Way back when I was in high school, one of my peers in the campus weight room had a peculiar reply to a claim from a buddy of mine. My friend was saying that a person could derive benefit from splitting rep motions in half on barbell curls. This essentially entails making sets out of moving the barbell from the hips to the halfway point – then doing a block of sets from the midway point to the fully curled position. The guy's reply: "I've heard you shouldn't perform split reps like that because it can make you too bulky." My friend and I looked at each other and agreed that we were both hoping to have such a burdensome "problem".

I've often wondered why this technique isn't practiced and talked about more often. Performing sets in this manner makes sense from a kinesiology standpoint. When we perform a barbell curl, for example, the tension on the biceps hits its peak when the forearms are horizontal as the curl reaches its midpoint. If we split the barbell curl into two half rep exercises (top and bottom half respectively), we double up on the time the biceps spend under this peak stress condition. Moreover, we bring the bar ‘up toward' the peak stress position using the lower half curls and we bring the bar ‘down to' the stress position with the upper half curls. This gives us the power a contraction from a positive repetition on the first exercise, followed with a dose of contractions from a predominantly negative movement on the latter one.

Actually, when curling the weight from the top of the exercise where the bar is at the shoulders – down to the mid-position where the forearms are parallel – we get a nice contraction of the biceps with a negative/isometric as we have to put on the breaks and briefly stop the weight before moving it up again. This is where the biceps really endure the extra intensity that can give them the size that full reps just don't provide.

If you also practice splitting your reps with some triceps exercises, the results on arm development can be impressive. I personally do this on one of those Cybex triceps extension machines. With my upper arms resting on the padded platform, I do sets from the starting position to the mid-point of a full extension. After that, my triceps get really worked and feel like they're breaking the seams of my shirt as I perform sets from the mid-point to the fully extended position.

Here's a suggestion that can really get your biceps growing by adding just two specific exercises to your routine. Lie down on a pulley-rowing machine while holding a straight bar of shoulder width with both hands. Move your body far enough down the rowing platform that you can curl the weight to your waist level without having the weight stack hit the top of the machine. You can usually secure your lower legs under the platform or bar that's normally used for a person's feet when doing rowing exercises. While lying horizontally, perform sets of biceps curls like this, curling the bar from your thighs up to the level of your waist. The pulley, with its weight fighting gravity through the entire motion, will give your biceps a nice contraction through the whole motion.

After five or six sets of that, find a bench and set it under a triceps press-down pulley. You won't use it for triceps in this case, but rather to put maximum contraction on the second half of your biceps curls. Lie on this bench with a straight bar in your hands and the weight stack a few inches behind your head. This time, you'll curl the weight from the point of your forearms being parallel to the floor to having the bar right on your chin. You can even touch the bar to your neck for really peak contraction.

Five or six sets of this peaking movement after burning up your biceps with the previous exercise will have them appearing like they're bulging even when someone's handing you a piece of paper.

If you've had problems with arm growth, I highly recommend you start splitting some of your exercises into two movements of half-range motion. It can really help you get a respectable set of "guns".