Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 300 - How to Get Bigger Biceps

Episode Date: December 27, 2019

We took the Power Project Podcast on the road to our favorite Coffee Shop, Philz Coffee in Davis, CA! Today is episode 300, thank you all for hanging with us this long. We felt it was only right to talk about one of the most important topics on the planet, how to grow bigger biceps! Mark and Nsima share how they've been able to train to grow bigger arms and Andrew describes how he was able to make the turn from tiny arms to a little bit bigger than tiny. Enjoy this episode and if in Davis, hit up Philz Coffee! Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 15% off your order! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject  ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject   ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

The flannel shirt with the peak. Oh, we sound pretty good on here, huh? Yeah, we sound great. Hey! I think mainly because it's episode 300 today, guys. Hey, let's make sure that this episode gets recorded just like we did down in L.A. last time we were at a coffee shop. Okay, see, the timer's going. The only thing I can't control is if the building explodes like the last coffee shop did.

That was really weird. Remember it kept shutting out? The building explodes like the last coffee shop did. That was really weird. Remember, it kept shutting out? Again, so this is the episode that nobody ever got to hear nor see. DJ was here. That's when SEMA gave away all his secrets on how he stays so lean and jacked. That was when he admitted why he changed his name from Not Natty Professor. Yeah.

Not Natty Professor? Yeah. Because you're no longer Natty Professor. Yeah. And that was that episode where you admitted everything that you had been doing and why you can't lose that routine. Was it hard to profess naturally when you weren't? Oh, what's up, dude? I think you maybe left something behind.

Oh, he left his coffee. Yeah, we're here today at Phil's Coffee. So today's a little bit different, celebrating episode 300. And as always, and Seema's always dodging questions over here. And we're going to talk today, because it's episode 300, we're going to talk about one of our favorite topics, not poop, not masturbation. Sorry.

Sorry, guys. Those are our favorites, though. Yeah. Maybe we should, should we just talk about that then yeah let's just go into that i just took a shit right now oh wow before the coffee helped out and i didn't masturbate over christmas i'm gonna have some major butthole problems over the next couple days because i got like a little bit of a diet break going on don't tell me you're in cars i did what i know i know i'm sorry i'm off the team and is that

legal it you know it's really actually kind of hard to do it really was i was like i don't i don't really care i don't really want to do this my kids were really pumped i ate like uh i just ate like weird stuff just because weird things happen when you've gone as long like it was about three months worth so almost and uh quinn's like you should make some toast and i was like i was like well i can i guess i will so a lot of it was a lot of those little things it was like it wasn't like i don't i don't really care about like mcdonald's but my kids were like let's go to mcdonald's so i got a chocolate shake from there and just the first first sip, I was like, oh, my God. It was kind of good because I sort of forgot. Not that I haven't had anything sweet because I've had some keto treats and like perfect keto bars and a couple things like that here and there.

And even like protein shakes and stuff. But I really almost forgot how much flavor is in something like that. You can taste everything. I can taste the salt that's in a chocolate shake, which I don't think I was ever able to even notice before. Yeah. So when you're doing the War on Carbs or the No Carbs Till Christmas, can you explain how you're still able to have something like perfect keto, like the keto bars?

Yeah. So what I mean by no carbs is I'm just trying not to intentionally eat carbs. So I'm not eating like a banana. I'm not getting not to intentionally eat carbs. So I'm not eating like a banana. I'm not, you know, getting sugar in my coffee. I'm not eating rice or cereal or milk or any of these things. So like I might eat like an avocado. An avocado has like 12 grams of carbs, but it has fiber in it. You know, and then something like a perfect keto bar, perfect keto bars have fiber in it.

So basically the net amount of carbohydrates is very low. And so by going off of those standards and the reason for it too is none of this has anything to do with carbohydrates making you fat. I'm not a believer that carbs make you fat or that fat makes you fat. We make ourselves fat by making a decision to overeat. You can stop yourself from overeating. You have a lot of opportunities. You can pass up on certain foods, right? You have a lot of opportunities to not gain weight,

and then we get addicted to food and have so much trouble with that process. And for me personally, that's the biggest struggle for me, is that if I'm allowed to eat any carbs, even the healthier carbs, they're slower-digesting carbohydrates, then I just want to kind to eat any carbs, even the healthier carbs, they're slower digesting carbohydrates, then I just want to kind of eat any and everything. So Perfect Keto Bar is great because it gives me the flavor that I'm looking for. It gives me a little pop, gives me something to look forward to at the end of the day, and just kind of helps satisfy that craving.

The cool thing about products like that, the cool thing about Perfect Keto products in general, is that the flavor is really, really good, but it doesn't taste as good as a chocolate shake from McDonald's. So what are the odds of you overeating that product? You're probably going to be less likely to overeat and overindulge on that product. But anyway, thank you so much for everybody that followed along with No Carbs Till Christmas. People got the message loud and clear because when I posted yesterday and I was posting that I was eating this eating this and that, like people weren't like,

oh man, now I got it. Like they didn't think that they had to go and do that. They were just like, oh man, I'm, I actually decided I'm going all the way through January. And that was kind of what I was hoping. A bunch of people told me they lost 20 pounds, which I was like, holy crap. I, you know, in basically a month or I'm sorry, two months because it started in November. People lost around 20 pounds. And then my aunt in New York, she lost 16 pounds and she's like kind of gone full carnivore and stuff like that. So shit, man, I just think that's awesome. I think it's great that we can talk about stuff on this podcast or on our social media forums and people can get all hyped up like they did for

shred again like they did for you getting abs for christmas and stuff like that i i got such an amazing response like um his name just slipped my mind but uh there's a guy that's that's fighting cancer and he's like you know i'm not using this as an excuse i'm gonna follow this this shred again trend and you know uh hit up Shred City. And it was pretty interesting because he was like, right now, because of chemo, I can't taste anything. He's like, so because of that, I'm just going to eat all healthy shit that doesn't taste great, but it doesn't matter because it's just substance that I'm eating. I'm like, oh, my God.

Dude, you have no idea how much of an impact you're making right now. That's so motivating. Exactly. It's great when we hear from the fans and they tell us you know what the podcast did for them or something it gets us hyped up it gets us out of bed it gets us excited to go in the gym and tear it up and stuff like that yeah i did enjoy a hero bar on christmas eve it was incredible wait so how about you what did you do like in terms of food for christmas well you know mexican family so we had a bunch of tamales and i will say that i had the first really bad blowout in a long time christmas day because all

the food i ate in christmas congratulations it was dude it was so like uh mike uh mutzel posted something uh today i think and he said nobody ever bragged about like feeling sick after they ate or you like you know what i mean like it was like oh nobody ever like celebrates how much bad food they ate i kind of did because it it hurt so bad that i didn't want to do it again yeah like i i had sweet like i had uh stephanie makes these like coke like they're basically like almond joys but they're homemade and i don't even like almond joys but i'm like oh these are great i had one like these are really good i had another one i had like five they're so good um but it all started off with like having the uh the hero bar because i had one stashed away i was like i've been waiting to eat this one and so i celebrated with that one but you know uh tamales uh salsa and chips what else? Nothing too crazy after that.

Like, I still was pretty conscious about everything. Like, I didn't want to have a bunch of ham because it was, like, more fat and then, you know, just more of everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, that's about it. But you did feel like crap afterwards, right? I felt horrible the next day. Yeah. Yeah.

Go ahead. Oh, my gosh. So my sister-in-law makes homemade peanut butter cups. Ooh. Dude. I didn't get an invite to any of this. Tamales, peanut butter cups. Because I ate them all.

Those were insane. They're just basically big balls of peanut butter, and she coats them in chocolate, and it's exactly what you're imagining. You had me at chocolate balls. I ain't even trying to lie over here. Yeah, yeah. imagining you had me at chocolate balls i ain't even trying to lie over here yeah yeah yeah uh so i had those also and i think that was like the tipping point because uh christmas eve i didn't even go to bed till like 2 a.m because we had four christmases to go to it's insane but i was sitting there at night i'm like dude i want something else like i just kept wanting more

and more and more i'm like this is bad so i had egg whites and rice and finally I was able to be like, oh, I'm full now. Did you guys end up seeing that roast beef that I had my brother-in-law cooked up? No, I didn't see it. Oh my God. Insert pink jokes here. Is that on your Instagram?

Yeah, it was amazing. It might have been one of the better pieces of steak I've ever had. It was unreal. Prime rib, like, I don't know. I like prime rib. Prime rib is okay, but I don't really like prime rib that much, to be honest. Like, at a restaurant, it's kind of like the old people food to get. I don't know why old people enjoy it so much, but I don't normally get it.

I usually get, like, a filet or ribeye or something, or a New York strip. And, fuck, man, he sous-vide the thing. It looked amazing. He smoked it. He sous-vide it. it i usually get like a filet or ribeye or something or a new york strip and uh fuck man he sous vide the thing it looked amazing he smoked it he sous vide it looking at it right now he seasoned it so good it was just dumb how good i mean it was it was unbelievable i mean i had probably three or four big you know pretty big slices of it yeah and everybody knows about my no carbs till christmas so everyone's like you're to eat a bunch of carbs and I was like not when that's sitting here so I made it through pretty much the whole day without

doing too much damage. How about for you Nsema? No the reason why I asked Andrew that question how he felt because it's like I wasn't going no carbs till Christmas but I wasn't eating like total crap every single day up to Christmas right? Christmas comes along there's hella desserts.

So I'm like, I'm going to have one of each. And I knocked out right after. I felt so bad. I'm like, wow, damn, I used to feel like this a lot. And I thought this was normal. So it's kind of a good thing. You know, I don't want to feel like that. So you kind of realize how good you feel up to it.

And then it comes and you enjoy it and then you feel like shit. It's like a good deterrent, like you said, Andrew. Yeah. And then yesterday on Christmas Day, I finally had the tomahawk steaks from pied montes oh there we go oh my gosh uh of course it was way too much how'd you cook them um didn't go out into the smoker i was actually kind of upset at myself that i didn't like time it well enough but um so i just uh baked them in the oven and then i tried tried to sear them on the stovetop, and it didn't really work out, but everything was incredible. It was so damn good.

I cut the bone right off, and I just started gnawing away on that. I was like, I haven't even got into the steak yet, and this is already insane. I still haven't cooked one. Dude, it's so good. I think it's great when you eat like that, then, like, you realize, like, other people are looking at you and you're, like, you're sitting there with a bone and you're, like, being a total savage. Yeah. Everyone's like, what are you doing? It was really, like, I just, I put a bunch of salt, a little bit of seasoning, and then threw it in the oven and I used my thermometer to make sure I had the right temperature.

That's a huge, you got to get one of those if you if it makes life so easy thermometer it's imagine just a slower air fryer that's what the oven is when you have a thermometer you just you just plug it right into the meat and then when you have it to the set like temperature that you want then you just pull it out pause this is like a or an oven safe thermometer like yeah you can it tells you it tells you when it's done yeah it's like a or an oven safe thermometer like yeah you can it tells you it tells you when it's done yeah it's like electronic or something right so the one that i have it's uh it's not wireless you just you just put the probe in the meat and then uh you just set a temperature you're inserting your probe yeah you probe it oh there's a there's a mike bell sighting oh hey

pop a mic yeah don't want to get this guy on the podcast. But, yeah, anyway, so we destroyed that Piedmontese steak, and it was phenomenal. Like, I'm really happy that I figured out another way how to cook an already really good-tasting cut of meat. All right. We've got to talk about biceps. Finally. Because I know we've got the new year coming, and people want to get jacked, and they want to be bigger. They want to look better. they want to have abs.

But look, man, we need some bigger biceps. So we're going to give you guys the top five things that we think, or it might be more than five, but we're going to give you guys the top five things that we think will be the most beneficial. We're not really going to talk about food and sleep and supplements. Having all that stuff intact is kind of a no-brainer. But what we will tell you about is the sets, the reps, the weight, how often we think you should do biceps. So just to kind of kick things off and give you a general maybe skeleton of what I think would be really beneficial for most, because I think that maybe these are things that people, there might be a couple things in here that people aren't doing.

And I would just say kind of number one, and Nsemi, you can interject, you're kind of number one as well. But my number one would be just to train your biceps, maybe the same way you train your squat, maybe a similar way that you train your bench, and maybe a similar way that you train like your deadlift. similar way that you train like your deadlift. So with that in mind, now's not the time to, you know, do like an incline curl with tons of isolation because we want to handle, that's a great exercise. I think awesome exercise. But that's going to probably be something you would want to do later on the workout. What I think most people should be checking out and

looking into is just training their biceps heavier. Yeah. Just grab a heavier weight. And I think that lead leans in well and leads well with what you were saying earlier about picking the movements. Exactly. Like, you know, if you're, if you're going to be doing a leg workout, most people would start with squats, you know, to attack most of the muscles in the legs, then they'll move into their leg press, leg extension, whatever. I think the same thing kind of goes with the biceps, you know, maybe starting with a barbell bicep curl or bigger bicep curl that you can do with more weight. Maybe it's a cable bicep curl with a lot on the rack that you can weight up and do for maybe sets of five to eight. You know what I mean? Do multiple sets of that. And then you

can move into smaller bicep movements. Um, along along with that like you want to think about if you're just doing biceps in a workout and you're writing out your workout because i think you definitely should you want to definitely think about how many total sets of biceps you're doing during the whole workout you know when you if you just go into the gym and you do it and you just focus on getting a really good pump and uh i guess making yourself really sore some people will do over like 30, 35 sets. But that, if you think about it. Because we get excited. We get excited.

Like we're pumped about it, right? Exactly. But if you think about how many sets that is, that's really hard to progress. So I like to think about just like generally. Most people should be doing between 14 and maybe 20, 22 sets in a total one workout. If you're a beginner, like you're just starting in the gym, it's probably a good idea to be on the slightly lower end of that because you're going to be making so much progress. And this is, you know, this is also something, you know, to consider is how frequently you're going to train

your arms. So if you train them properly and you get after it the right way and you incorporate some of the stuff we already mentioned, which was to go a little bit heavier, and we talked about picking major movements, if you think about those two things, now it's kind of, okay, how much frequency can we attack this with? And I would say about two times a week should be enough. And the second time that

you train in the week because you're doing pull-ups and bent over rows and a lot of other movements that are involving the biceps quite a bit um you might want that workout to have about half the amount of work that the first workout did um also too when you're talking about sets you're primarily talking about working sets. Is that right? I'm talking about working sets. So I'm not talking about like, maybe if you're doing a barbell bicycle, you might do like a warmup set or two to get up to your load. I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about your main working sets of that movement.

Um, so if you're thinking about like twice a week, maybe you're doing 15 sets, which like, let's just say you're doing 20 sets of workout. That's 40 total working sets of that muscle group each week broken into two workouts. There's also something out there called fat grips. And if you didn't have access to them or something, it's a pretty inexpensive investment. But just getting a thicker grip can really make a difference on how everything feels on your biceps. So for me, what I've done quite frequently is grab the squat bar. Squat bar is much thicker than a regular barbell. And now you have something a little bit, they have to squeeze

a little bit harder. That's a little bit more challenging to actually curl. Fat grips have been used by, you know, every top bodybuilder that you've seen. You don't necessarily need fat grips to have big biceps. That's not what I'm saying, but it could really help with the thickness and development of the bicep. And I just think it's simple enough to try to do. When you're going with the heavier weights and when you're trying to do some of these bigger movements, I think it's okay to have a little bit of body English. What do you think about that, Andrew? When we've been training, you think it's all right to kind of throw the back and legs in there a little bit, or how do you like to do it? Yeah. As long as the internet's not watching

because everybody, that's not strict or curl bro. Um, no, I like it because especially like after training with you for the bodybuilding show, I kind of understand like, okay, it almost, I mean, it matters, but it doesn't matter down here. It's really when you can turn and you can really squeeze at the top. That's where the money is. So if it means that I have to kind of swing my hips just a little bit to get it up there, dude, I'm all for it. It's just to allow you to handle a little bit more weight. And we're not talking about anything dangerous.

If something feels iffy, it's going to feel iffy and it's going to feel worse, especially when you add some weight. So that's not what we're talking about. We're just talking about getting a little dip in there, getting a little drive in there. But also keep in mind, because we're going heavier, and this is just a general strength training rule as well, you can allow the reps to dictate the type of weight that you use. Or you can allow the type of weight that you use to dictate the reps. But in either case, in either way that you want to do it, like let's just say you're like, oh, I'm going to grab 100 pounds.

And 100 pounds is challenging for you. You could kind of say to yourself, okay, this is probably going to be a three to five rep range lift that I'm going to do. Oh, yeah. And I'm not saying the reps should look like shit. All I'm talking about is getting a little body English behind it. Your last rep should look a little similar to your first rep. So there's really no reason to. All we're trying to do is send a message to our muscles that we are trying to make some change.

And we have to send a certain amount of signals to the muscle in order for it to grow. And that's why Ansema suggested, hey, maybe like doing 30 sets isn't a great idea. Another reason to not do 30 sets is that you're not going to be able to recover from it. You're not going to be able to pick up that extra bicep session a week. Also, maybe you'll be limiting your strength and your progress in other areas such as pull-ups and rows and things like that. And so we need to allow space and we need to allow some time for the muscles to grow. So training a little bit heavier, getting into some of the bigger movements. And then Nassim, what are your thoughts like as the workout progresses,

what should we be looking for? Let's say we got done with, let's say we started out the workout with a barbell curl and we got in three or four good sets of five reps. Yeah. So through the workout, I want to quickly attack what you guys mentioned in terms of like the body English, right? That's a great idea. And when people think about actually doing body English, right, or utilizing, I guess, heavier weight and moving around with it, they also start to go to failure a lot, which isn't a bad idea, but that's not something you want to do with your first movement of your workout. All right. Because when you think about going to failure too early in your workout, you fatigue the muscle too much. And then as you get deeper and deeper and deeper into your workout, you're not able to work with nearly as much overall load as you would have been if you were maybe leaving one to two reps in the tank of those earlier sets. Okay. If you think about it, it's like going to failure and squats on one set and then trying to do the same amount of reps in the next set. Right. So in the next set, right? So in your next movements, let's say that you just did a barbell bicep curl.

You can then move yourself on to maybe like a hammer curl or an incline bicep curl. And then you could also do after that maybe strict dumbbell bicep curls. They move to cables with single arm bicep curls or concentration curls to do those smaller movements. But what you want to do with any of these movements is since you've already done lower reps, you want to move into higher rep ranges. So you did your barbell curls for five to eight reps. Then you can move into smaller bicep curls for 10 to 15, 12 to 15, or maybe even 15 to 18 reps at the very end of your workout. And if you do want to use failure, which I is a really good idea to to finish things off i would say that should be something that you would do on maybe your last two exercises right meaning maybe you're if you're really gonna you know

write everything out that would maybe be your last six sets yeah last five sets of your workout what about um because you're we're basically saying like basically two times a week would be optimal. What about sneaking in a couple of sets in between like a bench session the way, you know, we kind of do every now and again. Oh, that's fine. The thing is like, when you think about doing that, right. I know I sound like, Oh, you need to write everything out and track everything. But if you're doing another day of biceps, let's say it's a different, it's a third day, right. Where you're doing, like you said, some bench and you're putting some arms in there and you want to do two sets of biceps, it's not going to fucking kill you. Like it's not going to mess anything up. But if you're really structuring other days, you want to make sure you're just not doing too much. The only

reason you're writing things down is so you can make it trackable. And you can also make sure that you're not doing so much that you can't recover from session to session. Right. And you want to have a goal in mind. And when you have a goal in mind and you write something down, you're not doing so much that you can't recover from session to session. Right, and you want to have a goal in mind. And when you have a goal in mind and you write something down, you're like, okay, I used 100 pounds last week and I did sets of five. Whatever way you have of writing things down, sometimes people will put rate of perceived exertion next to it, like on a scale of 1 to 10, how hard was it?

You can simply put a smiley face next to it and be like, yeah, that was, I'm good to go next week to probably try something a little bit more challenging, add a little bit more weight. Maybe you add another set. Maybe you cut back on the rest interval a tiny bit. But you want to be careful with that because, as Asima was saying, with going to failure, going to failure can be great. But under these circumstances, in the beginning of the workout

we don't want to do that and when we're training heavier and we have more compound movements in there we don't want to be uh cutting into the rest interval too much because you'll be too exhausted to handle that same you want it to be repeatable every time yeah um so what we're trying to do is is very simple and because it simple, you want it to be repeatable. And if we just try to go at a cadence of every 30 seconds or something like that and you're curling, you know, 60 pound dumbbells, you probably get tired really, really fast. And that's not that's not to say that that's a bad workout. That's just that's just a different style of working out. Yeah. And then just another idea here is like when we're thinking about making progress, there's a lot of different ways that someone could be making progress.

You can be either increasing the amount of sets of a load. So like let's say that you've really progressed a lot in terms of your biceps, right? And let's say you're now curling 50-pound dumbbells. Instead of increasing to 55, you could do an extra set of 50s or you can do an extra two set of 50s for a few weeks. Then you can increase to 55. And then also one other way of progression is making sure that your form is better. So for example, if you're using those 50s for curls and your reps are kind of iffy one week and then you use them the next week, you can look for stricter form or really focusing on feeling it in your bicep and getting better form the next week.

There's a lot of different ways to progress. You don't always have to increase the load, although it's a really good idea if you do. Andrew, what do you think about, like, C.T. Fletcher? You know, he's got some massive arms. And what do you think about his kind of style of training where he's commanding his arms to grow? I mean mean he literally is talking to his biceps have you done stuff like that in your training to get a little bigger and tighten up and stuff it i mean i started with ct fletcher right so like i would get motivation

from watching his his videos like uh he's the man no doubt cracking mother you know uh and then command demanding his biceps to grow but it didn't make any sense because i hadn't made any connection whatsoever with like any body part you know um but it wasn't until we trained with michael hearn when it's like dude why does he close his eyes and he's like i'm imagining the muscle fibers actually being broken down right where i want it and then so after that i was like okay well shit this guy knows what he's doing. Obviously, he looks amazing. So I'm like, all right, let's see what I can do.

And then that plus you, like, touching, like, my back when we're doing, like, rows and stuff. Okay, okay. We don't need any lawsuits here. It's okay. I'm not pressing charges yet. But I do have the emails saved and pictures and video and everything ready to go

uh doing that and then you know closing my eyes and then imagining the same thing and then really feeling it and be like oh shit like that's what you know mark's talking about when he's saying flex you know up top here or you know squeeze here so i think um doing stuff like that has helped me so much because i used to joke around and be like, yeah, I wasn't born with lats. And then all of a sudden, one day I learned how to flex them and I learned how to focus on contracting. It's like, oh, my gosh, like I got a pump. Like I couldn't stop touching my lats. I'm like, this is amazing.

What was the difference? Like what changed for you in terms of being able to feel them during a workout? Was it the touching or was it something you started doing in terms of your training? feel them during a workout was it the touching or was it something you started doing in terms of your training um in that moment it was definitely the the touch to be like oh right there okay let me imagine what that's like like oh i can do that but if he said like hey like try to flex your upper back area like i don't know what you're talking about but just being able to touch it was like oh okay cool and then so i And then, so I took that, uh, that same kind of mindset when we would work on other things. Like I would imagine, you know, my muscles growing,

I would imagine, you know, whatever the movement is, it's like, okay, I'm sending the signal to that muscle. And then that muscle is now receiving it because it wasn't open to those frequencies before. And now it is. What we're going to do with this episode is we are going to, and this is news to you guys, this is news to everybody listening here. We're going to create a PDF out of this because I think that people will really enjoy this and we'll make you aware of where you can get it and how you can get it. So don't panic and don't be worried. Give us, you know, give us about two weeks or so and we'll get something together from episode 300 on how to build bigger biceps. Cause I think you guys do need this in a written format so you can really see what to do. So a couple other things that

we haven't really gotten to quite yet in terms of bicep training is the tempo. So, you know, the speed at which you're lifting, you know, bodybuilders have used different speeds with exercises for years and years and have had a lot of success with it. A lot of times you'll see a body builder maybe do a bench press or squat, and they kind of like are almost like pulsing the lift. They don't really lock anything out all the way. They don't maybe have 100% range of motion, but they're moving in a range of motion that's keeping that tension on. And they have what's called time under tension. Time under tension can be very crucial.

Now, a lot of times the weight that you use can dictate the time under tension. So if we were to squat 135 for 15 reps, we would be able to move that pretty fast. But now if we're trying to squat 500, we're going to start moving a lot slower. that pretty fast. But now if we're trying to squat 500, we're going to start moving a lot slower. But when it comes to actual bodybuilding, it comes to guys like Jake Cutler and a lot of lifters like that. They kind of have a similar tempo most of the time. They're just trying to elicit the greatest muscle response they can. And so they move in a way that is very controlled. They have a controlled range of motion and then they find it might be different for all three of us.

If all three of us are doing incline curl, it might look a little different for each one of us. I may have my wrist down. Andrew may have his wrist in a regular position. You might be bringing yours up high and I might be kind of keeping my shoulder back because we're all built a little differently and we all have previous bumps and bruises and whatever. And so when you're going through these ranges of motion, you, you kind of find a range of motion and then

you start to settle in on a tempo. And I think for a lot of people would be really beneficial to try to have a little bit of an eccentric component to the movement. So we are talking about with the first couple sets and the heavier weights and the bigger exercises in the beginning of the workout, but you may also want to try to get a little bit of a tempo with any of these sets and reps that you're doing. Let's say you go and you want to grab like 80-pound dumbbells or something like that and you want to do some hammer curls. Well, that might be pretty damn challenging, but I'd still advise that you just try,

which might be very hard to do, catch the weight on the way down and try to control it. We still want to control these muscle fibers. We still want to always be in control of the weight. So something that's helped me a ton, there's two actually things that helped me a ton or three things that helped me a ton when I was younger. One was attacking the long head of the bicep through doing reverse curls and hammer curls and incline curls there's a bunch of other ways you can kind of attack that the other thing was the implementation of tempo work um trying to go at a cadence of around three or four on the way down every single time and then the way

up obviously you're not it's not power lifting so we're not trying to lift explosively. You just kind of lift the weight up whatever way you can. And then the third component of that was what we talked about already was going heavy. Yeah. On the tempo aspect, because there are a lot of people that have told me, hey, I can't really feel a pump in my biceps or I don't feel this move in my biceps. Tempo has been kind of that fix for a lot of them. Tempo and lightening the load just a little bit and maybe doing a single arm movement, like maybe a single arm bicep curl or single arm curls. Because instead of using a really heavy weight where they're like, you know,

doing a lot and using a lot of other muscle groups to move it, they can then focus in on the bicep, focus on controlling it, and then, wow, I feel a pump. So if you're struggling to actually feel those muscle groups working tempo is going to be a big thing for you like even maybe three seconds up four seconds down or whatever tempo is going to be a big a very big deal for you so then uh your guys's favorite bicep movement or bicep workout movements whatever exercise you want to call it i'll go first uh doing bicep curls with chains because that helps me a ton feel the pump.

Yeah. So we set up the chain so that some of the chain will hit the floor as we're coming down in the movement. And then as you come back up, the chains are unloading and you get more weight with it. That's a great movement. I really love reverse curls quite a bit. I always found them to be challenging. I don't really get a pump from them, unfortunately, but I love the way they feel and it's always felt like it's

helped increase the thickness of my biceps and then in addition to that it's helped with elbow pain and helps build up the forearms and stuff. Cable bicep curls with the paws at the top. That's just my favorite. Lock them in, squeeze them. And then slowly bring it back down.

I sound boring, but that's my favorite anyone that really struggles to get a pump when it comes to bicep work take an exercise like that take a cable bicep curl with a curl bar and have just a different mindset going into it than you maybe traditionally do try maybe like three three sets of 10 and do about a minute rest, but really concentrate like we're talking about, like really challenge yourself, get inside the muscle, pay attention to what you're doing.

Think about the bicep each time. Maybe try to point the pinky up as you're coming up and really try to squeeze the movement. Make sure you're not using a lot of other muscles, your shoulders and your lower back and stuff and really try to concentrate on it. Make sure you're not using a lot of other muscles, your shoulders and your lower back and stuff, and really try to concentrate on it. And I think that you'll find a much different result. I think a lot of times maybe we're thinking about all this other stuff and we're not really

thinking about, hey, look, if I just kind of slow the hell down and I pay attention to what I'm doing, I can get a ton more out of it. Yeah. Awesome. So, uh, let's try to review these, uh, some of these rules so people can kind of list them out and things like that. But we can also, um, we can, like we said, we can also put something in the show notes. Uh, we'll put a, put together a PDF for you guys. One thing I forgot to mention, but this is, uh, it should be kind of obvious is to gain weight. You know, I recognize that people don't want to gain body fat, but let's just say, let's just say your arms

are 15 inches right now. If you gain about 20 pounds over the next year or two years, you know, your arms are going, they're going to be bigger if you're training correctly, if you're eating your protein and you're eating the way that you you need to eat to really supply your body. Remember, food, sleep supplements, they all play into it. But that's not this particular podcast. So gaining weight is a good one. Lifting heavy is another one. Like maybe you're not lifting heavy for your biceps because you're thinking, I got to get a lot of blood in there.

Don't go to failure early in your workout. If you are going to go to failure at all, maybe it's towards the end of the workout. Towards the end of your workout would also be a decent opportunity to do some supersetting. Maybe you do some hammer curls with some incline curls, or you do some reverse curls with a regular curl. Those are easy to toggle back and forth between the two. curls with a regular curl. Those are easy to toggle back and forth between the two. And then we talked a lot about tempo work, slowing the weight down a little bit.

And then in addition to that, we talked a little bit about cueing, like trying to get inside the muscle. If you have a training partner and they want to tap you a little bit, that can make a huge difference. And then in general general the workout is starting heavier we're starting with a heavier more compound bigger exercise that we can use more weight with and then descending downward from there we're moving more into isolation so the workout from a rep perspective might look like you know sets of five to eight in the beginning yeah and then sets of uh eight to twelve and then towards the end 15 to 20 and now you're done remember go back to what Nseema said in the beginning of the show I think it's a major

major point it's like let's make sure we're not doing too many sets maybe how many sets did you say approximately 14 to 20 is a good general rule of thumb per workout stay within that range and you're guaranteed to get those biceps a lot bigger hopefully you guys enjoyed the show.

Nsema, where can people find you? At Nsema Eang on Instagram and YouTube. And Nsema Yin Yang on Twitter and TikTok. Out the Yin Yang. Just because my actual name was taken. So then who have I been tagging on Twitter then? I don't know. There's another Nsema Eang that apparently lives in Minnesota.

Oh, my goodness. I thought that was you. That's some bullshit right there. We got to call this guy up. Yeah. Maybe you guys can fight over it. I like Yin Yang. Yeah, I like it too.

That's great. It's a cool little thing. That's going to stick. It will. I like that one. Training out the Yin Yang. See? I already got stuff off of it.

You guys can hit me up on instagram at i am andrew z and real quick thank you phil's coffee and davis for letting us record here um everything we talked about today on the the podcast will be in the show notes uh especially um you know early on we were talking about perfect keto quest nutrition and piedmontese we got really good deals for you guys um head over to perfectketo.com slash powerproject at checkout. Enter promo code powerproject10 for $10 off your order of $40 or more. Questnutrition.com at checkout. Enter promo code MarksQuest for 20% off your order. And then our homies at Piedmontese, that's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code powerproject if you're listening to this after January 1st for 25% off your order.

And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Mark, how can people get in touch with you? I am at Mark's Melly Bell on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. I was trying to think of that last one. I'm like, what else do I have? What else do I have on my phone? Also, before I forget, the Power Project is now on Twitter,

at MBPowerProject. We're on LinkedIn. Instagram, if you guys aren't sure, it's at MarkBellsPowerProject. We have a lot of fun on all platforms. We're trying to do a lot more in 2020. Really hope you guys can join the party and hit us up on all of these platforms.

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