[Music] okay welcome everyone to a new episode of technique tuesday where every week we're going to be breaking down the lost art and science of training technique for one specific movement this week we're going to be looking at the bicep curl and in particular how to get the most biceps bang for your buck out of the barbell curl and while the curl appears to be a pretty straightforward exercise on the surface as we'll see there's actually quite a bit more complexity and muscular involvement than many people realize okay so with this movement we're going to
be performing mainly elbow flexion so basically just bending your elbow which contrary to popular belief is in fact handled mainly by the brachialis muscle that very powerful muscle that sits underneath the biceps and even though you can't see it superficially when you flex your arms building this muscle will push the biceps brachii up and out more which will increase their appearance of size as well now of course since the biceps brachii do cross the elbow joint they will be doing a lot of work here as well and these two prime movers will get assistance from
the brachioradialis muscle on the back of the forearm now we're also performing wrist supination here so twisting your palm up which will be handled mainly by the biceps and also the supinator muscle of the forearm and supination is actually really important for targeting the biceps because that more powerful underlying brachialis muscle can't contribute to supination meaning the biceps will have to handle the brunt of the load here also when viewing the curl from the side you can see that some degree of shoulder flexion is happening which is fine the biceps in particular the long head
that forms the biceps peak assists the front delt with shoulder flexion since the biceps also crosses the shoulder joint and can help bring the arm up like in a front raise finally throughout the curl there will be an isometric wrist flexion contraction where the muscles of the anterior forearm prevent the wrist from bending backwards maintaining that neutral wrist position throughout the curl now i put the barbell curl easy bar curl and dumbbell curl on pretty much even footing here the main advantage of the barbell curl is that you can more easily apply progressive overload with
minimal loading creases week to week adding just 2.5 pounds to each side as needed whereas with dumbbells you may have to make bigger jumps of 5 pounds per side which could compromise form or delay load progression and while the barbell does allow for a slightly more supinated wrist position than the easy bar i don't think this difference is practically relevant especially if you queue for supination as we'll discuss in a minute and if the easy bar feels better for you or more comfortable on your wrists then i think you should just go with that and
we'll return to the dumbbell curl in a little bit okay so generally speaking you want to load the bar with light to moderate load in a relatively higher rep zone around 8 to 20 reps because loading the biceps too heavily will just result in form breakdown as other muscles come in and help heave the weight up and throughout the curl rather than having the amount of weight at the forefront i think you really want to focus on improving your mind muscle connection with the biceps and squeezing the biceps as you curl one eight-week training study
from schoenfelding colleagues found that focusing on squeezing the biceps resulted in significantly more hypertrophy than just focusing on moving the weight so you want to grab the bar with a comfortable grip with which for most people will be at just about shoulder width now because the long head of the biceps is a stronger shoulder abductor than the short head taking a wider grip may target the biceps peak slightly more however at this point that's just kind of my own speculation and it might not actually be worth the reduced range of motion you get from going
wider and i'm personally not a fan of the very close grip as it also reduces range of motion and according to one source reduces biceps emg amplitude by 13 relative to a shoulder width grip as a quick aside when it comes to targeting the long head or that outer peak dr brad schoenfeld has recommended performing exercises where the upper arm is held behind the body where the long head will be placed under greater stretch so if your goal is to maximize the peak in addition to the basic variable curl you may want to also include
an incline dumbbell curl or a basin cable curl where the arm is held back behind the torso okay back to the barbell curl so with a comfortable roughly shoulder width supinated or underhand grip stand upright with the barbell keeping a strong shoulder width stance with a braced core and slightly bent knees now unlike with the bench press here you want to purposefully take a more loose grip with your hands and fingers which will increase biceps involvement by minimizing activation of the elbow flexors of the forearm you want to make sure that before initiating the curl
your elbows are tucked in comfortably close to your sides and just before initiating the curl you want to slightly flex the shoulder or in other words bring your arms forward by about 10 degrees and at the same time try tilting your scapulae posteriorly since the short head of the biceps attaches on the front end of the scapula tilting them posteriorly will pull tension into the biceps as you begin the curl think about putting the majority of the pressure on your pinky and ring fingers rather than your pointer and middle fingers which will force the wrist
into a more supinated position further shifting tension onto the biceps you want to think about curling the bar out in front of you in an arc rather than straight up and let's just look at the difference here so on the left we're just pulling the bar straight up and on the right we're swinging the bar out in an arc just notice the difference in distance between the axis of rotation at the elbow and the center of mass at the barbell between these two variations even though the weight is exactly the same you're going to generate
much more torque and as a result much more tension on the biceps by curling the bar out rather than just pulling it straight up generally as you reach the top end of the curl you want to maintain a neutral wrist position not allowing the wrists to curl in at any point throughout the range of motion in fact as an advanced technique you can slightly extend the wrists at the top which will help take the forearm muscles out of the movement even more just be careful when doing this and if you feel any wrist pain and
then don't do it now as you curl when viewed from the side there shouldn't be much movement at the knees hips or lower back and other than the arms everything should be pretty much motionless and locked into position and even though i don't like to pause at the top of the curl myself since there will be minimal tension there you do want to think about squeezing your biceps to move the weight including at the top of each rep on the eccentric again you want to lower the bar out in an arc while maintaining a loose
grip and forcefully contracting your biceps the eccentric is just as or more important than the concentric when it comes to muscle growth so don't treat the negative it's just a time to relax and just let the weight fall i personally like to think of the negative as a sort of failed positive where you're actively resisting the weight on the way down i personally prefer to reset every rep at the bottom because it allows me to regain position and get a deep breath in which helps maintain upper body tightness and stability on the next rep which
allows me to better control the weight and move more load overall so i would say the most common error that i see here is the same as with the row just going too heavy now i'm not against cheap curls on principle i think they can have a place in a program especially if you're really controlling the eccentric however they can set you up on a bit of a slippery slope or you may not be actually applying progressive overload you may be in fact applying progressive cheating where you just progressively get more and more assistance from
the other muscles down the chain while tension on the biceps actually goes down or at best stays the same so i think that a bit of shoulder flexion up to 10 to 15 degrees is actually a good thing to get the curl started but as the hips knees and ankles start to get involved it starts to become a totally different exercise now an arm blaster can actually be really helpful here as it helps to keep the shoulders back and enforces a better lifting posture however you don't want to use it as a crutch and as
with most exercises you should learn proper form without the aid of supplemental lifting gear first another common error that i see all the time is lack of active supination many people will correctly curl with an underhand grip but then forget to actively supinate by driving their pinky and ring fingers into the bar which can result in a curl where the forearms perform much more of the work than the biceps now i want to quickly mention the standing dumbbell curl here is an excellent adjunct exercise since it has the advantage of hitting each arm individually which
can correct for asymmetries and unlike the barbell you can start with a neutral wrist position and then supinate throughout the concentric now to maximize on this you want to curl with your pinky finger in the center of the dumbbell which is going to force your biceps to fire harder when performing supination of course combining exercises is usually the best way to work around slight pitfalls in each individual movement so don't be scared to periodically vary your routine while using the basic barbell or easy bar curl as the bread and butter movement of your arm building
program okay so that's it for this one guys i've decided that i'm going to leave the entire technique tuesday series totally unsponsored so that way i can just focus on delivering the information to you guys in its purest form now these videos will usually take rashawn and i 30 upwards of 30 hours to edit research write film etc so if you've been benefiting from the series so far purchasing a program on my website is the best way that you can support the work that i'm doing over here on this channel while at the same time
getting a complete and very applicable version of some of the stuff i talk about in my videos so for the release of this video i've decided i'm going to knock my arm hypertrophy program down by 30 for the next week which is going to put it at just 13.99 and there's more info on that arm hypertrophy program on my website if you'd like to check it out um thanks again guys so much for tuning in and thank you so much for the amazing feedback on the series so far i really do appreciate that and it's
been really motivating for me in terms of wanting to just crank these episodes out every week and make each one better and better um so please don't forget to leave me a like if you enjoyed the video subscribe so you don't miss future technique tuesday episodes and i'll see you guys all here next tuesday
