Five bicep curl variations that change joint angles, body position, and resistance type. Incline curls stretch the biceps and ease shoulder pain. Standing curls let you lift heavier than seated because of greater neural engagement. Cables are hardest at the top of the movement, dumbbells at the bottom, so a hybrid curl combines both for continuous tension.
The secret to bicep curling and how to manipulate your curls simply and effectively. Fundamentally, it comes all down to joint angle. We are gonna do the same action, we are gonna do the same movement, and the movement is essentially moving your arm up to your shoulder. Let's start with incline curl. So 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. 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 gonna lengthen and strengthen. And one of the keys here is that as we come down, we flex our triceps at the bottom and really get that stretch. You can look at where his elbows are now, they're in line with his body. 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. Anytime we stand up, we have more neural engagement. Neural engagement is going to allow 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 shoulders forward. 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. Still outstretch that wrist, and in this as well, I'm gonna get you to just hold that, stiffen up your body. 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. This is my piece de resistance. This is the hybrid with the dumbbell. 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. The other benefit of this, we wanna superset it, drop set it, mechanically drop set it, you can see now it's a lot easier.
