Monday Move

Biceps Curls, Three Ways

How varying your style of curl will help you get even stronger

The top of a reverse curl. Images by author.

If you’ve ever picked up a dumbbell, you’ve almost certainly tried a traditional biceps curl: Stand tall with dumbbells in your hands, palms facing forward, and bend the elbows to lift the weight up toward your shoulders, then lower. This is an amazing and straightforward way to strengthen your biceps. But there are so many fun variations to try, too, which target different parts of the arms.

Ahead, you’ll find instructions for a traditional biceps curl (which primarily challenges the short head of the biceps brachii) as well as a hammer curl (which works the long head of the biceps brachii and gets into the brachialis muscle) and a reverse curl (which also targets the brachioradialis muscle in the forearm).

Why consider varying your curls? A single style of biceps curl is a good way to laser in on a specific muscle, but when you’re actually using your arms in the real world you rarely only engage a single muscle — so strengthening the many parts of the upper arms and forearms helps you get stronger in a more functional, applicable-to-real-life, kind of way.

This gif shows all three curls in one go, and you can definitely try it that way — cycling through each variation within…