Exercise library / Arms
Biceps curl
Arms · Dumbbells
The biceps curl is easy to do and hard to do well. The fault is nearly always the same: the elbow drifts forward and the shoulder takes on work it was never meant to do.
The biceps bends the elbow and turns the forearm. Both should happen in the same rep, and dumbbells are the only tool that lets you do both.
Sets, reps and RIR
Single-joint work responds to reps and time under tension more than to heavy load.
RIR means reps in reserve: how many you could still have done when you racked it. RIR 2 is two short of failure.
How to do it
- Stand with the dumbbells at your sides, palms facing in.
- Lock the elbows against your ribs. They stay still for the whole set.
- Curl up while rotating the palm upward, so it faces the ceiling at the top.
- Stop before the forearm is vertical. Past that the biceps loses tension.
- Squeeze for a moment at the top.
- Lower under control all the way to a straight arm, rotating the palm back.
Common mistakes
- Elbow drifting forward
- You have made it half a front raise. If you feel it in the front of the shoulder, the elbow is in the wrong place.
- Arching the lower back
- Leaning back to get the weight up means the dumbbells are too heavy. Sit down if you cannot stay still.
- Stopping halfway down
- The bottom third is where the biceps is most stretched and doing most work. Straighten the arm.
- No supination
- Curling with the palm already up the whole way skips half of what the biceps does. Start neutral and rotate.
How it differs from the neighbouring variants
The hammer curl keeps the palm neutral throughout and moves work to the brachialis and forearm. It usually lets you go heavier and builds thickness more than peak.
The barbell curl locks the wrists in one position and lets you load heaviest, but bothers some people's wrists. The EZ-bar fixes exactly that. The incline curl puts the elbow behind the body and stretches the biceps more at the bottom; the preacher curl does the opposite, with most resistance in the lower half and the elbow supported.
What it suits
Curls belong at the end of a session, after back work or after pressing. Ten to fifteen reps with a still elbow beat heavy fives with the whole body. If you train back the same day, remember the biceps already worked on every single pull.
Muscles worked
Primary: Biceps.
Secondary: Forearms.
Estimate your one-rep max
Epley's formula, from a set you have actually done. It is an estimate, and it drifts above eight reps, so keep the input between one and twelve.
Enter a set to see the estimate.
What it is called elsewhere
- Norsk Biceps curl
- Svenska Bicepscurl
- Dansk Bicepscurl
- Deutsch Bizepscurl (Kurzhanteln)
- Español Curl de bíceps (mancuernas)
- Italiano Curl con manubri
- Português Rosca direta (halteres)
- Русский Подъём гантелей на бицепс
- Français Curl biceps (haltères)
Related arms exercises
athlate logs this exercise, keeps the numbers, and tells you what you lifted last time.