Want bigger biceps? Use the hormone peak after leg training

Well, as it stands... Just after you've trained your legs, you have much more testosterone and growth hormone in your blood. If you then train a small muscle group, it'll grow faster. Norwegian sports scientists at Lillehammer University College tested this theory.

Study

11 male test subjects were aged between 20 and 34 and had never done weight training before. For eleven weeks they had to go to a bodybuilding gym 4 times a week. On two days they trained only their left biceps, doing biceps curls, hammer curls and reverse curls. [A]

On the two other days they trained their legs. The men did leg-presses, leg-extensions and leg-curls. Immediately afterwards they trained their right biceps using the same exercises as they did for their left biceps. [L+A]

The subjects trained using weights for which they could just manage 10 reps. Before, during and just after a training session they drank shakes containing proteins and carbohydrates.

Results

When the researchers studied the men's biceps at the end of the 11 weeks, they saw that the L+A biceps that had been trained after the leg training were all significantly bigger than the A-biceps that had been trained separately from the leg training! What's more, the L+A biceps were stronger than the A-biceps, win win?

As always... Source: Eur J Appl Physiol. 2011 Sep;111(9):2249-59.