The dumbbell bicep curl and loaded preacher curl are great moves for arm day, but classic physique competitor,Wesley Vissers, also likes to take to the cables to crush those biceps, as the defined Dutchman recently explained.
“A lot of people ask me, why do you train the biceps this way?” shared Wesley Vissers in an Instagram post for his more than one million followers. “’Cause I’m not pulling it from the bottom, I’m curling it from around hip height.” Vissers is talking of single arm cable curls, and he’s right. When executing these curls, you can start the lift from a much lower position than with many other bicep exercises. But why is this important?
“A muscle grows best under a stretched position,” asserts the 2024 Arnold Classic winner, who goes on to demonstrate that starting the cable curl with his forearms parallel to the floor is far too easy for the kinds of monstrous gains that he is chasing. “But, as I go down, the tension increases and builds up more and more, and the maximum tension is when the stretch is at the max.”
How Wesley Vissers Gets the Most Out of Cable Bicep Curls
Using a single arm, Vissers is able to make sure that both limbs are building strength and mass equally, and he’s also able to position each arm behind his back as he hits the bottom of the lift. As he also shows, sending you your elbows behind your back requires a greater range of motion leading to a deeper stretch, while increasing tension on the biceps during the lifting phase. “That’s how the muscle grows best,” says the big man.
“Bets arms in classic physique,” wrote one of Vissers impressed followers. “Looks effective, and brutal,” wrote another. Well, they do say ‘No Pain, No Gain, but for us mere mortals, it is recommended to start out with a lesser weight while perfecting the form of any exercise. Once you are ready to get into that serious muscle building zone, increase the weight so that you are failing somewhere in the 8-to-12-rep mark, and aim for 3 working sets.
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