Your Ultimate Friendly Guide to a Bicep Workout Plan

Why you need a bicep workout plan

If you want stronger, fuller arms, a simple, consistent bicep workout plan will get you there far faster than random curls at the end of a workout. Your biceps help you bend your elbow and rotate your forearm, which shows up in everyday motions like picking up groceries or pulling yourself up.

Back exercises like rows and pull‑ups do work your biceps, but not enough on their own for maximum growth. Direct bicep training is still important for size and strength, as highlighted in the RP Strength bicep training guide (2024). When you structure your training with the right exercises, sets, and weekly schedule, you give your arms a clear signal to grow instead of leaving results to chance.

Understand your bicep muscles

Knowing what you are training makes it easier to pick the right movements and avoid overdoing it.

The main players

You usually think of “biceps” as one muscle, but several muscles contribute to arm flexion and the look of your upper arm:

Biceps brachii: The classic two headed muscle on the front of your upper arm. It bends your elbow and turns your palm up.
Long head: Runs along the outside of your upper arm and adds to overall arm length and “peak.”
Short head: Lies more toward the inside and contributes to thickness near the shoulder and inner arm.
Brachialis: Sits underneath the biceps and pushes them outward, which can make your arm look bigger from the side.
Brachioradialis: A forearm muscle that helps bend the elbow and adds size near the elbow joint.

A solid bicep workout plan should hit all of these, rather than focusing on just one type of curl and hoping for the best.

How often to train your biceps

Training frequency has a big impact on how fast your arms grow, especially if you are past the beginner stage.

Research and practical experience suggest you get more growth when you train biceps two to three times per week rather than once. Training this often has been linked with greater weekly increases in muscle size, about 3.1 percent more growth in some comparisons, than only hitting them once per week.

At the same time, daily bicep training is not a good idea. Your muscles grow during rest, not during the workout itself. If you train biceps every day, you cut into that recovery time, increase fatigue, and raise your risk of overuse injuries. The RP Strength guide notes that biceps usually respond well somewhere between 3 and 6 weekly sessions at different volumes, depending on your overall program and your ability to recover (RP Strength, 2024).

For most people, especially if you are also training back and other upper body muscles, 2 to 3 focused bicep sessions per week is a practical sweet spot.

Pick the right exercises

You do not need a long list of curls to build impressive arms. You only need a few well chosen exercises that challenge your biceps through slightly different angles and grips.

According to recent recommendations on the best bicep builders, six exercises stand out for mass and strength as of early 2024:

Concentration curls
Hammer curls
EZ bar curls
Preacher curls
Single arm high cable bicep curls
Chin ups

Each one brings something useful to your bicep workout plan.

Key dumbbell and barbell curls

Hammer curls
Hammer curls use a neutral grip, where your palms face each other. This position hits your long head of the biceps and the brachialis and brachioradialis hard, which adds overall arm thickness. You can perform them standing or seated.

EZ bar curls
An EZ bar places your wrists in a slightly angled grip, which many people find more comfortable than a straight bar. Depending on how narrow or wide you grip the bar, you can emphasize different portions of the biceps. These are excellent for heavy, controlled sets that build overall mass.

Preacher curls
Preacher curls, done on a sloped bench, keep your upper arm locked in place. This setup limits cheating and focuses the work on your biceps, especially the short head. Single arm preacher curls are also great for fixing side to side imbalances.

Concentration curls
With concentration curls, you sit down, brace your elbow against your inner thigh, and curl a dumbbell slowly. That locked in position lets you focus intensely on the contraction. Although they are usually done with lighter weight, they are powerful for mind muscle connection and short head emphasis.

Smart use of cables and machines

Cable curls maintain consistent tension on your biceps through the entire range of motion. A cable stack does not let the weight “rest” at the top or bottom as easily as some free weight angles do, which can help keep your muscles working.

Single arm high cable curls, where the cable comes from above at roughly shoulder height, are especially good for targeting the inner portion of the biceps and working the peak.

Machines like preacher curl stations or standing cable setups can play a similar role. They are particularly helpful if you want to push to a hard effort safely without worrying about dropping free weights.

Do not skip chin ups

Chin ups might not look like a typical “curl” but they are one of the best compound moves for bigger arms. With an underhand grip, chin ups work both your biceps and your upper back.

If you are a beginner, you can use:

Banded chin ups
Assisted pull up machines
Negative only chin ups, where you jump or step up and lower yourself slowly

These variations let you build strength gradually until you can do full bodyweight reps.

Choose the right sets and reps

Good bicep training is not only about what you do, but how you do it. You need enough total work to stimulate growth without overdoing it.

Your main rep ranges

For most people focused on size, a rep range of 8 to 12 repetitions for 3 to 4 sets per exercise is an effective starting point. Many programs suggest using 2 to 4 different bicep exercises per workout, which gives you enough variety without turning your session into a marathon.

RP Strength also recommends mixing your loads throughout the week (RP Strength, 2024):

Heavy sets of 5 to 10 reps
Moderate sets of 10 to 20 reps
Light sets of 20 to 30 reps

Around half of your total sets can sit in that moderate range, where you balance muscle stimulus and fatigue with a good mind muscle connection. You can use the heavier and lighter ranges to round out your training and challenge your biceps in different ways.

Volume and recovery

Biceps are smaller than muscles like your quads or lats, so they usually do not need as many total sets. If you match your bicep volume to your largest muscle groups, you can easily slide into overtraining, which stalls or even reverses gains.

A realistic starting point per week might include:

6 to 12 total sets of direct bicep work if you are a beginner
10 to 18 sets spread across 2 to 3 sessions if you are more advanced

Adjust up or down based on how your arms feel and whether you are progressing in strength and size.

Sample bicep workout plan for beginners

Use this as a flexible template and adjust weights to match your current strength. Aim to train biceps twice per week on nonconsecutive days, for example, Monday and Thursday.

Warm up, about 5 minutes

Before you start your work sets, prepare your elbows and shoulders. One beginner friendly warm up might look like this:

Banded chin ups, 1 to 2 light sets
Rotational dumbbell curls with very light weights
An inverted plank to activate your upper body and core
Gentle straight arm, behind the back bicep stretches

You should feel warm but not tired. Avoid reaching muscle failure in the warm up.

Main workout

Exercise 1: Seated dumbbell curls

3 sets of 10 to 12 reps

Sitting down reduces the temptation to swing your body and lets you focus on curling with your biceps. Keep your elbows close to your torso and bring the weights up to about chest height with control.

Exercise 2: Standing barbell curls

3 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Use a weight that challenges you while you can still keep good form. Try to keep your elbows in roughly the same spot and avoid using your shoulders or back to throw the bar up. If you struggle not to swing, stand with your back lightly against a wall or a bench.

Exercise 3: Single arm preacher curls

2 to 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps per arm

Set up on a preacher bench or an inclined bench that supports your whole upper arm. Lower the weight under control and curl through the fullest comfortable range of motion. These help you target the short head and also correct left to right imbalances.

Over time, you can add a fourth exercise such as hammer curls or cable curls, especially as you move past the beginner stage and need more total volume.

Advanced techniques to grow faster

Once you have a solid base, you can introduce more advanced methods to keep your biceps progressing without just adding endless sets.

RP Strength highlights several useful options (RP Strength, 2024):

Straight sets: Traditional sets for a set number of reps. These remain your bread and butter.
Down sets: After a heavy set, you reduce the weight by 10 to 20 percent and perform another set, often close to failure.
Giant sets: You pick a rep target, such as 40 total reps, and reach it across as many mini sets as needed with short rests.
Myoreps: You perform a set close to failure, rest briefly, then do clusters of a few reps with very short rests.
Drop sets: You go near failure, drop the weight, and immediately continue for more reps.
Pre exhaust supersets: You fatigue your biceps with an isolation move, then follow with a heavier compound like chin ups.
Occlusion training: You lightly restrict blood flow to the upper arm using bands during light weight curls. This method should be used cautiously and typically under guidance.
Lengthened partials: You spend more time in the stretched part of the movement, such as the bottom half of an incline curl.

You do not need all of these in one plan. Pick one or two techniques at a time, use them for a training block, then rotate to keep the stimulus fresh.

Tips for form, variety, and safety

Little tweaks in how you curl can make a big difference in how much your biceps actually do.

Slow your reps down

Jeff Cavaliere of Athlean X suggests taking about four seconds on the way up and four seconds on the way down during curls to improve your mind muscle connection and recruit more biceps activity. Slowing down eliminates momentum and forces your muscles to handle the load instead of relying on swinging.

He also recommends focusing especially on the eccentric, or lowering phase, which is a powerful driver of muscle growth.

Change your arm position

To bias different parts of your biceps, Cavaliere encourages rotating between:

Curls with your arms slightly behind your body, like incline dumbbell curls, which stretch the long head
Curls with your arms in front of your body, like preacher curls, which place more emphasis on the short head

Variety here does not target “upper” or “lower” biceps in a strict sense, and common beliefs that certain curls create a peak or hit “lower biceps” specifically are not accurate. Instead, think of it as slightly shifting stress within the same muscle group.

Use supination to your advantage

Your biceps do more than bend your elbow, they also turn your palm up. Cavaliere suggests gripping the dumbbell in a way that lets you twist it as you curl, almost like a seesaw motion. This strong supination at the top of the curl helps you fully contract your biceps.

Bands and cables can also help you overload this twisting action, because the line of pull can match the direction of your forearm rotation more closely.

Avoid early cheating

A little bit of “cheat” at the end of a set can help you push beyond strict failure, but if you start a set by swinging the weight, you move tension away from your biceps to your front delts and lower back. Keep your torso as still as possible and only use body English sparingly once you are already close to the end of a challenging set.

Respect recovery

Since your biceps are involved in many back movements, you need to consider your whole program when planning arm training. If you do heavy rows and pull ups on one day and hard curls the next, you might accumulate more fatigue than you realize.

Leave at least 48 hours between intense direct bicep sessions and avoid piling high bicep volume on heavy back days without adjusting something else.

Putting it all together

A good bicep workout plan does not have to be complicated. When you:

Train your biceps 2 to 3 times per week, choose 2 to 4 smart exercises per session, use mostly 8 to 12 reps for 3 to 4 sets, and focus on slow, controlled form, you create a clear path to bigger, stronger arms.

Start with the beginner template, track the weights and reps you use, and aim to improve by a small amount each week. Once progress slows, add some variety with cable work, different arm positions, and one or two advanced set techniques.

Most of all, be patient and consistent. Your biceps respond best to regular, focused effort and sensible recovery, not to one marathon curl session followed by weeks of guessing.