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I want to build up my biceps, should I work them every day?

On Wednesday, February 13, 2019

No, you need to perform unaccustomed exercise 2-3 days/week. Muscles need at least 48 hours of rest following the type of workout (in your case high-intensity resistance training) that continues to initiate a growth response. If you vigorously trained the same muscle groups each day with weights, you end up in an over-training syndrome where the body spends more time repairing muscles than building them.

To be sure, in order to stimulate growth one must disrupt the status quo by adding additional stresses to the working muscles and therefore keep up the bicep curling exercises. But as we alluded to above, the goal of any muscle-building or performance-enhancing program is to synthesize more muscle than your training tears down. Therefore, you want to minimize the necessary exercise damage while maximizing the repair/building process so at the end of the day you’ve increased muscle size as opposed to simply maintaining it. Proper progressive training is defined as the least amount of specific work (e.g. weight training) that continues to initiate the desired outcome, which in your case is adding muscle each week to your arms. So train your biceps 2-3 times/wk performing between 6-10 sets of 2 or 3 different exercises. Train your remaining body parts other days. Vary the training in terms of heavy weights with lower reps (6-8) one day and at the next bicep workout use lighter weights and higher reps (10-15). Eat well so that you are feeding the biceps the extra materials they need to grow. Your nutrient intake must include all the “stuff” that will or has been used or damaged during the training bout. And of course we want to supply more of these nutrients than were degraded with the goal of having the surplus deposited in muscle tissues, leading to an increase in size and/or strength.

Also be sure to feed the muscle directly, before and immediately after training, by consuming a pre- & post-workout formula. Below is a typical supplement program for accomplishing your goal:

Active multivitamin mineral formula

• Take 1 daily with breakfast or any other larger meal

dotFIT First String or Pre/Post Meal Replacement & Workout Formula

• Take 2 scoops 10-30 minutes before workout or use favorite dotFIT® bar for convenience

• Take 2 scoops immediately post workout

• Use anytime throughout the day to add calories as necessary to maintain muscle gain