Standing One Arm Bicep Curl with Cable

🎯 Biceps🏋️ CableIsolationForearms (2°)

How to do the standing one arm bicep curl with cable

  1. This is a single arm version of a bicep cable curl. Cable machines are great for helping you learn proper form while building muscle.
  2. Attach a stirrup bar to a low cable pulley.
  3. Stand of the side of the weight stack with your legs shoulder width apart and your knees slightly bent and your abs drawn in.
  4. Grasp the stirrup in one hand with an palms facing up.
  5. Lower the stirrup to the top of your thighs.
  6. Keeping your elbows still, curl the stirrup up towards your chest.
  7. Slowly lower the stirrup 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.

Every exercise for:BicepsForearms

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

A cable holds tension for the whole range, including the point where a free weight would go slack. Moving the pulley changes the angle the resistance arrives from without changing the movement.

Every exercise using:Cable

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

Related exercises

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.