A coach breaks down the preacher curl setup, bench angle, and elbow placement to maximize biceps tension. His preferred variation uses a fat bar with reverse grip to engage the brachialis and build biceps peak while keeping joints safe.
The perfect setup and execution of a preacher curl, and also my favorite implements to use on a preacher curl. So he's a little high as he does this, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to get him to hop up and I'm just going to prop him up a little bit, actually prop him up probably 2 whole points, so that way when he sits in it, he can sit in and retract nice and comfortably even without any weight, right? As Jason is sitting nice and proud, you can see the lever arm of the bicep, and this is why the preacher curl, because it is about controlling the angles. So you may have seen a previous video of mine before which was the incline curl. The incline curl places the elbow behind the body into this position. So we have the elbow behind the body, which creates obviously a different resistance profile than when we create a preacher curl, which places the elbows in front of the body. We're manipulating it by manipulating the joint angle of where the muscle will contract from. So in here, we are in a very, very disadvantaged— you can see here he's pulled everything nice and tight, and he's going to be moving in through this action here. So what I want you to do is bring your hips forward a little bit more for me, Jason. I want you to really stand up nice up proud. So again, as he stands up proud, he gets more tension point at that end range of the bicep. The next thing I want you to do is the same principle, is I want you to— yeah, pull that. And I'm just going to get you to position that a little bit there. So there we go. So that's really creating a lot more tension. It alleviates all of the forearm flexors, and your biceps are already lighting up, and there's no weight on the bar. And the reason why his biceps are already lighting up with no weight on the bar is we've got the tension angle set up in a way where the only thing that he's going to be able to utilize right now is his bicep. So my absolute favorite way of doing preacher is using the fat bar and not using it the way most people will do. I prefer a reverse grip. This is my favorite go-to with preacher curl, bar none. And you can see this forearm flexor, this bicep brachialis muscle, which is deep, goes all the way through. And once it is hypertrophied and does get bigger, it is going to pop out the bicep even more so. You can see the strength and strain that it places on his wrist. And again, the reason why I love it all the way down is because look at this, look at this activation that he's getting through that bicep brachialis, his forearms. Most people neglect their forearms and they neglect the strength through their forearms, they neglect the bicep brachialis. Up nice and tall, and this really places— this exercise here places you at such a disadvantaged angle where the only thing you can really work is this bicep brachialis. So I love this variation and it's super safe.
