we have both of us on the podcast, because it is easy sometimes for me to get that nihilistic view of things as I get later into the training agent being like, look, we did CrossFit and we didn't lose any arm size and you know, blah, blah, blah, and just kind of go down that rabbit hole. So, so that's good. I'm sure that's, that's appreciated. but yeah, I mean, we're here to talk about biceps. So after my kind of soap box of it doesn't matter, let's talk about why it may matter. so. We'll start with commercial gym as we do. We go commercial gym, home gym, work crossfit gym, and then dumbbell only. So in a commercial gym, and we, what with the recent research that we have in the last few years does seem to show that the biceps do respond to training at long muscle lengths, but the biceps are one of these really interesting muscles where training at long muscle lengths doesn't necessarily mean that there's tension at. the long muscle length. And we've you've guys have heard us reference this a lot before, but a perfect example of this is the incline dumbbell curl, where because the arm is behind the body, you are in fact training the long head or the bicep in general, depending on what you do with external rotation at the shoulder. So if you externally rotate at the shoulder, you're going to get more long head of the bicep. And if you internally rotate at the shoulder, you get a little more short head. So we'll just call it like, Well, we'll say most people are going to be externally rotated when you're doing an incline dumbbell curl. So you are lengthening the long head of the bicep. But the problem is that you're fighting gravity because you have a dumbbell. And so when your arm is vertical, even though it's behind your body, there's no real tension on the actual long head of the bicep at that point. That, when you look at a preacher curl, it's kind of the opposite of that because what you have is you have the biceps being trained at a shorter muscle length because the elbow is in front of the body. But because the pad is there that your elbow is resting on, you're training, there's a ton of tension at the longest length that you achieve. So you're just not, you're not achieving a long muscle length for the bicep because it's in front of your body. You would have to put the bicep. your body to receive a long muscle length or to achieve a long muscle length. But the preacher curl is great because it provides a ton of tension. In fact, the most tension at the point where the bicep is the longest. So this brings us to this point of to optimize gains. And this isn't just for biceps. It's for any muscle group. We want to not just train it along muscle length, but we want to put tension on the muscle at a long muscle. And when you look at the comparison of the preacher curl to the incline dumbbell curl, they actually did a study to compare this, which is dope because it gives us this really cool insight that it's actually the preacher curl, which provides more tension at its longest length. That's more effective for growth than the incline dumbbell curl, which has the muscle at a longer length, but lacks tension at that long length. So I think that that that information is. maybe somewhat intuitive for people that put a lot of thought into it, but I will say until the last few years of all of this length and stuff and length and overloaded and where the tension is and all this stuff, I hadn't thought a lot about it from that frame of reference. How about you? Like what has that study and the just bicep training in general, long muscle length stuff, what has that kind of taught you? It's confusing, right? But I think the example you gave is a very realistic example that anyone who's spent enough time training can think back to the times that they've done that movements and identify with that, right? Now, with the preacher curl, right? Where, like you said, especially if you're doing a dumbbell or an easy bar, you're not typically getting that full lockout because it feels like your fucking elbow is going to snap. backwards, you know, and it's it's terribly uncomfortable. But at wherever you stop the movement, which is, you know, longer than shorter, there is an insane amount of tension, which is why it feels like your elbows going to snap. Right. Relative to like, you know, incline dumbbell curl or the seated cable curl mimicking that you don't have that near, you know, the amount of tension because you don't kind of have that fulcrum. you know, with gravity pulling on one side and in the one part being fixated behind your tricep. then I think it makes perfect sense if you just, I mean, if you've done both and spent any kind of time training them, like you, like, yeah, it makes perfect sense. Yeah. Well, so what this study and this general exploration of biceps and muscle length has kind of created in my brain and where it begins to go now is, okay, preacher curls are great because there's a lot of tension at a relatively long muscle length and incline curls are great because they get you a longer muscle length. How can we combine these two movements together to kind of get the best of both worlds? because we know that there's something about having that elbow pad there for the preacher curl that allows you to feel that incredible tension at the bottom. So I think there's kind of two ways, three ways maybe, three ways that we can talk about kind of how to optimize this. And so the first one, the most obvious one would be to get a pad, a preacher pad of some sort, and to get your elbow behind your body. And so if you look at these new benches that Prime has, they have these wings that come off the side of the bench that you can buy. It's like an additional, I don't know, 170 to $200, which is kind of crazy for some like little pads that you add to a bench. But you have this prime bench, you get these little pads. They're like little preacher curl pads. And essentially what that allows you to do is have a preacher support anytime that your arm is, I guess, however you want to orient your body so that you can create the longest muscle length possible. And so you can do that. by like one way that would be really simple to do this if you don't have the cool prime bench is to find a preacher bench. But instead of doing it the normal way where you put your elbows in front of your body, it would be to lean your body back against the preacher bench where your arm is then resting on the preacher bench behind your body. So you're kind of emulating the torso angle that you get from the incline dumbbell curl. But now you have that support for your humerus for your upper arm. that allows you to not just achieve a long muscle length for your bicep, but then to achieve tension at that long muscle length. You could make that even better by having a cable come from behind you on a relatively low cable setup so that it's not gonna interfere with the bench itself. And you could legitimately have your elbows behind your body like you're doing a face -away curl, but you're resting your elbows on that pad. which then provide even additional support, gives you something to push against as you're curling, keeps your elbows behind your body the entire time and doesn't allow shoulder flexion. So it doesn't allow you to bring your arm forward as you're lifting the weight, which keeps more tension into the bicep there as well. So I guess that if you want to go one step slightly less productive than that, you could just do a face away curl. which I think is totally fine and effective because the beauty of the face-way curl is that there's a ton of tension as those arms are behind you, as the cable is pulling your arm back and down behind you. It's just that by lacking that preacher pad support for your elbow, there's less stability and there's higher proclivity to allow shoulder flexion to occur and to bring your arm forward as you curl. But if you can hold yourself accountable to pin the... the arms behind your body. I almost kind of pin them into my lats. Like I think about it, like my scapula is holding my arms in place. And then I just elbow flex from that position so that my arm isn't moving forward as well. So those are all really great options where you can kind of get the best of all worlds where you're getting the long muscle length, but you're also getting a ton of tension there. What do you think? Have you experimented with those? Yeah, so I was just gonna add something that I do when I perform the, you know, behind the back, I'm sorry, face away dual cable curl is obviously the, like you said, the arms are behind you. I will flare my lats to give me like a little bit of like a, just a, like a, what's the word? Like proprioception, something to give me a cue to like wedge my tricep into. It's a side of my tricep, right? But it's still enough to where like I feel extra stability. for me to just generate force from, right? I mean, like with most movements, the more stable that you can get whatever area that you're trying to generate the force from, you can typically generate greater forces from that. So I flare my lats a little bit to help me do that. Yeah, no, I do the exact same. And the same idea that you're talking about, I also implement into my seated face -away curl. So when I have a seated face -away curl where it's set up like an incline curl would be, I just pin my triceps into the side of the bench, which is the same thing that you're talking about if you were doing them freestanding without a bench, just to provide that stability there. And so I think those are really productive. I do think using the preacher pad is... marginally better than not. But I think for us with big lats and the ability to brace and stabilize in that manner and the experience to understand that we're not bringing the arm forward as we're curling, like we're not doing a front raise for our shoulders as we're curling, we're locking the arm in place and then we're just bending at the elbow. If you're able to implement that, then I think that... that movement is only marginally less effective than having the proper wings on the bench or anything like that. So I do think that's the number one bicep movement, because it's gonna combine tension at long muscle lengths and long muscle lengths itself. So I think that would be my number one. This is one of those variations. Would you agree with that? I would definitely agree. Yeah. If you're like Aaron, you get to choose two. That's 100 % one of them. Yeah. So, so for sure, for me, the behind the back with some sort of tension at long muscle length is the number one. I think the number two would be the preacher. So I think now we're moving the elbow into the front position. So it's in front of your body, but you're putting a pad there so that you have a ton of support and you're getting a lot of tension at the long muscle length, even though the muscle length is not as long. and one of my favorite versions of this, because I don't have a preacher curl machine. I actually have found a few preacher curl machines that are, man, chef's kiss, they're so good. But I don't have one. And so what I've found at home to be my favorite version of this is to take an incline bench and face it the wrong way. So it's facing into the cable machine. And then I loop my arm over the incline bench. So I'm kind of doing like a down slope incline curl, but I'm doing it with a cable. because I mean, I think a dumbbell is fine and effective for preacher curls too, because you're getting that tension at the long muscle length. What I love about the cable is that it gives you the tension at the long muscle length, but then it also gives you that even resistance profile where you're getting tension throughout the movement too. So I love that kind of down slope preacher cable curl. What would you put as your number two? It would be a preacher curl machine if it's a good one, which this, I'm glad you asked, because this is something I wanted to kind of bring up and get some of your points on. I find that past a certain level of strength using the preacher curl, whether that's like a traditional one where you're sitting down and using the easy bar that you're loading plates on or a unilateral with a dumbbell, I, this is my personal opinion, so it could be wrong. I feel like the risk associated with that as you get, pretty strong skyrockets. Like that is one of the few movements where if I'm performing it, my body the entire time is like, don't fucking do this. Don't fucking do this. Do not fucking do this. And I'm like, okay, I'll listen. I'll listen. But it just, it feels horrible. Like it literally feels like things are going to pop in there. And I think it's because to get, for it to be heavy enough for you to have some kind of tension through the mid range, it's incredibly heavy at the bottom. bottom. Yeah. I would say it would be like a either a plate loaded preacher curl machine or you know pin loaded. Fortunately most you're going to find these in most gym locations that are pretty decent. Yeah, I've seen enough of those bicep tear videos on the internet to be scared as well. And it's always, every time you see a bicep tear video, it's a preacher curl. And it's always a free weight preacher curl. So I have a few thoughts on this. I think there are two things that contribute to this disaster of tearing biceps on preacher curls. One is if the pad is too flat. So if when you think about where the tension is gonna be the highest, If you have a pad for your elbows and it's completely flat, just even though these don't really exist completely flat, they're usually angled in some way, but imagine if it's completely flat, then the point of most resistance is going to be that very bottom position. Because as soon as you begin to curl, that is the most, the most length and position you can get, the most tension you can get in the length and position. As the pad gets, gets steeper, So now imagine the complete opposite where the pad is completely vertical. So it's not angled at all. Imagine it's just completely vertical. Well, now you're almost at a point where there's very little tension at the bottom, or at least there's less than there would be if that plat pad was completely flat, like horizontal to the ground. So I think the angle of the pad really matters. And the ones that are more, that are less angled are going to provide a... more nauseating feeling in that like, shit, I might tear a bicep than the ones that are angled more steeply. So I think that's one concern. The second concern is in being in extreme supination. So that would be your palms facing up. And when you're in an easy bar curl, there's no way out than your palms facing straight up. And that's why that feels so awkward at the bottom. I think that if you can even get a very slight turn toward like, semi -neutral. So call it like half supinated, half neutral. I think that that changes that stress on the biceps significantly. And you'll see a lot of the preacher curl machines now are actually made with handles that kind of V. So you're able to get that like half supination, half neutral grip curl. And I think that that just feels much less tragic than the completely supinated version. You're nodding as if you agree as well. Yeah. Yes, 100 percent, 100 percent. I think the nice thing about cables and dumbbells when you're doing a preacher is that you can find that semi supinated position without having to be locked into true supination the entire time. So I do put the preacher up there and I do think, you know, avoiding extreme supination is probably a good idea. You probably will get slightly less length out of your bicep, but I wouldn't really worry about that too much because... The preacher curl naturally is going to put you into internal rotation more than the, behind the back curl is going to do. So if we assume that behind the back curl and external rotation at the shoulder is going to train more long head, then it's okay if we're not getting extreme supination on the preacher curl. And we're getting a little bit more short head in there, which kind of brings me into my next points of, of exercise selection, which would be that the short head of the bicep. does do internal rotation and kind of comes across the body when you curl. So I don't want to overcomplicate this because this was one of the confusing things for me when we went to end one, but essentially, internal rotation is going to have your bicep curl. If your shoulder is going to internally rotate, you're going to kind of curl across the body. So imagine, curling like to your opposite ear. So your right arm is going to your left ear as you curl or your left arm is going to your right ear. Really the only ways to get that to line up properly is going to be with cables. You're not going to be able to get any decent resistance profile on that type of movement with any sort of free weight implement. So if you did want to train the short head of the bicep, you do need to get into that internally rotation position. You need to kind of come across the body a little bit. So one of my favorite ways to do this is to sit down on the ground in front of the cable machine and use a low pulley. And then I kind of just jam my elbow into my knee, almost like how you would do a dumbbell concentration curl back in the day, but I'd be doing it with cables. And so then as I'm curling, it's emulating that position perfectly where I'm coming across my body. So the cable's coming from the opposite side of my body. And as I curl up, it goes right arm to left ear. And I also have the additional support of my elbow on my knee or on my thigh. So therefore I'm getting actually some tension at some long muscle length as well, even though it's training the short head of the bicep there. And then I would say to go one step further on bicep training, you do want some hammer grip stuff. So a hammer grip would train our brachioradialis more so than the bicep, which would be like more brachialis. And so, you know, I think the forearm muscle, the, the, rato radio, right? Braco radialis actually looks really cool. It's one of the things that I think looks the coolest when people are doing rows and you see that kind of big, bulgy muscle in the top of the forearm right underneath the elbow, kind of protrude out as you begin to row. That's a really cool look. And you can really tell people that have put the time in under under weights because That thing is not something that you get when you first start training. Like that's developed over years and years of developing man strength with pulling movements. And I think, you know, if you want to expedite that process a little doing some hammer grip curling is probably a good idea too. Yeah. Now, with that, I would say since we're I know we're going to be moving on, is there any kind of things that you find that could could be just really effective or helpful for someone who's maybe got like a pretty decent home gym or a garage gym set up and is looking for like some attachments or something like that that could really improve the quality and in joint, reduce joint? What's wrong? aggravation in doing that. Yeah, I mean, the best thing you can do is buy some sort of low pulley cable. Assuming they have that already. Yeah, they have. They have one of those. They have a low pulley cable at home. Then I guess the next best thing would probably. be a shipment. I don't know. I think honestly, you could probably optimize by like, like a machine preacher curl, but no one's gonna buy a machine preacher curl for their home gym. I don't I mean, maybe the pads for the bench, like if you have one of those prime benches, and you can get those wings for the bench, like that would be pretty dope. If you have a hip extension machine, a 45 degree or a GHD, then you can do the lean back version that I was talking about, where you kind of lean back and you treat the humps. as if they're the kind of preacher pad for you. And so you can hit that behind the back one that way, or you could use the humps as tricep support for a forward preacher curl with cables if you wanted to. I don't, I think beyond cables and some dumbbells, I don't think there's a ton that needs to go into optimizing bicep training. Am I missing anything, anything on your mind regards that? maybe it was just things that maybe I framed it poorly. So I'll take the take the loss on that. I've really noticed and maybe this is me entering my snobby years like the nylon kind of like D handles or like the soft foamy D handles versus just like the steel ones that are inflexible. Like if I go to a gym, they only have the steel ones. I'm like, what the fuck? Why I get like pretty pissed off if I'm going to be completely honest. So like those the cast handles. or the variations of that I feel like are very, very good. I feel like they're just really ergonomically designed. They just feel a lot better on your joints. There was one other, and then fat grips. I also really, really like, especially if you wanted to like kind of kill two birds with one stone, get some isometric work in on the forms. Like that one I find is very, very another like very simple addition to change like a variation too. Wouldn't you say that the fat grip though would take, it would train the forearm at the expense of taking the biceps to true failure. Like the forearm with a fat grip is probably gonna fail before the bicep does. I don't know. My kind of gut reaction would be no. I feel like I could put a fat grip on and still fail at the bicep, but I could be wrong. Yeah, I don't know. That's always been my, my thought of fat grip training is that it's going to be great for the forearms, but it is going to do so at the expense of the target muscle. And you see that with people doing like fat bar rows. And I'm always just like, but, but forearms, you know? So it kind of, to me, like, it feels like the same thing with biceps, but maybe it's different because you can kind of like palm it. So it's maybe less. Yeah. I feel like the cast handle has a semblance of that too. Like it has that fat side. and then the skinny side. So you kind of get the best of both worlds with the cat's handle. But yeah, to your point, I think finding a handle that feels really good is super important. And it doesn't have to be one of the ones that we said, like just even a $17 plastic D handle off Amazon for me, like I found one that I really like that has a really nice like rubbery grip to it and it fits in my hand perfectly. And it's just like a standard rubber D handle off of Amazon. So I think finding the one that works for you is super important as well. We talked about hammer grip. We talked about the different machines. I guess the last, we have two things maybe to finish up the full gym commercial gym one. And that would be to first to note that if you're training with dumbbells and you're not resting your forearm on some sort of preacher implement, you're always going to be fighting gravity and thus, any dumbbell, barbell, free weight curls are all going to be limited by essentially the short position. It would be when your forearm is parallel to the ground would be the point of most resistance. But with that comes, you know, when your arm is hanging straight down, if you're doing a barbell curl, dumbbell curl, and you're standing up type thing, there's just no resistance there. So we're always like, do full range of motion. Like make sure you get to the bottom and fully stretch the bicep. But in reality, you get to the bottom of a free weight curl and there's just no tension there. So yeah, like you probably should still do full range of motion because it standardizes reps and blah, blah, blah. You get as much length as you can out of it. But it just is a really ineffective way. I think if you're organizing your entire bicep training around free weight curling movements where you're basically standing up fighting gravity the whole time, I think there's just a lot missing from your biceps program. So probably worth using some machines and some cables if you want to. optimized bicep training there. And then the last thing we'll touch on here before we jump into home gym, garage gym is just what your current bicep routine looks like in your training. Obviously you're not training at the moment. So let's go back two weeks before you had a hernia. What was the full week of bicep training for you? So this one, it's honestly hard to answer and I feel kind of dumb even saying it. I stopped training them. Like they were getting so blown up just from my rows and stuff. Like they outpaced everything else in my body, you know, and they were already a strong point going into my physique. And then I, there was, I had him in my program. I had to take him out because my arms like literally blew up and then my joints were absolutely killing me. So I just stopped, you know, and in the final weeks I was doing like maybe honestly two. three sets of biceps per week and that was really it. So I feel like it's a kind of a cop -out answer, but that is the actual honest truth. So you were doing zero biceps work when you were doing two to three sets that was before you took them out completely. I, when I first started my program, I had, I think I had three sets on two, I had four sets on one day and I had three sets on another day. Okay, what'd that look like without a face-away curl and a preacher curl? One, no, one was a preacher curl and the other was just a dumbbell, a standing dumbbell curl. Yeah, I didn't have them in because there's only one functional trainer here and it kind of gets taken up often so, and I knew it was like a body part that would respond. So I kind of used that as a cop out to not program it optimally, but I just didn't, it didn't even last as is. What are you, what were you curling on dumbbell curls? Just standard like alternating dumbbell curl, both arms at the same time. Yeah, so what I was doing was two heavy sets, like the six to eight to just train them in a manner that I typically wouldn't. And then I had like two sets under 10 reps, two sets over 10 reps. But then something that I'll do sometimes, it's a little bit of like a, I mean, potentially like a mechanical drop set is I'll do two, I'll only do this on the last set. I'll do both arms at once. And then once they kind of fatigue, I'll go to alternating to give each one a little bit more of a rest. You can pump out a little bit of extra more reps. And then once those fatigue, I go right into alternating hammer curls. So I'm like moving from like, you know, low rests to inserting a little bit more rest by alternating and then moving into a more advantageous exercise with the hammer curl. Were you using the fifties for like those low rep sets? Actually, I guess you're in kilograms. Yeah. Like 20, 20. 20, the 20 kilo and I would get like five reps. Yeah. that's, dude, that shit was like, it always boggles my mind how people with like, an insane body part that obviously stands out can be using less weight for something than somebody else. Like you see Chris Bumstead and I see him doing curls with like 35s. And I'm always like, but I don't understand, you know? It's like, how? Because I use the 50s, like I use the 50s if I'm doing a set of six. That's. 20s and it felt like I had a million pounds in each hand and the reps were horrid. That's hilarious. Okay, cool. Well, I guess when it comes to biceps training for me, I'm also at this stage of life, not really training biceps or arms in general. As I'm in bike season, I am mostly doing upper body pulling, pushing, and delt work for my upper body at the moment. I am making sure that I do some movements that involve my triceps like dips or close grip pushups. I'm also doing narrow grip pull ups. So I'm doing some things that I know are going to train the function of the muscle without actually saying I'm doing direct tricep work or direct bicep work. So I don't have a ton if we're talking about reality of what I'm doing at the moment. But when it like I kind of alluded to earlier, when I am training biceps, when they're part of my program, when I'm programming for clients, we are going to have a face away curl of some sort, as much stability as we can get there. given their equipment options. And then we're going to have some sort of elbows in front curl. I'll often use that kind of down slope curl that I talked about with the cable where it emulates the preacher. I'll also do a spider curl, which I do prefer with cables as well. I love a spider curl with cables. There's only a little bit of tension at the bottom. The way I set it up is that the cable is kind of pulling me forward. So my elbows are in almost a preacher position. There's just no preacher pad under them to support them. So there is some tension at the bottom, but it's certainly more of a short overloaded movement. And then as far as structure of the bicep training session, I usually do tend to go short then lengthened if I'm doing two bicep movements in a session. So that would be spider curls for two to three sets and then face away curls for two to three sets. And that's usually sufficient bicep volume for a day. If they're on separate days, then that's fine too. I might do three or four sets of spider curls on one day and then three or four sets of face away curls on another day. And that seems to be a pretty thorough bicep slashing. Yeah. Just to be a little bit more educational for some listeners, if we wanted to, so you just described a short overload movement with the kind of spider curl or elbows in front, a more lengthened exposure with the elbows behind. Let's say someone wanted to throw in like a mid -range bicep overloading exercise to really kind of complete the trifecta. What would you use there? Or what would be some good examples of that? Yeah, I mean, a mid -range exercise is just one that's hardest in the middle. So it's not biased to the length and position or to the short position. So something like an inclined dumbbell curl actually would really be a mid -range movement because the most tension of the movement is at that point where the elbow is, or where the forearm is, is parallel to the ground. But when you're doing an incline curl, people don't stop the rep when the forearm is parallel to the ground. They usually continue up higher. So at that, depending on how you perform the movement, that would be a mid -range movement. I think that's a totally reasonable mid-range movement. I think you could do a standing dumbbell curl, standing barbell curl. And while that is short mid, it is mid. Because again, the point of most resistance is where the forearm is parallel to the ground. It's likely that you're going to come up slightly higher than that, which puts the most tension in the mid -range. I mean, I think there's value in those movements. Like, I don't think everything needs to be short and length. And like, I think you can get a lot of the benefits of all of it by doing mid -range stuff. And I think that applies to many muscle groups as well. Like when you do a chest press machine or a cable chest press or something, that's mostly mid -range stuff as well, depending on how you set up. But it's likely not the hardest at the short or the hardest at the length. And it's usually pretty even and it's hard in the middle. So I do think there's a lot of value in mid -range overloaded movements to kind of hit all the bases at once too. And I think if you look at anecdotally over time, a lot of movements that have been effective have been mid -range movements too. Yep, wonderful explanation. Cool. All right, well, we are way deep into this thing now and we're jumping into the garage gym and CrossFit gym setup. And man, it's like with some muscle groups, we have more to talk about with this than other muscle groups. But I literally like, I don't have a lot to say on either the home gym or the dumbbell bands options because you're just so limited by not having access to cables and machines. So. the best options to train at long muscle length here, where we want tension at long muscle length and we want to train at long muscle lengths, is that exercise we talked about prior, where you're leaning back against either a preacher bench or a hip extension machine. So you have those barrels of the hip extension machine. And as, like we were talking about, as you lean back, your elbow's behind your body, but it's supported and there's tension throughout the entire movement. And so that would work really well with dumbbells. You could also do all varieties of proper preacher curls where the elbows are going to be in front of the body and resting on a pad. So you can do that on the downslope of an incline bench with a dumbbell. You can do a proper preacher curl where there's like a proper hump in your elbows on there. You can use your hip extension machine to create the preacher bench. But I mean, really in reality, like, you're not that limited by not having cables because you're still able to achieve long muscle lengths at high tension with the elbow behind the body. And you're able to achieve shorter muscle lengths with tension at the length of position through the proper preacher curl, whether that's with an easy bar, straight bar, dumbbell, et cetera. And then you can do spider curls. So we just finished the full gym segment talking about spider curls where I do them with cables, but there's really no reason that because it's a short overloaded movement anyways, the dumbbell is going to be super effective or an easy bar as well. You know, you sit up on an inclined bench, you loop your arms over the top of it, or you sit down on the bench and kind of put your arms to the side of the bench. Either one of those work totally fine. Elbows are in front of the body. It's relatively short overloaded and you can get a ton of benefit from spider curls that way too. Because bicep training at home is slightly more limited without cables and machines, I do tend to sequence movements slightly differently. And so oftentimes I'll have people go spider curl directly to incline curl. And oftentimes you can use the same weight there because you're going to be stronger with the elbow behind the body and the incline curl. So I could use 30s for spider curls and then immediately turn around into the same bench and go into incline dumbbell curls with 30s. So it's almost like a mechanical drop set, but it's also training the bicep at a different shoulder position. So we have the internally rotated position with the elbow in front with the spider curl into the externally rotated position with the arm behind and the incline dumbbell curl. So you maybe just need to get like a little bit more creative when you're at home in that manner, but it isn't prohibitive to making great gains in your biceps at all. What do you think? What did I miss? Are you there? Yeah, I think I think we just had some some connectivity issues. Well, as you were as you were talking, I was really sitting here thinking and, you know, as I know, we've as we've gone through the series, there's been like a lot of pretty significant tradeoffs, you know, moving from the like commercial gym into the garage or function, the garage or functional functional training facility. As you were talking, I'm thinking like, I don't I think in this context, I don't think the tradeoffs are nearly as. significant as in some of the other other body parts because you know what you can do is you can manipulate your body or the position of your arm relative to behind your body at your side in front of your body so that you're changing where the bicep is when it's when when when the forearm is perpendicular sorry not perpendicular parallel with with the floor where gravity is acting on it most so you really could change where you bias the overload of words. It's like, it's not gonna be completely lengthened, but like mid lengthened, mid or mid short. And I feel like you can, of the muscle groups, you know, that I can think of pretty much off the top of my head, this is probably one of the best that, you know, not having access to the commercial facility is limiting you less than with some of the other ones. Yeah, I agree. I think that's a good point. You just got to get a little bit more creative. Like, like you need to use your hip extension machine to lean back against because doing just a standard incline dumbbell curl, like we've talked about, isn't going to provide tension at long muscle lengths. It's just going to get you a long muscle length, but by leaning back against the pad of that hip extension or preacher pad or whatever it is, providing support for the arm while it's behind your body is going to provide tension there at that position. So, so, and Vivi just ran in. So anyways, that is, that is why it's important. And I would just encourage you if you are training at home, I would make sure not to just be relegated the entire time to doing standing variations of curls. So don't just do standing dumbbell curls, standing hammer curls, standing barbell curls. Like make sure you change the orientation of the elbow in relation to your body and all that sort of stuff too. You're on mute. You're on mute. Yeah, my bad. OK, so I feel like we covered that part pretty well. And then not too much is going to change with with moving into the dumbbell or bands only, because pretty much everything that Brian said in the garage gym or the CrossFit gym, you're just going to be changing your body positioning to further replicate those those same positions. You might not have the GHD. Obviously, you might have to use the side of the sofa or something like that to create a as similar of a of a of a setup, but it's still very, very doable. And based off the things that we were talking about. Yes, you could use a barbell. I don't think it's it's better in many cases, I would honestly say it's worse, especially if you're older and you already have some miles on those joints, the likelihood of aggravating that only increases with with using more of a fixed position. So. Moving into that, I think like everything Brian said still makes perfect sense with those same positions. Using the bands... I'm sure there could be a use case. Again, it would be around being like really creative in how you're setting that up. But I just I don't think it's really necessary. And I'm sure Brian probably has some some insights and I'm sure there's probably been some uses that I'm kind of skimming over here. But I would say you're probably going to get the majority of what you would need from the from the dumbbells, especially. given that the biceps are smaller muscle groups where we're not as strong. You might be even as weak as I am apparently in using them. So the dumbbells that you typically have in sizes that you have at home are probably adequate there. What are your thoughts, Brian? Yeah, one of the things I like that you said is kind of staying away from the barbell as much as possible because that we talked about the problem of kind of locking yourself in supination for curls and how that can, in the preacher specifically, it can put the bicep at risk. But I think even locking yourself into supination for something like a standing curl with a barbell, it can, while not providing risk for the bicep specifically, it can cause. tendonitis, fatigue issues in your wrists, your elbows, and maybe even your shoulders, but probably wrists and elbows the most. And so yeah, the nice thing about the dumbbell is the ability to be able to rotate it to that semi supinated position where it's half neutral, half supinated. And I think that that just lines up a lot better with keeping joints healthy and things like that. So yeah, that's pretty much the home gym one. Do you have anything to add to home gym? You're unmuted again. I'm rusty. So obviously, like if you go on YouTube and stuff like you're going to see all these like variations and stuff that people come up with. But like we spoke about many times on the podcast before, just because there's a variation of something doesn't mean it's actually worthwhile doing, you know, like like you see the the kind of like the TRX one where you're like using your body weight as like a high, you know, a high cable curl. I can't I cannot confidently say it's worth. spending your time as opposed to like a standard dumbbell standing curl or seated curl or something like that. Yeah. It's any of those movements that use rings or TRX and your body weight, you're just so limited in the ability to progress and standardize. So like you can, you can progress by moving further under the rings each time, but like, how do you know exactly where you are? Like, are you marking your feet with a chalk mark and moving them forward one inch each, each session or something along those lines? It just, it adds complication that isn't necessary to optimize bicep training. So I guess if we then move into like the dumbbell and bands program, like I literally have nothing to say now because it's all covered in the home gym version. It's just that you don't have barbells. So now now you literally are just doing all of the same movements that we just said with dumbbells. The the thing with dumbbell is you you're probably not going to have a hip extension bench as well. So you're going to be more limited in that sense. You're probably not going to be able to do that lean back thing that I was talking about. I said the sofa maybe you could get creative with this like the if you have like an old school kind of sofa that's a grounded. absolutely. You can use a sofa. You could also do them single arm and lean back and angle your body against your inclined bench. So like you wouldn't be able to do this dual arm because it would then it would just become an inclined dumbbell curl. But if you want support for your upper arm while you're doing it, you could certainly like angle your torso, have your arm kind of leaning against the pad as you, you curl back and then you get some tension there at that length and position. You'd have to do those single arm. I haven't programmed them. Maybe that's something I'll film a video of and get into our app here in a little bit as another option. One of the things that I use a lot with the dumbbell only programs is that one arm preacher curl on the down slope of the incline bench. So I just like having that support there. You expect your dumbbell program to have a bench. It makes it pretty easy. Even if you only have a flat bench and you don't have a incline bench to do that with, you could just kneel widthwise to your bench. So you're going to cross the bench with your arms, rest your triceps on the opposite side of the bench. It's a flat bench. And curl that way where the dumbbells are going down towards the floor. One other one that I guess I'd be remiss not to mention that's gotten a lot of popularity recently is the lying dumbbell curl. And so the lying dumbbell curl, if you let your arm hang from the shoulder vertically, then it's no better than an inclined dumbbell curl because you're still not having any tension at the bottom where gravity is fighting you the hardest. If however, you're able to lean back on your bench, lie down, and then also kind of get your arms in tight to your body where you can almost rest part of the elbow on the bench by your waist, then now you've created almost a preacher position for your bicep at the bottom position where there's a little bit of support. And that's actually a really effective way of achieving tension at a relatively long muscle length with a dumbbell only option as well. So yeah, I think those are probably the main things you can certainly still do your dumbbell spider curls, you can do your standing curls, your hammer curls, your inclined dumbbell curls, your concentration curls. There's a number of like there's your you can still train your short head, you can still train your long head there's there's very few limitations even with dumbbells only that prohibit you from maximizing bicep growth. So to Aaron's point, like it is kind of one of those muscle groups where yes, it's more optimized and it's probably better for your joints if you have a full gym, but you can still optimize growth and protect your joints sufficiently by training in a home gym or dumbbell only style as well. Yeah, yep, very well put. So I guess that wraps us up on this episode, guys. Next week, we will do either the remaining training series or potentially something else, which will be. Q &A. We haven't done a June Q &A yet. We haven't, and June is already almost over. So we will definitely, definitely do that. Sounds good. As always guys, thank you for listening. Brian and I will talk to you next week.