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Welcome to The BarBend Newsletter! Here’s everything going on in today’s newsletter:

• Better for biceps: preacher or incline curls?

• How to get stronger with 30 minutes of daily training

• The best muscle group pairings to train together

Exercise Selection

It’s All About the Angles

In the land of lengthened partials, is every biceps exercise considered equal, or is there one king of the peaks to stand alone?

BarBend examines a study comparing preacher curls and incline curls and provides a final verdict.

Of course, it can’t be as simple as doing both (the internet, after all, excels in minutia). Training the biceps often involves switching angles and exercises to target more of the muscle once one area is exhausted. Both these movements are big-stretch movements you can use as a base for training for big guns, but make sure you’re making the best choices. Your arms deserve it.

A Message From Nike

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Strength Training

Power Half-Hour

Getting stronger doesn’t always require the four-hour training sessions that litter the advice you see from powerlifters and strongmen on social media. And speaking of strongman, the 2023 World’s Strongest Man, Mitchell Hooper, is a huge advocate of utilizing 30-minute sessions to boost your strength.

You can’t get strong in a short period by limiting everything, though. If you turn down the time, you’ll need to ramp up the intensity of the precious minutes you do have. According to Hooper, the point is to let one super-hard set get you stronger. You’ll also need to be rational with your exercise selection: Is 30 minutes of squatting or leg curling more effective? 

See what one of the strongest men on the planet thinks you can accomplish in his realm by including a little more brevity in your gym schedule.

Training

Perfect Pairs

There are only so many days in the week, and for anybody who doesn’t lift as a full-time job, that means it can be very easy to run out of hours in the scant seven-day cycle you have to train all your body parts.

This time restriction means you frequently have to train different muscle groups on the same day. Lucky for you, we have the perfect list of combinations for you to try when you need to get a pump on in as many places as possible.

Some of these combos create a solution that is greater than the component parts. Training chest and back together goes well past Arnold and his predecessor, Reg Park, both of whom understood the power of using this kind of split. 

See what other muscle group combos fit together like a set of Legos in the article below.

Big Lifts

We’ll Salute It

While the rest of us were eating a kindergartner’s weight in hot dogs and potato salad, powerlifter extraordinaire John Haack (@bilbo_swaggins181) was busy turning himself into a human flag for the Fourth of July.

Quick Hits

🥩Moralize This: Flying too close to the sun on wings of anabolic wax, the Liver King saga has reached 2008-reality show levels of sadness. Learn more about his one-sided feud with Joe Rogan, arrest, and last, desperate plea for relevance.

🐔Carry This: Farmer’s walks are already one of the foundational methods for developing true strength, but what if we could improve the experience or learn to utilize equipment more commonly found in standard gyms? These carries will blow your mind (not to mention blowing up your grip).

🏋️‍♂️ Read This: The 2025 CrossFit Games is *checks calendar* 25 days from today! Here are our picks for the rookies who could make a big impact in Albany this August.

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