When your arms plateau (and they will), it’s time to amp up your training with these 5 unique variations of moves you’ve probably never done before.

Everybody makes gains when they first start training arms, but eventually growth comes to a grinding halt. So, you respond by attacking your biceps with an array of muscle-building techniques and schemes. But even those approaches reap diminished gains after a while and you’re confronted with choices, most notably these polar opposites:

Choice 1: Continue doing what you’ve done, in which case you shouldn’t expect demonstrably different results.

Choice 2: Consider an altogether different solution in which your focus is on exercise selection, an approach that can stimulate the muscle fibers in significantly different ways.

One reason the latter approach can be your best option is that the biceps, unlike all the other major muscle groups, don’t have an arsenal of compound (multi-joint) moves available to them. In compound moves, more than a single pair of joints are at work, which allows you to use the heaviest weights. Hence, to encourage lasting biceps growth, it becomes even more critical to keep mixing up your training.

For starters, let’s examine a typical biceps workout. It would generally consist of: 1) a barbell curl; 2) an alternating dumbbell curl of some kind; and 3) a finishing exercise, like a preacher bench move.

If this approach sounds familiar or you need to jump-start your biceps workout, then a good dose of variety, especially with various angles, is absolutely in order.

We mention the idea of angles with regards to biceps training because a change in elbow position in relation to your torso allows you to emphasize either the long or short head of the upper arm (remember, biceps equals two heads). The basic goal never changes: Innervating as many of those muscle fibers as possible, either individually or together, to maximize gains in strength and size. The best way to accomplish that feat is to put your arms in different positions relative to your torso. Here we’ll cover five fairly unique variations that you can easily insert into your arm workout to keep those muscle gains coming.