How to Do Dumbbell Curl

Dumbbell curl are one of the most common exercises in gyms. The muscles of the arm, biceps, and triceps, are constantly in sight, so many try to pump their arms in the first place. Let’s look at how to pump big arms with dumbbell curls.

Depending on the execution option, biceps curls can be both basic and isolating, these exercises will help increase the mass of the arms.
Basic exercises: Helps to build up the mass of the arms, these include exercises such as:

Isolation exercises: These exercises do not build mass, but they help develop the maximum peak of the biceps.
That is, to make the biceps muscle more round. Think of the hand of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

All options for performing biceps curls are described in this article.

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What Muscles Do Work in Dumbbell Curls?

Dumbbell curls target at working out the biceps.

Biceps: This is the muscle of the shoulder. Divided into two muscles.

Short biceps part. Located closer to the body. It is the muscle involved when the elbows are pulled back. In this position, it is in a more stretched position.

Long biceps part. Located farther from the body. One of the functions of the biceps is to help the front delta in raising the arm up. Therefore, in order to use precisely her long bicep head, you should put your elbows forward when lifting the dumbbells.

We can also stretch one biceps part by simply increasing or decreasing the distance of the arms from the body.

A narrow grip will shift the focus to a long head, and a wide one to a short one. If you stay in a neutral position, your arms are shoulder-width apart. Then all parts of the biceps will receive the same load

Interesting fact. The short biceps head is actually longer than the long one. And it is called that because of the size of the tendons.

Brachialis. This is the internal muscle. Located under the biceps.

These two muscles are very important for the formation of the biceps. They are united by their common function. It is about flexing the arm at the elbow joint. As you can see, the exercise is called exactly the same.

Brachioradialis muscle. This is the muscle of the forearm. It attaches to the humerus and helps to bend the arm at the elbow joint. And also participates in supination along with the biceps.

Supinated Dumbbell Curl

That is, we do not just lift the dumbbell up. And gradually we begin to rotate it clockwise towards the thumb. This helps to put even more stress on the biceps. This is because we are using another function of the biceps. Namely, the rotation of the brush. For the effect to be pronounced, we need to take the dumbbell by one of the edges. That is, not for the middle, but for the edge closer to the thumb. This will make the dumbbell less balanced and more difficult to rotate.

Alternate Biceps Curl

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We can do two-arm curls at the same time. It is much more convenient and faster to do this. But you will have to focus on two biceps at once. If you don’t have a lot of training experience, then it will be more difficult to do this. Therefore, we can raise our hands one at a time. So only one of the biceps is involved in flexion and it will be easier for us to keep our attention on his work. Plus, we will be able to increase the working weight by 5-10%. On the one hand, this is good. But on the other hand, we will have a skew in the waist area. That is, bending one hand, for example, the right hand, we will bend in the same direction by inertia. Therefore, we will not be able to uniformly load the rectus abdominal muscle (abs). Curl two arms at the same time will help solve this problem.

| Read more about ALTERNATE DB CURL

Variants of Biceps Curl with Dumbbells and their Execution Technique

Standing dumbbell curl

This exercise can be called a classic. This is a biceps curl that most beginners and pros alike prefer:

Benefits

• Requires no additional equipment other than dumbbells.
• The ability to use “Cheating”. Which, if used wisely, will help you perform exercises to muscle failure.
• Free play of elbows. Therefore, you can safely put them forward or backward. To shift the focus to a short or long head.
• Promotes the growth of the biceps and growing mass.
• The movement occurs in full amplitude. Which maximally includes all the available muscle fibers of the biceps.

You can do the exercise in any way. If you want, curl your biceps alternately or simultaneously. The same goes for supination. You can do the exercise with or without it. But still, there is one drawback.
But “Cheating” recommended for use only by experienced sportsmen. If it is done by inexperienced athletes, then they are unlikely to benefit from it. And just waste their time. And when working with a lot of weight, they can injure the elbow or shoulder joint.

Execution technique:

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1. Grip the dumbbells off the weight you need.
2. Legs are shoulder-width apart and slightly bent at the knee joint. The back is straight and the body is tilted forward. This will give a more stable position.
3. Shoulders down. This way we will not be able to include them in the work.
4. As you exhale, we bend our arms at the elbow joint and raise the dumbbells up. In the version with supination, it unfolds the hand during lifting.
5. At the top, we pause to squeeze the biceps. And while inhaling, we lower our hands to the starting position.

Seated Dumbbell Curl

This option is practically no different from the previous one. Except that now we will bend our arms from a sitting position. This will isolate the biceps to some extent and exclude the help of the accessory muscles.

Perform it while sitting on a bench. Two options can be distinguished: with an emphasis on the back of the bench and without it. For beginners better of course to fix the back, which allows you to work out the biceps in isolation.

Beginners also need to reduce the weight of the dumbbells, as the exercise will be more difficult. But with the right technique, we won’t even notice it. The back fixation will allow us to exclude help from the body and shoulders. This will give an opportunity to feel the work of the biceps even for a beginner.

Improve the neuromuscular connection between the brain and muscles. More experienced athletes execute to do this exercise without back support.

Execution technique:

1. To perform this type of flexion, we need a bench.
2. We set it at an angle of 90 °.
3. We take the dumbbells in our hands and sit down on the bench.
4. The back is straight. We can rest our back to the bench or just sit straight.
5. As we exhale, we bend our arms at the elbow joints and curl the dumbbells.
6. On inhalation, we return to the starting position.

| Read more about Biceps Workout

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Сonclusions

Choose a medium repetition range of 12-20 reps, 3-4 sets. And your biceps will inchmeal take on the shape you wanted.