How Much Bicep Workout Is Best?
Dose-Response Relationship of Weekly Resistance-Training Volume and Frequency on Muscular Adaptations in Trained Men.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Doubling or tripling training volume didn’t lead to significantly more muscle growth.
Fitness culture often pushes 'more is better,' but here, 9 sets worked nearly as well as 27 for hypertrophy—challenging the idea that volume linearly increases gains.
Practical Takeaways
If you're short on time, do 9 bicep sets once a week to maintain or build muscle.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Doubling or tripling training volume didn’t lead to significantly more muscle growth.
Fitness culture often pushes 'more is better,' but here, 9 sets worked nearly as well as 27 for hypertrophy—challenging the idea that volume linearly increases gains.
Practical Takeaways
If you're short on time, do 9 bicep sets once a week to maintain or build muscle.
Publication
Journal
International journal of sports physiology and performance
Year
2019
Authors
Samuel R Heaselgrave, Joe Blacker, B. Smeuninx, James McKendry, L. Breen
Related Content
Claims (6)
If you're already building muscle well with just a little bit of lifting, doing a lot more workouts won't help much more and will just make you more tired and slower to recover — it's not worth the extra effort.
Doing more biceps workouts each week might help build stronger, thicker muscles—even if the differences aren’t crystal clear in the data, it seems like more sets could mean better results.
If young guys who already lift weights do just 9 sets of biceps exercises in one workout each week for 6 weeks, they’ll still gain noticeable arm muscle and strength.
If young guys who already lift weights do a lot of sets (27 per week) twice a week, they get noticeably stronger in static holds after 6 weeks—doing fewer sets (9 or 18) doesn’t seem to help much.
If you're a guy who's already used to lifting weights, doing biceps exercises for six weeks — whether you do a little, medium, or a lot each week — can make you noticeably stronger.