Can You Do Biceps After Shoulder Day? (Solved!)

Finding the best order to train your different muscle groups is a tough task.

Because the last thing you want is to hinder your workout by the previous day’s workout.

Well, in this article, we discuss whether you can do biceps after shoulder day.

We look at the benefits and disadvantages, some safety points, and whether there are other muscle groups better suited to being trained after shoulder day.

Can You Do Biceps After Shoulder Day?

Training biceps after shoulder day can be an effective way of working out and moving towards your fitness goals.

During your shoulder workout, your biceps won’t be doing too much work so they should still be pretty fresh the day after you’ve done shoulders.

When it comes to doing biceps, your shoulders do play a part in some exercises…

…But they don’t activate enough to become fatigued after a heavy workout the previous day.

Your shoulders and your biceps do work together in some exercises but you can still train them on consecutive days without too much issue.

Benefits of Doing Biceps After Shoulder Day

You Can Alternate Between Push And Pull Workouts

Your shoulders are considered a push muscle while your biceps are considered a pull muscle.

This is useful to keep in mind as many gym-goers alternate their workouts between push and pull movements.

If you’re one of these gym-goers, then doing biceps after shoulder day can work out nicely for you as you can keep working in your push/pull sequence.

You Can Target Your Upper Body More

Many of us desire a big, strong upper body.

Targeting two upper body muscles over two consecutive days can be very beneficial for your upper body development goals. 

Working two upper body muscle groups that don’t impact the performance of the other can be an even more beneficial thing to do.

By doing biceps after shoulder day, you can continually target your upper body in a bid to keep your progress moving in the right direction.

Drawbacks of Doing Biceps After Shoulder Day

Targeting Two Small Muscle Groups Individually Might Not Be The Best Idea

Usually, people train biceps and shoulders on the same day as other larger muscle groups.

For example, a push day workout might include your chest, shoulders, and triceps.

A pull day workout could include your back, biceps, and forearms.

By combining muscle groups in this way, you can train the same muscle groups multiple times throughout your training week (depending on how often you train).

It can also help ensure that you’ve enough time to train all muscle groups in your training week.

If you train each muscle group individually, particularly the smaller ones like biceps and shoulders, it can be almost impossible to fit them all into one training week without training more than once per day.

Muscle Fatigue

Although your shoulders and biceps don’t work together in every exercise, there are some bicep exercises that bring your shoulders into play.

If you’re doing these after shoulder day, it could be that your shoulders are fatigued and prevent you from performing the bicep exercises as well as you’re able to if your shoulders were fresh and fully recovered.

Muscle fatigue in secondary or stabilizing muscles can impact your workouts in a big way, so this is something to consider when planning the order of your workouts.

Should You Do Biceps After Shoulder Day?

You could, but it might not be the most effective way of training for you.

While they do have opposing functions in terms of push or pull, there’s some overlap between your shoulders and your biceps in some movements.

That’s why it might not be the best idea to do biceps after shoulder day unless it’s part of a push/pull split training program. 

Is It Safe To Do Biceps After Shoulder Day?

As long as you aren’t injured and your muscles are recovered enough to perform each exercise in a controlled manner, it’s usually safe to do biceps after shoulder day.

Your shoulders will likely be fatigued after shoulder day, so it’s important to keep this in mind when planning your bicep workout to avoid any risk of overtraining your shoulders.

(Since they assist in some bicep exercises.)

Is It Better To Do Shoulders After Biceps Day?

As your shoulders are push muscles and your biceps are pull muscles, the order in which you train them shouldn’t matter too much.

During a push/pull split program, you train biceps and shoulders on consecutive days regardless of whether you do your push or pull workouts first.

As a general rule, most people will do their push workouts first which will include shoulders.

This means that you typically do shoulders before biceps.

Conclusion

In summary, you can do biceps after shoulder day with minimal issues. Since your biceps aren’t required during most shoulder exercises, they’ll still be fresh when you train them the next day.

That’s all for this article, but what about chest day after arm day? Or what about biceps after back day?

Hope this helped!

Sources

https://www.healthline.com/health/muscle-fatigue