What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
So what curl is the best one for you?
You see, there actually is an answer, especially if you're heading to the gym at all banged
up.
You have problems with your wrists, your elbows, your shoulders, and your back.
What curl is best for you?
You kind of have to figure it out because the curl is going to be a staple of bicep
training.
There's not a lot of other options that don't involve some sort of curling of a dumbbell
or a barbell.
But there's a big difference and you can never just whittle it down to two.
That's one of the stupidest things you can do.
There are so many options and they all vary based on your anatomy.
So today I want to show you how to pick the right curl based on what might be going on
with you.
Now, if you're a bicep non-responder like I say, someone that simply can't feel your
bicep contract when you try to train it and you don’t ever feel like you get a good
workout there, then do this first.
Go watch this video that we did before called The Bicep Non-Responders.
I give you three tips no matter if you're working out with dumbbells, or with a cable,
or with a resistance band.
I show you how to get more out of every single rep of your curls.
What I'm talking about here though are those aches and pains and how to work yourself around
them.
So first of all, the wrists.
The wrist is a common source of pain during a curl, particularly on a barbell curl.
I've covered this before why that happens, but basically in short, your wrist here, and
the bones in your wrist are uneven, okay?
You have your radius that comes a little bit further up than your ulna, and in between
the ulna and the rest of your carpal bones you have a little disc of cartilage that's
meant to try to help level off the difference that's created by that long radius.
Well, when you curl – especially if you're trying to curl heavy – you've sort of leaned
back a bit, what happens is you're getting this bending back of your wrists, and also
bending in this direction here.
You're pinching that cartilage.
So we can avoid that by getting rid of the straight bar, obviously, but if you still
want to be able to do your straight bar curls you can do it with less weight.
You're not having to lean back.
I'm a big proponent of doing cheat curls, but if wrist pain is something that you're
dealing with now you don’t want to do that.
So the other thing we could do, obviously, is something called The Easy Bar Curl.
Now, someone smart came up a long time ago with the idea of bending the bar in a certain
configuration here that allowed us to not have to have our wrists forced to be in this
position, but allowed them to be a bit more neutral.
This alone will make a big difference, but don’t make the mistake of making the easy
bar curl easy.
Load up that sucker and make it a heavy, easy bar curl, just like you would with the straight
bar curl.
So if you continue to see the gains without the pain in your wrists.
Of course, you could always use dumbbells too and just mimic the same positioning.
Instead of holding your dumbbells like this, get them in this position here.
Again, don’t forget you still want to get some supination up at the top as I'm showing
you here, to make sure that you're not missing out on the full benefit and function of the
biceps.
Moving up the kinetic chain, the next stop that you might start having some pain is right
here in the elbow.
It's actually a really common source.
Forearm and elbow pain during curls.
A lot of people have stopped curling because of the excruciating pain they feel when they
do it.
You don’t necessarily have to.
You see, it's most likely a symptom of weak biceps and what you're getting is an ulnar
contribution of the flexor muscles of your forearm to try to help.
So if I can't get the weight up because my biceps aren't strong enough, my forearms are
going to try to kick in and do too much of the work.
Here's a couple easy options and solutions of that to avoid it.
You can do what we call Wrist Back Curls.
The wrist back curls are going to have another added benefit of giving you, perhaps, the
best contraction you've ever felt on your biceps.
When you perform your curl, instead of having the hands straight out like this, you're going
to want to have them bent back like this.
Like a waiter would be carrying a tray to the table.
No matter how the bar curls up you always have to keep your hands flat so you don’t
dump the tray on the floor.
So you could see me doing it here in this curl.
By bending my wrists backward, I'm able to keep the forearms out of it, maximize the
amount of stimulus I'm putting on the biceps, and get much more of a workout for the biceps.
Like I said, probably the strongest contraction you're ever going to feel.
We can carry that over too, to chin-ups by just getting in the same position – just
like this – and you'll see me do it here, where then I pull myself up and I'm keeping
the forearms out of it.
A lot of guys will feel this medial elbow pain on the chin-ups for that one very reason.
Or you could do this final exercise, one of my favorites here that I've covered before.
It's a drag curl.
The drag curl is naturally going to keep your wrists bent back a little bit, your arms are
going to go back behind your body just a little bit more, and you'll be able to actually target
the long head of your bicep a little bit as well.
So, three different options for you if you're dealing with elbow pain, but you won't have
to stop doing all your bicep curls altogether.
Next up, one that I know all too well: shoulder pain.
Curls with shoulder pain can be a pain in the ass.
Ironically it goes right from your shoulder to your ass.
That's because it hurts and it hurts a lot and really, when you understand the anatomy
of the bicep, you understand why.
You see the tendons in the bicep actually will attach one close to the shoulder and
one right up inside the joint capsule, right near the labrum.
For someone that has a torn labrum, like myself, you get a pulling, or a yanking right on that
area that is torn.
You're going to feel some pain.
One of the worst things you can do in this case is incline curls.
The reason for that is, once you get into the position I'm showing you here, you put
your arms back behind your body into extension.
Already, it's pulling down on that shoulder, right inside on that capsule where you have
the injury.
This could also apply if you have a rotator cuff tendonitis.
You can feel the same discomfort here and your ability to generate force and power out
of that pre-stretched position – which is why you're doing it in the first place – is
greatly diminished.
So you're not even getting the benefits of what you're doing that exercise for in the
first place.
If you have healthy shoulders it's a great exercise.
But if you're someone that's dealing with some pain there, you might want to look for
something else.
The alternatives would be, try to flip that positioning around.
Instead of having your biceps and your arms back behind your body, pick exercises that
allow you to get your arms out in front of your body.
Some of my favorite here are a spider curl, dumbbell and – ironically on an incline
bench, but done the other way – facing it, as opposed to laying on it, and then also
we could do something just like a regular preacher.
You can stand up, put your elbow down on the slope of the incline bench, and do a regular
preacher curl.
Again, both of them position the arm in front of the body, as opposed to that more irritable
position back behind.
Lastly, one area that people tend to forget when it comes to performance on curls – and
which on you should be doing – and that is a weak core.
You see, curls can be a core exercise.
As a matter of fact they demand a lot of strength and stabilization from your core and when
you don’t have it, I guarantee you will feel it.
Where do we feel it?
A lot of times we feel it in our low back.
So if you're getting any kind of back pain during a curl, or if you just don’t have
the strength on an exercise that you should, or you think you should, likely it's your
core that's betraying you.
So here's the quick way to figure that out and to test it.
if you were to do, let's say, a 100lb barbell curl, or a 50lb dumbbell curl in each hand,
alternate the dumbbells, and curl the bar itself – together – or curl the two dumbbells
together.
You don’t even need a bar if you don’t have one.
Which one is easier?
I'll tell you right now, the dumbbell curls are going to be easier.
How could that be?
Each dumbbell is still 50lbs, each bicep is still responsible for curling 50lbs whether
or not we're doing this together, or whether or not we're doing this one by one.
The difference is, if we do them together our core has to stabilize our body and provide
that stable base for which our arms are going to move off of and generate force of either
100lbs at once, or 50lbs at once.
If your body can tolerate the 50lbs, but once we try to curl them together your strength
dramatically diminishes, that's because you don’t have the required core strength and
pure stability up and down, throughout your kinetic chain to really handle that.
So it may not even be that you have to start focusing more on increasing the strength of
your biceps, it would be that you have to start focusing more on your core itself and
getting stronger throughout your entire abs and low back and core region.
So there you go, guys!
As you can see, lots of options here, and lots of things that you can rely on to continue
to train your biceps, despite maybe dealing with some things that have you banged up at
the moment.
You never have to altogether ditch your bicep training, or you certainly don’t have to
just pick from two to think that this is what you have to do.
There's way more that goes into it, especially if you put the science back in strength like
I try to do here for you each and every week, and each and every video to bring you guys
that next level.
The why, and not just the what.
If you guys are looking for a training program that does that as well, head to ATHLEANX.com
and get our ATHLEANX training program.
I'm happy to coach you through every single day giving you the why and also the 'what'
so you understand what you're doing.
You're going to get way better results, way faster when you do.
That's over at ATHLEANX.com.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful make sure you leave your comments
and thumbs up below.
I'll do more of these.
Tell me what other issues you want me to cover and I'm happy to do that here in the days
and weeks ahead.
All right, guys.
I'll see you back here soon.