One of the most iconic bodybuilding images is the cover photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger flexing his biceps for his 1977 book, Education of a Bodybuilder. Arnold’s bicep peak, reminiscent of the Swiss Alps, inspired millions of guys to hit the weights.

Not all of us can develop a biceps peak like Arnold. By prioritizing the long head of the biceps, however, we can optimize our genetic potential to build impressive biceps. This article lays out eight effective exercises to work the long head of the biceps - that’s the part responsible for biceps height.

Biceps Anatomy

The biceps brachii muscle is a single muscle that is made up of two heads or attachment points. These are known as the long head (or outer biceps) and the short head (or inner biceps). The short head originates from the Coracoid process of the scapula, and the long head originates on the “Glenoid tubercle” of the scapula.

Importantly, both heads converge to insert into a single bicep tendon before it crosses the elbow joint, where it inserts into the radius bone of the forearm. The long head sits above the short head. As a result, it has come to be associated with biceps peak, while the short head is considered to add width or thickness to the biceps.

The function of the biceps is to flex, or bend, the elbow. Two other smaller muscles contribute to elbow flexion. These are the brachioradialis and the brachialis. The biceps also play a minor role in shoulder flexion. Importantly, the long head of the biceps plays a more significant role in shoulder flexion than the short head.

When you bend the elbow, both heads work together to flex the biceps. As a result, it is impossible to isolate either the short or long head completely. Every curl variation that you perform will activate both heads since they both have the same insertion point.

However, you can place more emphasis on one head than the other. That is primarily due to the long head’s involvement in shoulder flexion.

4 Ways to Emphasize the Long Head of the Biceps

As well as focusing on exercises that emphasize the long head, here are four tips you can use on any exercise to maximize long-head engagement:

1. Place your hands close together when curling.
2. Keep your elbows in at your sides.
3. Use a neutral grip.
4. Pull your elbows back beyond the line of your torso.

8 Best Exercises for the Biceps Long Head

Although every biceps exercise will work both biceps heads, the eight that follow do the best job of emphasizing the long head. If you are after an awesome biceps peak (and who isn’t?), you must incorporate some of these long head bicep exercises into every workout.

Seated Incline Dumbbell Curl

Why Do It:

The dumbbell incline curl puts you in a posterior shoulder position. This allows for a fuller range of biceps brachii motion than the standing position. It also puts more emphasis on the long head.

How to Do It:

1. Grab a pair of dumbbells and sit back on an incline weight bench set to a 45-degree angle. Hang your arms down at your sides. Keep your elbows in at the sides of your body. Your palms should be facing the body.
2. Twist the left wrist so it is facing forward.
3. Flex your left elbow to bring that dumbbell up to your shoulder. Contract tightly in the top position.
4. Lower the arm, returning to a palms in position at the end point.
5. Repeat with the right arm.

Personal Trainer Tip:

• Do not allow your arms to rest in the bottom position on the incline bench dumbbell curl. Focus on getting an intense contraction in the top position.

Dumbbell Drag Curl

Why Do It:

The dumbbell drag curl is a super strict version of the standing curl that does an amazing job of keeping tension on the biceps through the mid-range of the movement.

By allowing your elbows to track behind your body, you will also get a powerful contraction in the top position that emphasizes the long head. That’s because pulling your elbows back puts the long head in a pre-stretch position, increasing its activation.

This version of the dumbbell curl also minimizes front deltoid involvement in the movement.

How to Do It:

1. Stand with feet shoulder distance apart, and a pair of dumbbells at your sides.
2. Extend your elbows behind your body so that the weights are hard up against your thighs
3. Drag curl the weights up the side of your body, keeping your elbows back to full contraction.
4. Squeeze the biceps tightly in the top position.
5. Lower under control

Personal Trainer Tip:

• Maintain a natural arch in the lower back and do not swing your back. Drag the weights up your torso as you curl them.

Seated Alternate Hammer Curl

Why Do It:

The hammer curl places your hands in a neutral grip position, emphasizing the biceps’ long head. Be sure to squeeze the bicep tightly in the top position to get the most benefit.

The seated version of the hammer curl is stricter than the standing curl. Since you cannot incorporate your lower body’s swinging motion into the action, the biceps have to do all the work. The resistance curve for the biceps during the sitting alternating incline hammer curl is also optimal.

How to Do It:

1. Set the angle of your bench to 75 degrees and sit on it with dumbbells in hand.
2. Hang your arms down at your sides and assume a neutral grip as if you were holding two hammers.
3. Curl the right arm to full contraction from a starting position with your palms facing forward.
4. Lower under control.
5. Repeat with the left arm.

Personal Trainer Tip:

• Pause for a 2-second count in the top contracted position.

Neutral Grip Pull-Ups

Why Do It:

The pull-up is a compound exercise that primarily works the lats. The biceps are secondary in getting your body up to the bar. The closer you place your hands together, the more you increase biceps involvement. By putting a ‘V’ handle over your pull-up bar and using a neutral grip, you’ll emphasize the outer head.

I love to do neutral grip pull-ups as a finishing exercise after completing a couple of curling exercises. I rep out to failure and then hold the top contracted position for as long as I can on the last rep.

How To Do It:

1. Place a ‘V’ handle over a pull-up bar and reach up to grab it with a neutral grip. Hang from the bar with your knees slightly bent and your shoulder blades pulled down and chest up.
2. Pull through your biceps to come up to the bar.
3. Contract your biceps tightly in the top position and then slowly power back to the start position. Accentuate the eccentric part of the exercise, taking 2 seconds to lower your body. Do not swing or allow momentum to make the movement easier.

Alternate Cable Curl

Why Do It:

The alternate cable curl is my overall favorite biceps exercise. I love this biceps curl variation because the resistance comes from behind you, so your biceps are fully loaded in the start position. This early phase loading aligns with the biceps’ natural strength curve.

By standing slightly forward from the cable machine, you can start the exercise with your hands slightly behind your body (similar to the drag curl). This puts your long head in a pre-stretch position, increasing its activation.

How To Do It:

1. Set the pulley on a double pulley cable machine to its lowest position.
2. Stand about two feet in front of the machine, facing away from it. Grab the handles and hold them with a palms forward grip. In this strata position your hands should be just behind your hips.
3. Curl the right hand cable up to your shoulder level. Be sure to keep your elbow at your side and do not swing your body. Squeeze your biceps tightly in the top position.
4. Lower under control to the start position, taking 2 seconds during this eccentric phase.
5. Repeat with the left hand cable.

Close Grip Cable Preacher Curls

Why Do It?

Many people swear by the preacher curl as a way to build biceps peak. Whether it can actually do that is highly doubtful (biceps peak is 95% genetic) but this exercise does have a couple of advantages.

Firstly, the close grip preacher curl provides you with a great stretch of the biceps, especially if you bring your arms all the way down on every rep. Secondly, this exercise is one of the strictest ways to do a bicep curl. Because you are leaning over a pad, you eliminate any possibility of using momentum to cheat.

Using a close grip on the preacher curl places the emphasis on the long head.

I also strongly encourage you to use a cable for preacher curls, rather than a barbell or dumbbell. I’ll elaborate on the reason for this further down.

How To Do It

1. Position a preacher bench in front of a cable pulley machine so that the pad side is facing the machine, about 18 inches away from it. Place a short curved handle on the end of the cable.
2. Set the pulley to its lowest position and load the appropriate amount of weight.
3. Sit on the seat and drape your arms over the pad. Grab the handles with as close a grip as possible.
4. Starting from a fully extended arm position, curl up to a fully contracted position. Squeeze your biceps tight in the top position.
5. Lower under control and repeat.

Close Grip Barbell Curl

Why Do It:

The barbell bicep curl is the old standby that often gets overlooked in favor of the many curl variations that allow you to work each arm separately. However, the standard bicep curl with a barbell is the best exercise for when you want to go heavy on the biceps. Your biceps are about 60% fast twitch muscle fibers, so they respond well to heavy training.

Use a close grip, with your pinkies about six inches apart, to maximally work the long head of your biceps.

How To Do It:

1. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and a barbell held at arm’s length against your mid-thighs. Your hands should be about six inches apart in an underhand grip. Maintain a neutral spine position and pull your shoulder blades down. Your elbows should be at your sides.
2. Curl the bar up to shoulder level, making sure that your elbows remain fixed at your sides. There should be no backswing or other momentum so that the only movement is through the forearms.
3. Squeeze your biceps tightly in the top position.
4. Lower slowly to a two-count, accentuating the eccentric part of the movement.

Spider Curl

Why Do It:

The spider curl provides a stable front shoulder position to give you training versatility and allow you to focus on the biceps in a doubly shortened position. This long head bicep exercise is a strict version of the curl that eliminates all momentum.

How to Do It:

1. Grab a pair of dumbbells and lie face down on a bench that has been inclined enough to allow you to reach full extension with your arms roughly perpendicular to your torso.
2. Beginning at full extension, flex your elbow to curl the weights up to full contraction.
3. Lower under control to the start position.

Two Biceps Long Head Workouts

Now that you’ve got an arsenal of eight super effective exercises to emphasize the long head of your biceps, let’s talk about putting them into action on the gym floor. Based on my 35 years as a personal trainer combined with the latest research, I believe the ideal training frequency for the biceps is twice per week with a volume of 10-12 sets per workout.

To give your body enough time to recover and rebuild between workouts, you should rest 48-72 hours between biceps workouts. For example, you could schedule your biceps on Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Saturday.

I also recommend working your biceps and triceps together. These two muscles are agonists to each other. When your biceps are contracted, your triceps are relaxed and vice versa. Doing all your upper arm exercises in the same session will ensure balanced development and give you an amazing arm pump.

Here are two biceps workouts, one for each of your training sessions:

Long Head Biceps Workout A

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Alternate Cable Curls	3	20/15/10
Incline Dumbbell Curl	3	12/10/8
Dumbbell Drag Curl	3	12/10/8
Neutral Grip Pull-Ups	2	Failure

 

Note: Training to failure involves keeping going until you cannot complete another rep with proper form.

Long Head Bicep Workout B

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Barbell Curls	3	12/10/8
Seated Alternate Hammer Curl	3	12/10/8
Spider Curl	3	12/10/8
Close Grip Cable Preacher Curls	2	12/12

 

Why You Should Never Do Preacher Curls With Free Weights

When you do a preacher curl with a barbell or a dumbbell, the pull of resistance (gravity) is straight down. That puts a huge load on the bicep muscle and tendons in the start position when your arms are fully extended. In this position, the biceps is pulling parallel to the forearm, which causes mechanical disadvantage.

The angle of the forearm which is the active lever of their biceps, in relation to gravity is about 40 degrees. This is way too much and could very easily cause a rupture of the biceps or a tearing of the biceps tendon.

The resistance curve in this form of the exercise is very risky. It is too heavy at the beginning of the range of movement and too easy at the top of the movement. In fact, there is virtually no resistance once you get past the three-quarter mark of this exercise.

You can overcome all of these problems by switching from free weights to cables on the preacher curl. By doing so, you are able to change the angle of resistance. Rather than coming straight down, as it does with gravity, the resistance is now coming from an angle. In the start position, the forearms are now parallel to the angle of resistance.

This provides the biceps with a less active lever at the start of the exercise, when the mechanical disadvantage is at its worst, and a more active lever towards the end of the movement. As a result, the cable preacher curl is a far safer version than the barbell or dumbbell version.

What’s the Best Rep Range for Biceps?

Traditionally, we’ve been told that the best rep range for muscle growth is 8-12 reps. However, recent research suggests that locking yourself into that range may limit your hypertrophy potential.

Every muscle is made up of a combination of fast twitch and slow twitch fibers. Endurance athletes tend to have a lot of Type 1 or ‘slow twitch’ fibers (muscle biopsies on endurance athletes have revealed as much as 99 percent slow twitch fibers in the calf muscles). These fibers are highly resistant to fatigue because of their ability to process lots of oxygen but they tend to be recruited mainly as low intensities of effort (such as picking up a piece of paper).

Type 2 or ‘fast-twitch’ fibers, on the other hand, are associated with muscle power and strength training - and kick in only when the intensity of effort required increases.

The important thing to know as far as muscle mass training is concerned is this . . .

Since the motor units are recruited in sequential order from Type 1 to Type 2, it follows that the only way to train a muscle in its entirety (getting the maximum number of motor units involved) is to expose it to increasingly challenging loads, to ensure they all get a ‘piece of the action.’

Each muscle has a unique ratio of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers. When it comes to the biceps, that ratio is 60% fast twitch and 40% slow twitch.

Remember that fast twitch fibers require heavy weights with relatively low reps for maximum growth potential. Slow twitch fibers need lighter resistance with higher reps.

So, to optimally train the biceps for hypertrophy, you should use a variety of rep ranges, with a slight emphasis on the heavy side. I recommend pyramiding your sets by increasing the weight and lowering the reps on each succeeding set. Here is a suggested rep scheme if you were doing six sets of an exercise:

• Set One: 30 reps
• Set Two: 20 reps
• Set Three: 12 reps
• Set Four: 10 reps
• Set Five: 8 reps
• Set Six: 6 reps

Wrap Up

Throughout this article, I have made the point that the shape of your biceps is largely determined at birth. Take a look at photos of pro bodybuilders when they were younger and you’ll see that the shape of their upper arms remains largely unchanged. First Mr Olympia Larry Scott was never able to build the peak of a Robby Robinson or Arnold Schwarzenegger. But he was able to maximize his own genetic potential.

The eight bicep long head exercises detailed above will switch the emphasis to the long head, while also engaging the short head of your biceps. Give our two workouts that utilize these moves with a 12 week trial and see how they work for you.

If you want truly impressive arms, you’ve got to give equal effort to your triceps. Go here for two super effective workouts to target the long head of your triceps (link to long head of the triceps article).