What's up guys, Michael Kamalu aka Dr Gains here and in this video
I'm going to go over the absolute single best exercise to work your biceps. Zero bias, 100
scientifically proven. It's called the Kamalu Curl and it's a move that I developed in order to hit
the entire range of motion of the biceps. From complete extension to maximum contraction,
while maintaining consistent resistance on the muscle throughout the motion. First,
I'll show you what the exercise is and how to do it and then second, we'll go into
why it's so effective by doing a dive into, of course, the anatomy as well as the 90 degree
principle and how both the anatomy and the 90 degree principle work together to make this
move so effective. Then, at the end, I'll give you a killer finisher to do at the end of every
set. The Kamalu Curl is done by starting with your hand gripping the end of a cable or a single-sided
rope or wedge or any instrument that allows you to position your hand in a hammer grip like you see,
and then facing away from the cable with your arm extended behind your back at the shoulder
as I'll show you here in a minute. This puts your biceps in a maximally extended position.
Then, as you start to curl your arm up, you'll slowly rotate your body until you're facing the
cable for the second half of the curl and then finish by squeezing the end of your forearm as
close to your shoulder as you can. Get it with your elbow elevated and again as I'll show you
here in a minute, that puts you in the position of maximal contraction of the bicep muscle. Now, why
is this the single best exercise for your biceps? Well, first let's get into the anatomy. The biceps
has two origination points but neither are where you would expect them to be. When you think of the
biceps, you think of flexing the elbow so it would make sense if the biceps originated on the Humerus
and inserted down on the Radius. Therefore, when contracted would bend the elbow, however,
both of the origination points are actually up on the shoulder. The short head originates from
a part of the scapula called the Coracoid process and the long head originates from another part of
the scapula called the Supraglenoid Tubercle. Then they both travel down to insert on your Radius so,
since they pass over both joints when they contract, not only do they flex the elbow,
but they also flex the shoulder. There's another reason why it's really important to understand
the origination and insertion points of muscles in weight lifting. You want to be able to work
a muscle at its full range of motion so you want to be able to hit it at maximum extension
as well as maximum contraction and everywhere in between. That's important both for optimizing
muscle growth and for preventing injury. However, it's normally very difficult to go all the way
from maximal extension to maximal contraction while maintaining consistent resistance.
In fact, it's impossible to do unless you have a way to alter the angle of resistance. This
can be a little complex to understand but bear with me here, I promise it will make sense. In
order to get maximum extension of any muscle and, extension is just another way of saying
stretch, so maximum stretch in the muscle, you have to get the origination point as far away
from the insertion point as possible. So, if you think about it, you have a muscle,
it's connecting two points. Well, if you can pull those points further away from each other, that's
going to extend the muscle. So, in the case of the biceps, since both of the origination points
are on the front of the shoulder and the insertion point is on the Radius so right on your forearm,
then in order to get those as far away from each other as possible,
one your elbow has to be extended and two, you actually need to have your arm extended behind
your back at the shoulder. So, how does the Kamalu Curl start? With the elbow extended and the arm
extended behind the back. Now, in order to get maximum contraction of a muscle, you do the
opposite. You want to get the insertion point as close to the origination point as possible. So,
in the instance of the biceps, you want to get that insertion point on the forearm as close to
the origination points on the shoulder as possible. In order to do that, you have to bring
the elbow up and then you also need to elevate the elbow to get that point as close as possible to
the shoulder. Guess what, that's how the Kamalu Curl ends, in maximum contraction of the bicep.
However, if all you had to do to work the full range of motion of a muscle efficiently,
was go from max extension to max contraction, then well, that's easy then. Grab a dumbbell,
start here and end here. Right? What's with the rotation and everything is that just for style
points well this is where the 90 degree principle comes in and it's very important to understand
not only for this exercise but for every exercise that you do in weightlifting.
Maximum resistance in any weightlifting move comes when you are working at 90 degrees to the source
of resistance. To put that into practical terms, let's say you have a free weight like a dumbbell,
well with free weights the resistance is always gravity which always goes straight down. Gravity
is pulling everything down to the earth. So, if I were to curl using a dumbbell then maximum
resistance would happen right here when i have a 90 degree angle to the resistance when the curl
starts down here there's very little resistance because the motion from here to here is not
90 degrees to the resistance it's almost parallel to it but as i go up then slowly that approaches
closer and closer to 90 degrees right here is when the maximum amount of resistance is on that muscle
then as i continue up resistance slowly declines again until when it's straight up
and down again there's virtually no resistance going from here to here because i'm not moving
at 90 degrees to resistance it's close to zero degrees try this out and you'll see what i mean
if you were to grab a weight and try to hold it right here you could hold that thing all day or
hold it right here with only a little flex again you could hold that all day but you put that at
90 degrees and completely different story so let's see how i incorporated this principle
with the kamalu curl when the motion starts we're very close to that 90 degrees when you're using a
cable machine then it's a little different from free weights because all of a sudden
you can change the angle of resistance it's not always going to be straight down it's whatever the
angle of the actual cable is so when the motion starts we're at pretty close to 90 degrees we're
getting up to it we hit it and then we start to go past it but by the time we are passing 90 degrees
you're rotating your body now what would happen if we didn't rotate our body well we'd reach that
90 degrees and then we would continue up and we would be losing resistance that entire time
until by the point you get to the top of the curl there's very little resistance from that cable
because you're moving now parallel to it and therefore having very little resistance to that
motion so if you were to stay in one place and use that cable you would have the same limitations
as you do with gravity you're only going to get maximum resistance at one point in that motion so
by rotating your body you're able to alterate that by the time i start to pass 90 degrees
i rotate my body and all of a sudden look what happened with that angle again now it's once again
back to 90 degrees from the cable and that means on the second half i still am getting
a lot of resistance it's not going to be perfectly 90 degrees throughout the whole time
but by rotating your body by altering the angle of resistance in relation to the angle that you are
pushing or pulling you're able to maximize the amount of resistance that is happening on your
muscle throughout the entire motion now if you're still not convinced here's another reason why the
kamala curl is so effective the biceps actually have another role that we haven't discussed
they do more than just flexing the elbow and flexing the shoulder you can see that by taking
a closer look at the insertion point of the biceps we discussed how it goes down and inserts on the
radius but if we pay a little closer attention to that we'll see that it actually inserts on
a specific knob called the radial tuberosity and that radial tuberosity is located on the
medial side of the forearm the medial side of the radius so it's not pulling from directly above it
if it were then all it would do is flex the arm but since it's pulling from the medial side
of the arm it's going to rotate that arm inwards as it contracts this is what's called
supination again try this out yourself put your arm at a 90 degree angle and then grab
your bicep with your other arm and supinate your arm just go back and forth rotating your arm and
your palm up and you will be able to feel every time you supinate your arm your bicep
contracts so you can actually work your biceps very well without even flexing the arm you could
keep it at the same angle and just put resistance onto that supination movement and i actually do
that in some of my workouts so how did i apply this principle in the kamala curl well now that
we know a little more detail about the insertion point of the biceps we know that in order to get
maximum extension not only do we need to do the opposite of flexion by extending the elbow but
we also need to do the opposite of supination and that's pronation so pronating the arm down gets
that insertion point even further away from the origination point making sure that we are getting
maximum extension of the biceps at the beginning of that motion and so that is why you start this
motion in a hammer grip for those who don't know a hammer grip is a type of bicep curl where you
start with the palm pointing to the side rather than up in a classical curl so make sure you're
not starting this motion with an open palm make sure that you really do have it in a hammer grip
with your thumb pointing up and then while you're flexing and rotating the other thing that rotating
really forces your muscle to do is it makes you supinate your arm as you come through and then
you finish that supination in the final part of that motion so not only are we getting the maximum
extension and contraction in flexion of the bicep and of the shoulder but we're also getting that
full supination motion throughout this exercise if you do these right you'll have very little juice
left in you at the end of a set but if you do then there's a finisher i use where i'll simply face
back and then rep out as many of the first half of the motion as i can and then rotate and assist
using the other hand in order to wrap out as many of the final half of the exercise as i can now the
reason i do this is because you actually have more power in that first half of this motion
and so you will be limited in your full reps by how many of the second half you can do you'll
be able to do a lot more of the first half so in adding this finisher really gotten as many reps as
possible that we can out of that first half of the movement while still balancing it out with some
final reps of the second half this is a concept that i call double failure where you take two
different parts of a workout where one is slightly easier than the other and so you go on the harder
one until you reach failure and then move to the slightly easier aspect until you reach failure
again try out the kamala curls next time you work your biceps and i promise your biceps will never
be the same it can be a little difficult to get this motion down at the start but stick with it
and pretty soon it will start to feel natural and you will definitely notice the difference
guys if you thought this was helpful please hit that like button make sure you're subscribed and
share this account with your friends if you have any input or requests i'll put the feedback form
down in the description of the video along with a link where you can sign up to be notified as
soon as my full online training programs are released aloha my friends until next time you