When it comes to how many sets and reps you should perform for the biceps, we must start by seeing how experienced you are when it comes to strength training. What many beginners do wrong is that they look for the most brutal training program they can find online where the training volume is far too high and the risk is that it only in the end does more harm than good. If you are a beginner and take your first steps on the gym floor, around 8-10 sets is more than enough for biceps a week. If you have a couple of years ”on your neck” and your muscles are used to the load that is put on them from strength training, you can easily go up to 16+ sets a week and this preferably divided into two different training sessions.

If we talk about how many reps you should perform per set, there are two things to review:

1. The execution (technique) in the exercises with a certain weight.
2. What are you looking for? Strength or size?

We have all seen them, they throw around 40kg dumbbells in dumbbell curls, scream so the roof lifts and get, in one way or another, some reps. Sometimes I wonder if the legs, when they both take charge and dive under the weight during the ”swing”, get more activation or if the lumbar spine does it when they lean backwards to continue the swinging moment they started with the legs. In the end, we can see that in any case there are not many biceps fibers they activate here. We can also completely forget about the eccentric phase (down), as all the tension in that phase is often released completely. When you train the biceps, you should feel it in the biceps and you create that with full contact and full range of motion in the exercise.

Also think about what your goal is with your biceps curls. Is it to train to get stronger or to get bigger? Combining these two points, 1. correct execution and 2. what is your goal, gives us a guideline on which reps interval exactly you should try to stay within. For strength there is a guideline to stay around 1-6 repetitions and for hypertrophy (muscle growth) anything between 8-15 +. Checking out point 1, correct execution, and being under 4-6 reps for different biceps curls has, from experience, been seen as difficult. There is simply too much swinging and jumping, especially among the more inexperienced clients. More experienced strength trainers can be seen to do better as the whole ”package” (body) from top to toe can balance and stabilize the lift / curls better. But even here you often see a very unnecessary movement in the body. If you are looking for size (hypertrophy), I would like you to stay between 8-15 repetitions. With these higher number of reps, you will be able to squeeze out the biceps more easily and really feel the muscle you are working out.

Variation is the key.

Regardless of whether you are looking for pure and raw strength or size, you benefit from varying your number of reps. If you have been doing your low reps for a long time, try doing a little higher. If, on the contrary, you have been doing a higher number of reps, try to take a little heavier weights and lower the reps. However, do not let heavier weights take over the correct and good execution in the exercises. I think a normal ”swing” in the body is absolutely in order. You should not have to tense up as if you had something up in… well… yes you know where. I do not consider that to be the correct execution either. Learn to activate your biceps with a normal flow in the body, without swinging too much or with excessive backward tilt.

The variation can be done by performing all the exercises within a certain reps interval for a few weeks and then switching to another. From low reps to high or vice versa. You can also keep a variation during one and the same workout. One exercise you do heavier, for example at the beginning of the workout when you have the most energy, with lower reps and others you can aim for higher and more squeezing out and isolating the muscle.

It’s more about what you do and how you do it.

Giving tips on the number of sets and reps is much more about reviewing what you do and how you do it than just saying ”do this and that many sets and reps”. We have gone through different parts of the biceps now and you understand how different grips activate different parts of the arm muscle. We will use this theory in practice. I have had clients who I have seen have had sufficient volume in their arm training, but when you start to look more closely at where that volume is placed, it has been 90% on the inner head (1). The exercises have largely only consisted of exercises with a supinated grip.

It is also about reviewing how the client trains once they train. This is very important as a Coach and PT to learn to see or find out about their client. If you week out and week in do your 3 sets with 10 reps in barbell curls with 30kg on the bar, your biceps will eventually stop growing bigger and stronger. Why would the muscle need to grow bigger and become stronger if it does not need to lift more or perform any other type of technique? It simply becomes ”comfortable” with being the size it is because it is not loaded with more. If, on the other hand, you increase in weights but you give in to the correct execution in the exercise to be able to lift that bigger weight with good form, the load and stimulus for the biceps, during the execution, will be lost. Finding the balance between training hard and heavy with a correct and good execution in the exercises is a must for optimal growth.

There are those who do too much and there are those who do too little. You must dare to step out of the comfort zone and take a little heavier weights or lift more repetitions with the same weight to send signals to the muscle that it needs to grow stronger and bigger. Train hard – but smart.