Exercise Of The Week: Barbell Curls

With your elbows pointed forward, slowly bend them, lowering the bar down, aiming towards between the top of your chest and your chin. While holding the bar, step one leg backward and settle into a lunge position with your front knee in line with your ankle and back knee dropped towards the ground. With a slight bend in the knees, sit your hips back and keep your back straight as you pull the bar up in line with your shins. As you pull the bar upward, allow your elbows to flare out above shoulder height. With the EZ curl bar resting on the floor, load it with weight. Grip the bar palms up at standard width and extend your arms down.

Sit on a bench set to an incline between 30˚ and 45˚, holding a dumbbell in each hand. Keeping your back flat against the bench and your elbows using salt as a pre workout close to your sides, curl both dumbbells up to shoulder height. Squeeze your biceps at the top of the move, then slowly return to the start.

The cable system allows for smooth movement and you can easily adjust the weight to match your strength level. This exercise starts by holding the bar at thigh level and pulling it up toward the chest. The upright row is considered one of the best muscle builders for the back and shoulders. It is also potentially dangerous for the shoulders, requiring perfect form for the best results and helps to avoid injury.

You could also choose a floor press if you’re at the gym during busy hours and all the exercise benches are taken. Pick a couple of dumbbells and stand with them by your sides, palms facing your body. Keeping your upper body still – that means no swinging – lift the dumbbells out to your side with a slight bend at your elbows. Lift until your arms are parallel to the floor then slowly lower to the start position. The positioning of your hands as you do curl bar exercises influences which head is emphasized. Though many people think it’s just for your biceps, the curl bar is a versatile piece of kit that can be used to target many different muscle groups.

For many lifters, barbell bicep curls, tricep dips, bench presses, push-ups, are go-to exercises for arm development, and that’s because they work. Floor pressing can be more shoulder-friendly than bench pressing because you use a shorter range of motion. Choose the curl bar floor press if regular bench pressing tends to bother your shoulders.

Focus on your biceps as you lift the bar upwards toward your chest until your forearms touch your biceps, as shown in Figure 6. You can perform regular barbell curls by grasping a barbell with an underhand grip, and with your hands separated by a shoulder-width distance. In the initial position, shown in Figure 1, you should be standing up straight with a shoulder-width stance and with your shoulders squared.

With an EZ bar, a form of a concentration curl is possible, but because you are using a bar, you will be limited in how far you can lower the weight . So, the spider curl is like the concentration curl of EZ bars. Just as a heads up, we won’t be spending as much time on the other exercises as we just did for the EZ bar’s “bread and butter’ exercise.