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STOP Doing Bicep Curls Like This (5 Mistakes Slowing Your Gains)

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Rating: 4.5; Vote: 2

Biceps training isn t complicated. Although there are tons of different exercises, they pretty much all boil down to one movement: bicep curls. Hold a weight, flex the arm. Simple, right? Not really. There are 5 common mistakes almost everyone makes on the bicep curl. Fix these, and your curls (no matter what kind dumbbell curl or barbell curl or cable curl) will instantly become far more effective at growing your biceps. Mistake number 1. You might ve already noticed that as you curl a weight up, it gets harder and harder and becomes the most difficult mid-way when your forearm is perpendicular to the ground. After this point, it gets easier. Your body can sense this and finds ways for you to cheat through this difficult bottom half of the movement without you even realizing. One way it does that is by initiating each rep with a slight swing. Unfortunately, that additional load goes straight to your lower back which is now helping you get the weight up by using momentum. So, try doing a standard set of curls with your regular form. Then, stand with your back against a wall to prevent your body from swinging at all. If you had to drop the weight considerably, then it means you ve likely been incorporating too much momentum into your regular curls. Although I wouldn t recommend doing all your curls against a wall, you ll see far better biceps growth and reduce your risk of injury if you simply lighten the weight and minimize the amount of swing you use, especially towards the end of your set. For the next mistake, two really interesting studies have found that participants experience more muscle growth when they only do the bottom half of the exercise (i. e, where the muscle is fully stretched. What does this mean? Well, I wouldn t recommend doing only partial reps from now on, but it does seem that the bottom part of an exercise when the muscle is fully stretched provides a powerful stimulus for growth. Especially in the distal regions of a muscle like the bottom part of your biceps. So, whenever you do your bicep curls, avoid cutting the range of motion short at the bottom position. Instead, extend your arm fully by flexing your triceps at that bottom position before you go into your next rep to ensure your biceps get fully stretched. Third mistake: flexing your wrist on the bicep curl. The function of the inside forearm muscles is to flex the wrist. Many people, when they curl, subconsciously flex their wrist when trying to get the weight up. This can lead to the forearms working harder than they have to be, and eventually lead to fatigue and cramping. Instead, next time you do a curl, first bend your wrist back so that it s aligned with your forearm, and then keep it that way as you curl. Next, let s talk about the elbows. The primary function of the biceps is to flex the elbow. But whenever you curl with a weight that s too heavy for your biceps to lift, your front delts will start to help by swinging your elbow forward. Biomechanics expert Coach Kassem tested this and found that allowing the elbows to excessively sway forward during the curl (note: across all variations, including the barbell curl) led to less biceps activation and more front delts activation. So instead, keep your elbow locked and focus on the biceps primary function - flexing the arm. A little bit of elbow movement is perfectly fine and hard to avoid, but anything more than what s shown here will likely lead to more of your front delts taking over instead of your biceps. Last mistake: forgetting about mind muscle connection. If you struggle to feel your biceps even with proper form, try this out. With your arm by your side, flex your biceps as hard as you can. Then, bring your arm up in front of your face and again flex hard. You should feel a very strong biceps contraction when your arm is in that position. You don t want to do curls in that position, but you can do this to actually feel what a strong biceps contraction is like. Then, when you go into the dumbbell curl (or whichever curl you prefer, rather than thinking about simply lifting the weight up, think about pulling the bar or dumbbell into your body. And, as you curl the weight up, focus on driving your pinkies up towards the ceiling. This emphasizes another function of the biceps, supination, which can help you get an even stronger contraction to get the most out of every single rep. Next time you do curls, apply these 5 fixes and let me know in the comments below just how much of a difference it makes!
Date: 2022-10-10

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Comments and reviews: 14

Kenan
I have found different techniques to emphazise different parts of the biceps, that works for me:
-lower inner portion
-upper inner portion
-mid inner portion
-lower outer portion
-upper outer portion
-mid outer portion
-upper width
-lower width
-mid width
Many are free to disagree, but I'm going on to 45 cm flexed (from a starting 36 cm) and fully natural, I don't even use creatine powder, but get it from meat.
Experiment in the gym guys.
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Kos
4: 10 Is not to be underestimated. I can tell from experience that if you put too much stress over time on your wrists, it will take a lot of time to heal. Maybe even years if you train through pain and continue to be active weight lifting or do other sports. It is quite some years back since when I had the problem and when doing benchpresses I can still feel it sometimes. Keep your wrist in line with the underarm at all times. Wrist pain is a huge deal.
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T.
Time under tension is easily one of the greatest markers for muscle growth. Tension is the greatest in the middle of the range, but more consistently high from the stretched position to the middle of the range, with the final 3rd of the range providing the least amount of tension.
The results of those two studies is not surprising.
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Daniel
Jeremy - do you know anything about BFR (blood flow restriction? I'm told it can also be done for the chest, back and shoulders and not just the arms and legs. I can't find any discussion on the how to do it - weight, reps, etc. If you can do a video on that, it would be appreciated. A long time follower of yours: Dan Rutley
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Ghostxx
i have a questin jeremy, in 3: 13 the biceps on the right side of your arm, the weight which you are holding, if i were to compare it to the same arm in 6: 19, the arms look bigger when you flex. my question is, why does this occur, and how does one make the biceps be almost as big as if one were not to flex them? thank you
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Coolking
After doing much ego lifting especially on biceps i decided it was time to stop it and focus to the little details of the exercise so I lowered the weights a lot and Ive been stable for some months on the same weights, shall I continue like this or I should start increasing the weight again?
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BigBossMan538
Yesterday, I did bicep curls with 25 lb dumbbells. I did two sets of 12 comfortably, then I could only do 6 reps. My body started to swing forward and I just couldn't muster enough strength to do more without breaking form. I didn't hurt myself, but it was interesting seeing my limits.
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Josue
2: 59 That is interesting how doing the bottom half of the led to more growth. I don't have a good understanding of anatomy, and I would have thought that your quadricep muscle is actually most stretched out at the top-half. It turns out that's when its most contracted.
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Rounak
Very well said bro about this topic and about biceps curls mistake 5 things to avoid and keep it up and keep training hard and be positive and happy always but never give up on your dreams and take care of yourself
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7enth
After doing barbell curls I fell pain in my forearm bone or under part of the bone(Ula. The pain is very sharp. Also my Ula bone moves near the wrist while doing the curl. Why this happens and how to deal with it.
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Good
Six weeks of chin ups did nothing for me. I switched to incline curls and saw immediate bicep growth. I now do ABA, BAB routine for incline curls (for long-head) and preacher curls (for short-heads.
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Anthony
Comes back from back day sees Jeremy post a bicep video cries inside
I feel like I haven t seen a 10/10 tricep video going in detail about targeting specific heads yet
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sport
I have a lumbar herniated disc and I am afraid to lift heavy weights for the muscle with two heads is there a position that prevents pressure from the lumbar spine
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spartacus
Good tips.
If you want to save your lower back from some of that injury risk, try taking a boxer stance (one foot forward) instead of a parallel stance,
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