Alternating Incline Curl with Dumbbell
How to do the alternating incline curl with dumbbell
- Adjust an incline bench to a 45 degree angle.
- Grasp a dumbbell in each hand and sit back on the bench with your feet firmly planted on the floor.
- Allow your arms to hang down at your sides.
- Keeping your elbow straight, raise your right arm up towards your head.
- In a controlled manner lower the weight and repeat with your left arm.
Muscles worked
The prime mover is the biceps brachii, which bends the elbow and rotates the forearm palm-up.
Every exercise for:Biceps
How this movement works
Everything happens at one joint. That gives you direct control over where the tension sits; the trade-off is that the muscle gets no help, so the load that feels hard here is a fraction of what a multi-joint version of the pattern would take. Slow, complete repetitions beat heavy ones.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
Dumbbells let each side work on its own, surfacing a strength difference between limbs that a barbell would quietly cover for, and leaving the wrist free to rotate through the movement.
Every exercise using:Dumbbell
These train the biceps too, using equipment this one does not:
- Barbell Curlbarbell
- Bicep Curl Lunge with Bowling Motionmedicine ball
- Bicep Curl with Machinemachine
- Brachialis-SMRfoam roll
- Cable Hammer Curls - Rope Attachmentcable
Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.