Bicep Curl Tips | Biceps Curling Techniques

Biceps Curl Tips

Weight Training Advice

The biceps are one of the favorite muscles to build for most weight trainers. Even though they're a relatively small muscle group, they're very easy to display so many people who lift focus on building them up with bicep curl exercises.

Virtually every bicep exercise involves curling in some way. The main function of the biceps is that curling motion, so if you're trying to increase the size of your biceps you need to learn how to curl properly.

Performing biceps curls seems simple enough - you basically curl a weight towards you. The only problem is that it's very easy to cheat while you curl and not get the pump you need to get your biceps to grow. Cheat biceps curls do have their place. You can start your bicep workout with some heavy cheat curl sets where you use some body english to get the weight up and lower it slowly so you can really get the blood flowing in the arms. You can also do some cheat curls after you've done as many reps with good form as possible during a set. You'll still need to do some biceps curl exercises with good form to get a good burn in the muscle.

To do bicep curls with good form you need to make sure you aren't using weights that are too heavy. Using wieghts that are too heavy to curl with proper form will force you to bend your lower back to get the weight up. You are also cheating if you shrug your shoulders while performing biceps curls. To properly do curls you need to keep your back straight without any shrugging of the shoulders. Standing with your back against a wall while you curl can help force you to curl properly. Of course if you want to get some extra reps you may want to cheat a bit.

Another thing you should avoid doing while performing bicep curls is curling you wrists towards you at the top of the lift. This will take the resistence off the biceps. Try to keep your wrists straight or even curled away from you for proper form.

Another function of the bieps is to is to twist the forearm. Because of this you should do dumbbell curls with your palms facing your sides at the beginning of a rep and twist your forearms as you lift so that your hands are in a barbell curl position at the end of a rep. To train the brachialis muscles you should begin a rep the same way you would with dumbbell curls without twisting the forearms as you perform the lift.

One thing you don't get at the start of normal barbell and dumbbell bicep curl reps is a good stretch in the muscle. One of the keys to building muscle is to get a nice muscle stretch during reps of an exercises. You should do some sets of dumbbell curls on an incline bench or preacher curls to get that all important stretch at the beginning of a rep.

With many biceps curls exercises you'll also have different levels of resistence during different parts of a rep. Many times you may not feel much resistence on the biceps at the top of a curl rep. To get resistence on the biceps throughout an entire rep you can do some sets of cable curls. There are also some machines that will allow you to feel resistence throughout a curl because they have different places where you can put weight on to overload the start, middle, and end of a rep.