The 7 Bicep Dumbbell Exercises For Arm Growth

Finding a variety of exercises to keep your arm training both fun and effective can be difficult. Thankfully dumbbells are one of the most effective ways to create muscle growth stimulus within the arms. Here we have highlighted 7 different variations that you can use in the gym or at home.

4 min read
Sean Klein
Written by
Sean Klein
Published on
07/06/22
Last updated
12/01/23
In This Resource
  • The 7 Bicep Dumbbell Exercises For Arm Growth
  • Benefits Of Bicep Dumbbell Exercises
  • Recovery From Bicep Tears
  • Improved Aesthetics
  • Improve Pull Up Performance
  • Training Considerations
  • Train Regularly
  • Sets Recommendations
  • Repetition Recommendations
  • Add Them To The End Of Session
  • Common Mistakes
  • Using Momentum From The Hips
  • Not Enough Training Frequency

The 7 Bicep Dumbbell Exercises For Arm Growth

Buy Dumbbells ↗
Isolation
Upper Body
Biceps
Buy Dumbbells ↗
Isolation
Upper Body
Biceps
Buy Dumbbells ↗
Secondary
Upper Body
Vertical Press
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Isolation
Upper Body
Biceps
Buy Dumbbells ↗
Isolation
Upper Body
Biceps
Buy Dumbbells ↗
Isolation
Upper Body
Biceps
Buy Dumbbells ↗
Secondary
Upper Body
Vertical Press

Benefits Of Bicep Dumbbell Exercises

Recovery From Bicep Tears

  • Bicep tears can occur regularly in sports and need a great deal of rehabilitation to prevent them from happening again. These exercises above can be used effectively within a balanced training programme to mitigate further issues later on where the injury occurred.

    • Improved Aesthetics

  • Increasing the size of the bicep muscles is often related to improving general aesthetics, these exercises will be effective at increase the size of the bicep musculature and therefore improving aesthetics.

    • Improve Pull Up Performance

  • The bicep muscles are crucial for the pulling action, making them important to isolate when looking to improve both you’re horizontal pulling or horizontal pressing.

    • Training Considerations

    Train Regularly

  • The biceps are not a large muscle group and therefore can be training regularly without generating to much general fatigue. This is great as it allows you to perform a high amount of volume on this muscle group, increasing the growth stimulus without suffering from to much fatigue like you would if you trained a muscle group like the quads as regularly.

    • Sets Recommendations

  • Maintenance = 4-6 sets per week
  • Growth = 8 - 16 sets per week

    • Repetition Recommendations

  • Working sets should be done to a 1-3 reps in reserve.

    • Add Them To The End Of Session

  • Doing isolation work at the end of the session is a great way to add in training volume on a specific muscle group without having any effect on the fatigue of the primary lift for the day.

    • Common Mistakes

    Using Momentum From The Hips

  • This is seen across gyms all over the world, using too much weight that you cannot perform the exercise correctly to boost your ego. Lower the weight, use the biceps to lift the weights, not a mini hip thrust.

    • Not Enough Training Frequency

  • It’s tough to get muscle groups like the biceps to grow with a small amount of training volume, thats why targeting the biceps 2-3 times a week will be a great way to see consistent results in muscle growth.

    • If you enjoyed this resource you can find more below or try Programme, a fitness app that plans every workout for you – based on your progress, equipment and lifestyle.

    This resource was written by Sean Klein. Sean Richard Klein has thousands of hours of coaching experience and a BSc in Sports Science with Management from Loughborough University. He owns a gym in Bayonne France, CrossFit Essor, which runs group classes and a Personal training studio.

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