This month in my series on exercise tips I've learned over the past twenty-four years from various experts and bodybuilding champions, I move on to arms, specifically biceps and forearms. So put on your learning cap because this is good stuff, some the the real so-called secrets of the champs.
Everybody loves to build big biceps, and everyone loves to do curls. Ironically, many bodybuilders don't know how to curl correctly so that they isolate the muscles and build fuller, rounder, more peaked biceps.
Curling isn't as simple as it may appear. There are lots of things you have to do right with this type of movement in order to activate the target muscles properly. If you don't do these things, you end up working your forearms and delts more than your biceps.
One of the most important factors in curling is wrist position. Your wrists should remain locked and straight at all times. I first learned about the importance of keeping the wrists locked from Frank Zane's mail order courses back in the early '70s.
In fact, Zane said that he had always had a hard time isolating his biceps when curling until Arnold told him to keep his wrists locked. Here's why it's so important . . .
The top of any curl rep is reached when the biceps contract, not when the bar or dumbbell hits the shoulders. If you keep your wrists locked straight and don't move your elbows up, the bar should stop several inches away from your shoulders, at the nine or 10 o'clock position for most men, because your biceps will get in the way and prevent further movement. If you let your wrists bend, however, the weight can fall into your shoulders and your biceps won't fully contract, if at all.
The elbow position is also of paramount importance for making the biceps work hard. Hold your elbows against your body and don't allow them to move up, forward, or out from your body or back.
Try this now. Stand up as if you were holding a barbell at arms' length. Squeeze your elbows into your sides so they can't move. Now curl your hands up as far as they'll go. You'll notice that if you don't let your elbows move, your hands come up only about halfway before the biceps contract at roughly the nine or ten o'clock position, depending on the size of your arms. The bigger your arms, the shorter the distance you'll be able to the bar up.
Your upper arms should remain motionless when you curl, and only your forearms should move. At least that's the way a true strict curl is performed. Any upper-arm movement at all constitutes cheating even if you don't swing or heave the weight up. Steven Moore, a Toronto-based personal trainer who has worked a lot with Steve Brisbois, recommends this type of strict curling, especially for beginners who don't yet know how to isolate their biceps properly. While it's true that you have to use less weight when you curl this way, the fact is, it's not how much weight you use that matters (within reason, of course, you whiny science-based anal retentive trainwreck of a non-human clod of shite posing as a person) . . . it's how hard your biceps work and how fully they contract.
It's better to use less weight and get a harder contraction than to use more weight and get less.
To increase the intensity on your biceps, start your sets by curling in this elbows-into-the-body, stationary position. Proceed through your reps until you can raise the weight this way anymore. Then switch to what people usually mean when they talk about "strict" curls . . . that is, allowing your elbows to move a little . . . and go to failure again. At that point switch to cheat curls and go to failure again. When you perform your curls this way you can work your biceps into the ground with fewer total sets.
The importance of getting a good biceps contraction is why trainers like John Parillo and Vince Gironda are both advocates of what are called drag curls. These are just what the name implies . . . as you literally drag the bar along your body to a point below your chest. The bar never leaves your body.
When it's halfway up at about the nine o'clock position, you've reached the top of the rep. At that point press your arms into your sides, arch your chest, drop your chest and pause for a count of two while you squeeze and contract your biceps, then lower slowly under tension before pulling up your pantyhose and readying for another set.
Shoulder position is also very important in curling. You should keep your shoulders down and back at all times. If you shrug your shoulder(s) as you curl a bar or dumbbell, your delts and traps assist in lifting the weight, taking work away from your biceps.
To see how much the shoulders can interfere in this movement, stand up and shrug them as high as possible and keep them there. Now try to do a curl. Note that you can't even lower your arms halfway down and that your range of motion is very limited. Note also that your biceps are absolutely out of the movement when you lift the bar. This is why it is important to keep your shoulders down and back.
If you try to use too heavy a poundage for strict form, you'll be forced to involve your shoulders in order to get this weight moving. In the gym you probable see novices doing this with heavy barbells and dumbbells all the time.
Watch a beginner do heavy dumbbell curls. The elbows come away from the body and the shoulders lift the weights the first four or five inches. Then, when the weights are about halfway up, the biceps finally kick in.
It's better to use moderate weights that you can handle in strict form when curling. I've said it before but I'll say it again - go for muscle stimulation and contraction when curling - not to see how much weight you can lift with sloppy form.
Here's a curling tip I picked up from Bruce Roberts of Hibbing, Minnesota. Use the antagonistic muscles (triceps) to make the movement feel as though you're pulling down as you lower the weight. This increases the tension on the biceps at the start of each rep. A basic rule of exercise physiology states that the more stretch you put on a muscle (within reason) at the beginning of a rep, the harder it can contract, and the harder it contracts, the more potential growth stimulation.
Since pulling down with the triceps increases the stretch at the beginning of the next curl, this is something you should consciously do (within reason you idiot!) as you lower the weight.
I find it useful to imagine that I'm doing a reverse-grip triceps pressdown with the bar or dumbbell as I lower it. I pretend that there's a cable attached to the bar from an overhead pulley and that I'm pulling down on it. Try it yourself, and you'll feel your intensity go up a notch for sure.
I picked up a useful curling tip from Lee Haney in 1984 when I attended a seminar he gave, several months before he won his first Mr. Olympia. Here's something from Lee Haney that may be of use here:
According to Lee, you should squeeze hard at the top of the movement and not rest. Most lifters do their curls backwards, he said. They use a lot of effort to get the bar moving up and past the sticking point, and then they relax at the top, using that position as a resting spot. In addition, they usually allow their wrists to bend, letting the bar fall into their shoulders.
Lee's solution was to reverse the procedure. Instead of resting at the top, you squeeze and tense the biceps hard so they contract. Then you rest at the bottom of the rep, when your arms are straight.
To explain this idea more clearly, Lee said to think of the arc that the bar makes as it travels from midthigh to shoulder level and compare it to the speedometer of your car. The bottom is 0, and the top position is 60. As the bar leaves your thighs and your arms begin to bend, start squeezing the tensing your biceps to make them contract. The bar should pick up speed as it approaches the top, and when you get there you should be squeezing the hell (language!) out of your biceps for all they're worth. Then slowly return to the starting position and take a short pause at the bottom.
Another curling variation that can be very effective is 21s, a technique that really blasts the biceps. Vince Gironda has advocated these for more than 40 years, and Mr. Universe/Trainer Charles Glass says they're his favorite way to train biceps. Nearly everyone knows how to do them but for some reason they aren't used very often. Maybe it's because they're just too painful, or perhaps the average bodybuilder can't count past 10 and continue to move his body simultaneously . . . one never really knows. Studies have not been done comparing the I.Q. and also creative levels of lifters who prefer high reps vs. those who prefer low reps, unfortunately. Let's make an "office" pool and bet on this one a bit. Once the studies are done, regardless, though, I'm betting all bodybuilder/lifters are out-and-not-quite-out a-holes with limited views on everything human. But then and after all,
Time destroys everything,
Life is a selfish act and
Death opens no doors . . .
ba dum ssss and thank you to
Gaspar Noe with no accent aigu here on the E.
We could watch the films Carne, I Stand Alone and
Irreversible now or sometime soon, if we were so inclined.
You won't like them.
I fucking loved re-viewing them this week.
Okay . . . the name "21s" means 21 reps. Curl a weight from the bottom for 7 half reps, and then without resting do another 7 half reps from the top. Again without resting, finish the set with 7 full reps. Hey, I can feel it just by writing about it although the gainz from the text are nonexistent. I've noticed that when a lot of the top bodybuilders do their curls, the bar never stops moving; that is, there's no deliberate pause at either the top or bottom of the rep. The bar just keeps on moving until they hit failure. [Designs for a soon to be patented anti-gravity barbell that lifts itself and never stops moving are under way here as we speak. This may enormously increase audience numbers at bodybuilding, powerlifting, Olympic lifting and strongman competitions, owing to the wider circumference of a bar's personality when compared to the one-dimensionality of the common elite competitors today. Sheesh! Train, eat, sleep. These types live like monks that shit six to 10 times a day and have dripping gyno nips to proudly show in family photos with that shirt off said the minor misanthrope].
This constant motion (not the shitting) type of curling puts constant tension on the muscle (use a freakin' thesaurus already . . . how 'bout "uninterrupted" instead of a double-constant) and can be very intense. For variety (the opposite of my word selections) you might want to curl like this every so often or perform one curling movement per workout in this fashion. Just remember . . . you'll have to use less weight . . . but what a pump you'll get.
I remember Greg Zulak being very open about his PED usage well before the internet became our handheld god and gold was replaced by data. He mentioned two things about GH usage. His aches and accumulated pains from years of lifting disappeared in a few days and his pumps were the most outstanding he'd ever experienced, often lasting from the workout one afternoon to the following morning. Chemicals is weeeeeeeeeeeird shite, eh.
Okay, nuff said for now.
To be continued . . .
Enjoy your lifting!
No comments:
Post a Comment