Both your biceps and your triceps are critical for your upper body strength. These two muscle groups help you with a huge variety of lifting tasks and arm movements, whether you’re carrying heavy loads overhead or taking out stress on a punching bag.

Can you work out biceps and triceps on the same day or do you need to alternate? This guide can help you decide.

Can You Work Out Biceps and Triceps on the Same Day Safely?

In most cases, there’s nothing wrong with working your biceps and triceps on the same day. Generally speaking, when you focus on one muscle group during your workout, you want to give those muscles at least 48 hours of recovery time afterward. Because the biceps and triceps are two different muscle groups, you can safely exercise both of them in the same session or in different sessions — whichever you prefer.

Put simply, fatigue in one of these groups doesn’t affect the other group. Even if your biceps are tired, you can still include triceps exercises in your session.

Why Are Workouts for Biceps and Triceps Important?

To decide where you want to focus your attention during upper arm workouts, it’s helpful to understand more about these two important muscle groups.

The Function of Your Biceps and Triceps: Pulling and Pushing

One of the things that makes your arms so useful is the wide range of movements you can perform with them. Thanks to your elbows, it’s possible to grab and move objects in countless ways. The biceps and triceps make it possible for your elbows to work correctly.

The biceps are responsible for making your elbows bend, raising your hand like a crane lever. On the other hand, when your triceps contract, your arm straightens out. The biceps and triceps work opposite of each other, contracting and relaxing in unison.

Triceps Versus Biceps

Even though you can work out biceps and triceps on the same day, many athletes prioritize the triceps. Here’s why:

• Size: Triceps are generally the larger muscle group. They account for around 50% of arm muscle mass, compared to just 30% for your biceps.
• Number of muscle heads: As you may suspect from the name, the triceps have three muscle heads to hit, while the biceps only have two.
• Posture: Ignoring your triceps and exclusively focusing on your biceps can give you an unbalanced “gorilla” posture that pulls your shoulders forward and puts undue stress on your shoulders.
• Usefulness: Many sports activities use your triceps more often than your biceps.

If your favorite activities involve swinging a baseball bat, pitching, shooting hoops, throwing a football or punching something, you want powerful triceps muscles on your side. That said, if you’re into rock climbing or archery, having strong biceps for pulling is a must.

What Types of Exercises Target the Biceps and Triceps?

Another important question is how you can exercise biceps and triceps on the same day efficiently. It’s trickier to target your tris, so you probably need to include a few specific exercises.

Great Triceps Exercises

Bench presses are the quintessential weight training option for your tris. As you lift the weights, you’re pushing them overhead, which engages your triceps. Depending on your skill, you can perform traditional (more pecs) or close-grip (more tris) bench presses.

To mix things up and target your tris, lats, pecs and back muscles at the same time, learn a few of the following workouts:

• Triceps dips: Hold your feet in the air, stay vertical and rely on your arms to lower and raise yourself.
• Bench dips: This exercise involves lifting your body with a rear bench for support while placing your feet on a front bench.
• Overhead dumbbell extensions: There are one-arm, two-arm, standing and seated versions of these overhead lifts.
• Cable push-downs: With the exercise equipment at a gym, this type of push-down is fast and easy to perform, and it’s great for the lateral triceps head.
• Resistance band exercises: If you’re working out at home, you can use resistance bands to simulate both extensions and push-downs.
• Close-grip pushups: These narrower pushups place more emphasis on your tris than your pecs.

Do the most intensive triceps exercises first to maximize your safety.

Easy Biceps Workouts

Tons of arm exercises directly or indirectly give the biceps some love, including concentration curls, barbell curls, EZ bar curls, hammer curls and spider curls. You can often pair biceps exercises with back, shoulder or abdominal exercises. For example, rowing gives many arm and core muscles a workout, including the biceps.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Working Out Biceps and Triceps on the Same Day?

Including both of these groups of muscles on the same day helps you use your time wisely. After all, when one group contracts, the opposite group rests. Plus, as long as you have your equipment handy for curls and rowing, you may as well use it for pull-downs, bench presses and overhead extensions as well.

That said, it’s not always as effective for muscle gain to alternate muscle exercises strictly. You need to target specific heads to maximize your performance. Generally, the muscles you prioritize are the ones that see the biggest gains.

If you want stronger tris, do those exercise sets before starting on your bicep workout. That way, you keep your momentum going and make sure the tris are thoroughly exercised.

Should You and Can You Work Out Biceps and Triceps on the Same Day?

There’s a difference between “Should I work biceps and triceps on the same day?” and “Can I?” You can exercise both groups, but that doesn’t mean you have to. Always choose a workout routine that meets your goals, feels safe and avoids hurting your body.

Balancing your gains matters. Instead of overdoing it with biceps or triceps exclusively, you may get better results overall by focusing on a variety of muscle groups. ZOZOFIT can help you measure the size of your biceps, triceps, lats, pecs and other muscles with precision. This can help you create a personalized workout routine and track your progress every week.

When deciding if you can work out biceps and triceps on the same day, the more info, the better. See how the ZOZOFIT app can help exercise enthusiasts right away.