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Understand Your Arm Muscles to Get Maximum Mind and Body Benefits Out of Your Arm Exercises
Do you have your tickets to the “Gun Show: Starring (your name here)”? We’re going to learn about those things people like to call “guns”, a.k.a. your arm muscles!. Let's start with the biceps muscle (and yes, biceps is singular and plural!). The anatomical term for this is the biceps brachii muscle which most people attribute to flexing the arm up towards the body. Aside from this, however, the biceps is the most powerful supinator of the elbow. In other words, the biceps outwardly rotates the forearm forcing the palms to face forward. So starting your car in the morning, turning a screwdriver and lifting a cup of Joe all require action from your biceps muscle. But how does this work?
To understand how the biceps muscle works, it’s important to understand its attachment points. The term “biceps” came about because the muscle has two “heads” to it – in other words it bifurcates or divides into two separate bundles, each attaching at a different point of the upper arm (humerus) and the shoulder. The biceps proceeds down the upper arm and diagonally to attach at the upper portion of the ulna (the thin bone that runs the length of your forearm on the “pinky” side). This orientation provides for outward rotation of the forearm (supination) and flexion at the elbow. This one directly opposes the biceps muscle and sits on the back of your upper arm. Because it’s opposite of the biceps, it’s easy to conclude that the triceps will work to extend the arm at the elbow. One other action of the triceps is to help keep the arm in specific positions for long periods of time, such as during typing or writing.
So where does the triceps attach on the upper arm? Well, just as the biceps has two heads, the triceps has three heads: medial, lateral and long heads… • The long head attaches at the underside of the shoulder joint (also known as the infraglenoid tubercle). • The medial head attaches directly to the back side of the humerus (bone of the upper arm). • The lateral head also attaches to the back of the humerus, but more towards the outside of the bone.
Given the attachment points, it’s easy to imagine the actions of the muscle. The triceps stabilizes the shoulder joint (attachment to the joint), extends the elbow (attachment to the back of the forearm) and fixes the elbow at a specific flexion angle for long periods of time. I won’t get into each individual muscle of the wrist as this can get pretty complicated. But it’s important to know about the extensor and flexor compartments. Basically, the muscles that control your wrists and fingers reside in the area from your elbow down to the base of the hand. Further, extensors of the wrists and fingers are located on the back of the arm while the flexors are located in the forearm. As a quick example, because the flexors are generally attached around the palms of your hands (aside from the individual digits) and stretch up the forearm, when these muscles shorten (contract), the tendons at each insertion point are pulled, thereby pulling the wrist into a flexed position. The opposite is true for the opposing extensor muscles. Just like other antagonizing muscles, when working out the forearm muscles, or any of the other arm muscles for that matter, it’s important to focus on both the extensors and flexors so as to avoid weak spots and injury.
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About Your Arm Muscles
Remember, your biceps and triceps antagonize each other. In other words, when your triceps contracts, your biceps relaxes, and vice versa. This means that you have to work out both muscles equally to prevent any injuries. You don’t want huge biceps and small triceps – this is very unbalanced, injury prone, and has the recipe for reaching a weight plateau.
All of these “heads” converge into a single tendon, the triceps tendon, and inserts into the olecranon process on the back of the ulna.
