Bicep Curls Gone Bad (BIG MISTAKE!!)

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What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. Today we’re going to cover one of the biggest bicep training mistakes that you can make. It’s really, really big because the fine line that we walk between making this a big mistake, and something that you actually need to do to get better results in your biceps is like that.

You see, this is what we’re talking about. It’s the contribution of the front delt to bicep exercises. The fact of the matter is, you need the front delt to help you for a very short period of time. If you get anything beyond that though it becomes a major mistake. Let me explain what we’re talking about.

If I were to take this dumbbell – I’ll come a little bit closer here – you can see exactly what we’re talking about. We know that as we curl the dumbbell up we’re going to get some contribution here of the shoulder. But how much, is what really determines whether or not this is something that you’re doing majorly wrong, or actually doing it right. If I start to curl – and I’ll back off so you can see this – but right here you can see in the first few degrees of the curl that I’ve got my front delt activating. I’ll do that again.

Resting, first few degrees. Resting, I start curling. Look at the activation of the front delt. What’s happening here is it’s stabilizing the upper arm bone – the humerus – so that I have more leverage for the biceps to work off, and then perform the curl with maximum strength. If I had no stabilization first it’s sort of like that analogy of trying to jump as high as you can off the sand.

Because the sand is moving and dissipating while you’re trying to jump off it you’ll never be able to jump as high, or as much force as you could off a nice, sturdy surface here like this hard ground. So, the same thing happens here. This front delt provides that stability, that stable surface that we can then curl off of and do so with much more strength and let the bicep actually do the work that it should. The danger comes in when we allow it to happen for a little bit longer than that. Not just in the first couple degrees, but for the first half of the exercise because now the front delt is taking over the movement.

The bicep is not even doing anything because the elbow angle isn’t closing down at all. The bicep flexes the elbow. Meaning this has to close down like that. That has to happen. If I hold this here and I lift with this, nothing changed.

This angle didn’t change at all. I’m just using my front delt to lift and what happens is I get to the top here, and I lurch my body forward, which brings me closer to the dumbbell, making me think that I actually curled this dumbbell up. Now, two problems with that. The first is the strength curve. We know that the hardest part of a bicep curl – it should be – is right here in the middle.

If my elbow is held at my side here, right here at the middle is the hardest part. But if my elbow is forward like that, this is no longer the hardest part of the curl. Right? Look at the elbow. The elbow is at 90 degrees here.

If I bring my elbow forward my elbow is still bent at 90 degrees, but it’s hard because gravity isn’t acting straight, perpendicular here to my forearm like it is here. It’s even hard for me to hold that. So we’ve changed the strength curve. We’ve made the biceps not even work as much as they should. Look at Jessie here.

We did this video a few weeks back about the bicep pump, an inch on the arms. Well, Jessie said he could do 40lbs. he runs to the 40 pounders and then proceeds to swing them all over the damn place despite me telling him “Jessie, stop the swaying. Stop the swaying. ” But look, we’ve all made the mistake.

The fact is when you’re looking for a pump you can get away with a lot of shit that you couldn’t necessarily get away with when you’re really trying to control and activate the biceps as much as possible. But look what’s happening. I showed you – and as we look at him in slow motion here – the angle of the elbow is not closing for him. It’s not getting any shorter. What he’s doing is he’s locking that elbow out and then swinging with the front delt.

Basically doing a front delt raise. He’s not working the biceps. Then when he gets toward the top, because he’s leaning back, he lurches forward, gets his body closer to the dumbbell, makes it look like he flexed his elbow there, but really, the biceps did none of the work. So you have to ask yourself: “Are you doing this, too? ” If you are, then you are likely not getting the growth at all – and I’m not surprised – out of your biceps that you should.

If you want to do this you’ve got two options. The first thing is you grab a much lighter dumbbell because with the lighter weight, maybe now you don’t have to rely on the front delt to lift it up. You can rely on the front delt just stabilizing for the first couple degrees, keeping the elbow close to your side, and then letting the bicep power up the whole rest of the way. So from here, bicep, powers it up the whole rest of the way. The second thing you’re doing here is you’re allowing your body to load the bicep properly and in the right sequence.

We have the flexion happening under maximum load, we have supination happening under maximum load, and then when we get to the top, now you can actually get a little bit more flexion. We talked about how you can actually elevate your arm a little bit at the end – not at the beginning – at the very end because that will actually give you a complete contraction in the long head of the biceps because we know that can flex the shoulder, too. But there’s a big difference in doing it in the beginning, versus doing it strictly and doing it at the and for the last few degrees. If you still cannot master these, even understanding what it is you’re doing wrong then you have two other options. Here’s what you do: do the no money curl like I’m showing you here.

What this does is it takes the dumbbells out of the sagittal plane – front and back – and puts them more into the frontal plane. You’re still getting the elbows to flex and do what they’re supposed to do. You still get the supination to do what it’s supposed to do to get the biceps to work, but you’re turning off the front delts a lot by putting your elbows into your sides and those dumbbells out to your sides, and more on this frontal plane, which allows you to minimize that delt contribution. The second thing you can do, as I’m showing you here, is a drag curl. The drag curl, again, does something unique.

What it does is it changes the strength curve because it’s not hardest anymore in the middle. It’s hardest at the top here of the range of motion. But what it’s also doing is, because the arm isn’t coming out away from the body it’s not asking for the front delt to work. It’s literally allowing the bicep to flex as I keep the front delt mostly out of the move. So I pull up, and I curl from here.

Pull up, and curl from here. Again, I shut the front delt out. So if you’re somebody that does not see results from your workouts – your bicep workouts in particular – be careful because this is the thing that you’re probably doing wrong. The most important thing you can do is, either lighten the weights, and then be conscious of what I just taught you here and you should see results. If you still don’t then start switching to those other two exercises for a while until you can build a better mind-muscle connection by keeping the front delts out of it.

All right, guys. I hope you’ve found this video helpful. If you did, make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below. In the meantime, if you’re looking to see anything on this channel, you want me to cover something that you’re not quite clear on, make sure you leave your comments below and I’ll do my best to do that for you in the da