"It's actually harder if you don't use dumbbells," says Samuel, "because the placement of the loads will make it harder to supinate your forearms properly; you'll have to earn that more, torquing and challenging your biceps more. Curl both dumbbells up until your forearms are parallel with the ground; pause here for 5 seconds. Time under tension refers to how long your muscle spends under stress during an exercise and is a key way to stimulate hypertrophy. Time under tension (TUT) is simply the length of time a muscle is contracting to resist the force of a weight. Your biceps and triceps need to squeeze … TUT is just another way to measure a set. Start either standing or kneeling, glutes and abs tight, shoulder blades squeezed, dumbbells held at your sides. Once all that's done, you eliminate the need to supinate and start in a hammer curl iso-hold, forearms parallel to the ground, then do hammer curl reps. "These hammer curl reps are much easier, especially if you're using water jugs," says Samuel, "but they won't feel that way because you're fatigued by then by time-under-tension.". You definitely have that first thing, too. That's 1 set. Yes, it can be done with dumbbells, if you have a pair at home. There's a reason for that. Use an Offset Grip. In terms of building bigger biceps you need to be slowing down the tempo of your pull ups so that your set lasts around 45-70 seconds. Men's Health participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. Drops sets and unilateral assistance exercises are great hypertrophy tools, and machine variations have advantages when it comes to bodybuilding. This Time Under Tension Drill Grows Your Biceps, Blast Your Biceps With The Spider Curl Countup, Does This Trendy Time Under Tension Workout Really, This At-Home 32-Rep Dropset Rocks your Triceps, Blast Your Chest And Abs With This At-Home Workout. Basically, this It can also work as the biceps portion of a pull workout that included plenty of back work. This is the optimal time under tension of a set for stimulating muscle growth. ", Iso-to-reps Mayhem adds more than a mere curl to your biceps, bringing dropset action to the movement to coax every ounce of energy from your guns on every set. But the underrated key in the arm-muscle-building equation is one more idea, too: Time-under-tension. The 60 Best Black Friday Deals to Check Out Now, My Secret to Navigating COVID-19 Mental Health, 8 Reasons to Quit Your Phone This Holiday Season, No, Vitamin C Supplements Will Not Save Us All, The Hypervolt GO Is the Mini Massage Gun You Need, Bowflex SelectTech 1090 Adjustable Dumbbell, This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. If you slow down each rep so that it takes six seconds, it would take 60 seconds to complete a set of 10 reps. Ebenzer Samuel, C.S.C.S., is the fitness director of Men's Health and a certified trainer with more than 10 years of training experience. Curl up until your forearms are parallel to the ground. "Each hold is a reminder to operate with perfect technique — and you get to carry that good technique into the series of reps. Then it's right back to reinforcing good technique." All you need is something from around the house and a pair of towels. Erase bad curling technique and grow major biceps with this smart and easy finisher. If you really want to slam your biceps in isolated, arm-pumping fashion, you need to load them. "I love this as a finisher," says Samuel, "but even three standalone sets will fire up your biceps and have benefit.". This includes the time spent in the concentric (shortening) phase, peak contraction phase, and eccentric (lengthening) phase. ", You'll learn that during this Iso-to-Reps Biceps Mayhem. Time under tension is a method of training where you keep some tension on a muscle or group of muscles for an extended period of time! A more effective way, and the one this program will focus on, is to use a tempo prescription for each rep. Why is this more effective? But at-home biceps moves? Our product picks are editor-tested, expert-approved. Start standing, holding either dumbbells or water jugs wrapped in your towels at your sides. Typically that involves dumbbells, which not everyone has in their home. If you do “drop sets” then you are already using this. It's a versatile move too, says Samuel, because you can use it either as a finisher at the end of a biceps workout, or as a standalone curling move in a full-body workout (or even for a quick Friday pre-night-out pump session). If you want to try an even more dedicated routine, consider Eb's New Rules of Muscle program. Pick a weight that will leave your arms screaming at the end of that 1 minute. But you can also use it to cap off a more aggressive and vicious biceps workout too. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io, This Incline Superset Blasts Back and Shoulders, This Split Squat Will Make Your Glutes Explode, This Fly Move Will Build Your Lower Chest, This Overload Skullcrusher Builds Massive Triceps, Blast Every Part of Your Biceps With This Series, This Plank Leaves Every Part of Your Core on Fire, This Move Blasts Your Shoulders and Abs at Once, Three PT-Approved Stretches for Your Lower Back, This Mobility Flow Will Unlock Tight Hip Flexors. "This is a great third biceps exercise in a full-fledged arm blast," says Samuel, "really finishing off your arms." Surf the internet and you're bound to see a slew of training recommendations based on the concept of time-under-tension (TUT). They rock at the waist, or they don't really rotate the dumbbells upwards with intent, and in making those errors, they shortchange their arm day gains. No, there aren't many of those. Whereas most people define a set as how many reps are performed, TUT expresses it in terms of how long it takes to complete the set—in other words, how long your muscles were under the tension provided by the resistance you used. Don't have dumbbells?