How to Fix Your Bad Form on the Bicep Curl

How to Fix Your Bad Form on the Bicep Curl

The bicep curl is one of the most abused exercises ever. I see more people doing the bicep curl wrong than any other exercise. (Bench Press is a close second).Squats and dead lifts are more technical in nature and take some practice to get right. But the bicep curl? There’s nothing technical about it. Yet people seem to come up with endless ways to cheat on the lift and use every muscle in the body other than the bicep.  Then they can’t understand why they can’t gain any strength or size in the bicep.

Here are the problems I see most:

·        Fully straightening the arms-This takes the tension off the bicep muscle and provides the opportunity to “rest” at the bottom of the rep by pausing at the bottom.  

     Beginning the concentric part of the movement from full extension also shifts much of the stress to the forearm and wrist instead of the bicep. Full extension also provides the opportunity to get the shoulder, back and legs into the movement by “swinging”.

·     
           Bringing the concentric portion of the lift all the way to the shoulder in an effort to squeeze” the bicep muscle.- This isn’t a terrible mistake and you may have even been taught to do it this way. But it’s not optimum.  Once you get to less than about a 30 degree angle between your shoulder and you hand much of the muscular tension is transferred to your anterior deltoid (shoulder) and your wrist/forearm and away from the bicep.

The solution to correcting mistakes is to provide a situation where the lifter has no way to make these mistakes even if he tries.

The solution in this case came from an article and video by Dr. Joel Seedman, PhD for  T-Nation.com.  Dr. Seedman is a neuromuscular expert and performance specialist who works with athletes to improve movement mechanics.

If the lifter has no option except to do it right, they learn how the movement is supposed to feel and see for themselves that it works.

The variation shown in the video below creates enormous tension in the biceps because they are locked into the sweet spot of the movement where there’s maximum activation and no relaxation and effectively eliminates the possibility of excess movement and cheating. Any cheating or swinging will cause you to dump the weight. 

Do your bicep curls following the video below until the proper form is perfected. You'll need to start with a lower load than normal.

Sorry, but the video is not loading correctly but you can watch it on Youtube HERE. (37 seconds)