FST-7 workout founder Hany Rambod shares her top three exercises for biceps growth

Hany Rambod has one of the most impressive coaching resumes of all time, and she's not shy about helping others online. In her latest venture, Rambod shares her top three biceps exercises and opens up about the importance of barbell movements, as well as whether reaching failure is essential for muscle growth. In the world of bodybuilding, Hany Rambod's name shines brightly. He has mentored and coached the sport's greats, including former seven-time Mr. Olympia Phil Heath and four-time titleholder Jay Cutler. In addition to overseeing the training of Men's Physique competitor Andrei Deiu, Rambod is also responsible for training reigning Mr. Olympia Derek Lunsford, former champion Hadi Choopan and reigning five-time Classic Physique Olympia Chris Bumstead.

Rambod, who has an in-depth knowledge of bodybuilding at the highest level, has an unparalleled knowledge of training and exercise. He created his own training program called FST-7 (Fascia Stretch Training), which is not a single workout, but a system that can be applied to any workout.

The 3 best exercises for biceps growth according to Hany Rambod

• Spider curls
• Hammer curls
• Drag curls

Spider curls

Rambod prefers spider curls because of the contraction they provide.

"Okay, so number one is spider curls. I love this exercise. It's that exercise where you lean forward on the bench, your chest is up and you really get that great contraction. I showed you how to do them."

Hammer curls

Probably the most essential exercise that Rambod named for biceps growth was the hammer curls, which he considers a staple of his routine.

"My second exercise, I love hammer raises. Good forearm and biceps brachialis activation, just sometimes, you know, vary it a little bit by going slightly cross, but any variation of that. Again, you can do them on the bench as well, but it's basic, make sure you have them in your workout, it's a very very good biceps exercise."

Drag curls (on a Panatta machine)

In the end, Rambod advocated drag curls but mentioned that he prefers to use a Panatta machine for this total arm workout.

"For the third exercise, I really love the great arm machine from Panatta. That's my favorite machine. I know most gyms don't have it. I like it because you can use either a straight bar or a bent bar on it and do what I call drag curls."

"You basically pull the barbell across your body and if you don't have that machine and you want to do drag curls, you just use the straight or bent bar that goes all the way up to your belly button and you just curl it all the way up, but you literally pull it up there," shares Hany Rambod.

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Rambod explains why you should master the technique and whether it's necessary to go to failure for every series

According to Rambod, exercises such as the incline press with dumbbells are a "must" and the younger generation should "build a foundation" with dumbbells.

"There's a meme with me and Jay and Jay does oblique push-ups with dumbbells. Everyone has it on their iPhone right now. You can look it up. There's a picture of him and he's doing push-ups with dumbbells. I think he was training for the 2009 or 2010 Olympia. You have to do these exercises. Barbell squats are mandatory exercises. They are so essential, especially for the younger generation, you need to build that foundation."

Rambod doesn't believe it's necessary to train to failure in every series. He stressed the need for warm-up and work sets.

"Every series to failure? No. First of all, you need warm-up sets, secondly, when you do a set to failure, it should be one or possibly two sets for a particular exercise, but it's not every set because the first two or three sets are warm-ups.

Then you move on to what I call working sets. Usually that's one or two sets of really good high working 8-12 reps going into failure and then possibly if you want to go into really like another failure, let's say we're using half reps, let's say you're doing forced reps or you're doing some type of negative, you're really taking it into that absolute failure."