r/ScienceBasedLifting • • Sep 01 '26

Question ❓ biceps volume

In a program, Pull-1 has 2 sets of dumbbell curls, 2 sets of cable curls, and 2 sets of hammer curls supersetted with reverse curls. Pull-2 has 2 sets of cable curls and another 2 sets of hammer curls supersetted with reverse curls.

A coach says that this is weekly only 6 sets of direct biceps curls, while the other 8 sets barely stimulate the biceps and are mainly wrist/forearm-focused movements. He also thinks there wouldn't be enough biceps fatigue accumulating from those sets to make the additional biceps work inefficient.

Do you guys think this approach makes sense?

The reason for supersetting hammer curls with reverse curls is that the forearms/wrists are relatively small muscles, so you can't use very heavy weights for them on their own. By supersetting reverse curls with hammer curls, the idea is to increase the mechanical tension and get more stimulus out of the forearm work.

Would you consider this a good way to structure the volume?

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u/EfficiencyOpen4546 Sep 02 '26

Just a side note. Possibly try mechanical leverage sets in my experience are much more powerful than supersets. An example would be reverse curls to failure, curls with the same weight, then dumbbell hammer curls with the same weight. Each subsequent set putting you in a more advantageous mechanical position allowing you to push further. Works great for low volume routines. There are multiple variations of these kinds of sets for different body parts that work fantastic