Barbell Curls Lying Against An Incline

🎯 Biceps🏋️ BarbellBeginnerIsolation

How to do the barbell curls lying against an incline

  1. Lie against an incline bench, with your arms holding a barbell and hanging down in a horizontal line. This will be your starting position.
  2. While keeping the upper arms stationary, curl the weight up as high as you can while squeezing the biceps. Breathe out as you perform this portion of the movement. Tip: Only the forearms should move. Do not swing the arms.
  3. After a second contraction, slowly go back to the starting position as you inhale. Tip: Make sure that you go all of the way down.
  4. Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.

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

One joint changes angle and the resistance travels toward you along a single arc. Nothing is positioned to help, so tension stays where you aimed it and the usable load drops sharply against a multi-joint pull for the same muscle. Protect the range of motion; buying weight by shortening the arc defeats the point.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.

Every exercise using:Barbell

These train the biceps too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.

Of the 99 biceps exercises in this database, 38 are listed at beginner level.

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.