maratoolBiceps Curl Reverse with Dumbbells
How to do the biceps curl reverse with dumbbells
- Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, your knees slightly bent and your abs drawn in.
- Grasp a dumbbell in each hand with palms facing down.
- Keeping your arms at your side your elbows steady, lift the dumbbells up towards your shoulders.
- Pause for a moment and then return to the starting position.
Muscles worked
The prime mover is the biceps brachii, which bends the elbow and rotates the forearm palm-up.
Even with a single joint doing the moving, the muscle is not working alone — the forearms hold the grip, which is often what gives out first.
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:
- Biceps Curls with Barbellbarbell
- Brachialis-SMRfoam roll
- Cable Hammer Curls - Rope Attachmentcable
- Close-Grip EZ-Bar Curl with Bande-z curl bar
- Machine Preacher Curlsmachine
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.