Mark Ottobre from Enterprise Fitness breaks down five bicep curl variations and how joint angle changes where the lift gets hard. Standing curls let you load more weight than seated ones. Cables peak tension at the end of the range, opposite dumbbells, so combining them eliminates the easy spot and keeps tension constant.
In this video, I'm going to show you the secret to bicep curling and how to manipulate your curls simply and effectively. Fundamentally, it comes all down to joint angle. Hi, my name is Mark Ottobre. I'm the owner and founder of Enterprise Fitness. I've transformed thousands of people's lives, trained hundreds of competitors, worked with Commonwealth Games gold medalists, Olympic athletes, world champions, world leaders. Let's start with incline curls. So as I was saying, curling is, is basically the same no matter the angle, right? So we're going to do, we're going to do the same action, we're going to do the same movement. I'm going I'm gonna show you 5 variations of the exact same movement. And the movement is essentially moving your arm up to your shoulder. Now again, what we're gonna manipulate is the resistance profile and the strength curve of this, starting with bringing our shoulders and our elbows more specifically behind our body. Now, when we bring our elbows behind our body, we elongate and stretch out the biceps, putting it in a very disadvantageous position. So curl in this position. The incline bicep curl is a great exercise those who are suffering sometimes with shoulder pain, it's because of that bicep tendon. This is going to lengthen and strengthen. Obviously you want to make sure you're working at a weight that you can do because you don't want to be tearing anything, obviously. And one of the keys here is that as we come down, we flex our triceps at the bottom and really get that stretch. So this isn't an exercise where we're going to use super amounts of load. I mean, you can go as obviously as heavy as you possibly can, but you are in a disadvantageous position doing this exercise. Look at the movement that he's doing. it's going to be exactly the same as when we push him forward. And the only thing that's going to change is the joint angle. You can look at where his elbows are now, they're in line with his body. So do another couple of curls, let's just do 4 of these. And you can see this is slightly easier. He was starting to get tired before, and now all of a sudden he's able to do these reps pretty easily. And again, it's because of that joint angle, it's not as much stress and strain on the bicep. That's perfect, okay? So this one is kind of like that general, we can use a lot of weight, we can use a little bit of momentum when we're sitting as well, but generally we're not using the upper body or the lower body. If we stand up, anytime we stand up, we have more neural engagement. Neural engagement is going to allow our, our whole body into the exercise. We're doing exactly the same motion. The only difference is we have more activation from our nervous system from standing to seating, which is going to allow us to use more load. Some key things here, again, always pull the wrists back, and you can look at that elbow, that joint angle. Some things and coaching points that I like for folks is I like them to protract their shoulders forward. So I'm just going to get you to retract for a second. Most people start a bicep curl, they retract. I don't like retraction on bicep curl. The reason I don't like retraction is because it pulls the joint angle behind their body. I want the joint angle to be forward, so I get people to protract purposely, which is hollowing out your chest, bring your belly button into your spine, hold that, flex your bum as hard as you can. We are stiff in that position. That's where we want to be. Now I want you to curl, and you can see his arms light up in that position. That's where we want him, in this position. Still Exactly the same movement pattern. The only thing we are changing is, that's right, you can guess it, is joint angle and the resistance profile. And we're going to do exactly the same movement pattern. Single arm bicep curl is going to pick this up. Same movement pattern, he's standing up. The only difference here, again, we're using the Prime handles, not that it matters. The only difference is, is we are using a cable now, which again, as we've spoken about before, the only difference is between a cable and a dumbbell is the resistance profile, the strength profile. The movement is exactly the same, right? The movement is exactly the same. The same. Still outstretch that wrist. And in this as well, I'm gonna get you to just hold that, stiffen up your body. That's a bit better. That looks a lot better to me. So you want everything stiff. Let's go one foot in front of the other. That way everything is nice and tight. We're using a nice stable force. Remember, anytime we're doing any exercise, we want to be stable. So that's perfect. Outstretch the wrist. Same movement pattern, same movement pattern. The only thing we're changing is the cable. And you can see the hard part is at that end, right? If this was the dumbbell, the hard part is at the start. When we're on the cable, He's struggling there. So we're hitting all angles now with the resistance profile. You can pop that down. Our last and fifth variation. This is my pièce de résistance. This is the hybrid with the dumbbell. You can grab that one, start curling, hold onto that, get a nice and stiff, stable base. There you go. Show me your wrists as you do it. Now curl up. Now there is no hiding on this exercise. Why? Because we have combined the cable resistance profile with the dumbbell resistance profile. So now, the dumbbell we have the benefit of being hard at the start, and the cable we have the benefit of being hard at the end. We're not using a lot of weight here. It's very light on the cable, and it's very light on the dumbbell. We've only got four kilos, but there is absolutely no hiding when you do this exercise. And you can see it, how much you're struggling. K's a strong guy. He's got some good arms on him. Go. One more, one more, one more, one more. And you can see him struggling on this. Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. And you can see that that's the cable. That's all cable. The other benefit of this, if you just let go for one sec, we want to superset it, drop set it mechanically. Drop set it. You can see now it Lot easier. Now he's only dealing with the dumbbell. Obviously there's less weight, but also one of the big differences is the resistance profile has now changed. And you can see it's hard from here, and we've just eliminated the hard spot that the cable was making, because you can see as he comes up, he just comes through because there's— the cable resistance isn't there.
