Are Bicep Curls Bad For You?

Have you ever found yourself doing bicep curls and wondered, is this a waste of my time?

I mean, bicep curls are a short range of motion, monotonous movement that you can do with little focus or effort. Compare a bicep curl to big movements like squats and deadlifts, and you are left wanting.

Bicep curls are not a functional movement, i.e., it isn't a movement necessary for survival or found in nature. If you need to move something heavy from waist height to shoulder height, you will use your legs instead of your biceps.

Bicep curls are a targeted movement that trains one muscle in your body. It is a small movement, and you should not perform it with the heaviest weight in the world. So it begs the question:

Bicep curls aren’t bad for you. In the scope of all the potential exercises you could do, I'd say bicep curls are inefficient. Chin-ups, seated rows, and bent-over rows are all better for you. All those exercises also engage your lats and your core to a much greater extent than a bicep curl.

When done in excess, bicep curls can cause repetitive strain issues, but that is true of most exercises. If you have golfers or tennis elbow, you should avoid bicep curls altogether. Opt instead for TheraBand exercises. It is the best product I've used to help people with elbow issues.

To avoid injury when weight lifting, it is always best to start by building strength with full-body movements like push-ups.

In general, bicep curls are a terrible place to start if you are a beginner. It is a very small range of motion and isn't even the most effective way to build your biceps. That's not to say bicep curls are all bad. On the contrary, they have some redeeming qualities.

Are bicep curls good for you?

Let's not forget that you can work up a sweat, build muscle, and burn calories while doing bicep curls. So if you are deciding between sitting on the couch and doing bicep curls, get up and curl some stuff!

It is a weight-lifting movement that has minimal impact on your joints when done correctly. If curls bother your elbows at all, you should try a neutral grip with your palms facing each other. AKA a Hammer Curl. If that still bothers you, you probably need to head to a physical therapist.

No matter how you curl it, bicep curls are still good for one thing in particular—making bigger biceps! There is a reason you still see muscular men doing bicep curls.

How do you perform bicep curls for growth?

If your goal is hypertrophy or bigger biceps, then your focus should be time under tension.

Don't worry about the heaviest weight you can lift. Instead, find a weight that you can control and see if you can keep tension on your biceps throughout the movement. Don't ever swing your arms or use momentum to move the weights up and down unless you are "cheating it up" to do a heavy negative.

If your goal is to increase the size of your biceps, I would start your workout with a set of chin-ups, seated rows, or bent-over rows. Followed by a few sets of high-volume curls. Think four sets of 12 curls. Focus on lowering slowly until just before your arms are straight and then coming back up without allowing your biceps any break between repetitions.

Use dumbbells. If you've been reading this blog for long, you know I usually recommend kettlebells, but dumbbells are the best for it when it comes to the bicep curl. Dumbbells allow you to choose a comfortable position for YOUR wrist, not the place a barbell is marked or bent.

on your wrist, you can vastly change the load on your muscles. This allows a ton of variety in how you can do your curls. Variety is the spice of life, and variation helps keep your gains from plateauing.

You can train high-volume biceps 2-3 days a week. Always start slow and let your muscles recover from previous workouts before targeting your biceps again.

In a nutshell, there are three reasons to do curls:

1. If you want bigger biceps

2. If you are looking for an accessory exercise on a heavy tricep day

3. If you like curls

If there is an exercise you enjoy and that causes you no pain, you should do it. There are very few truly bad exercises. I only titled my article Are Bicep Curls Bad For You because I’m hoping it might be something people type into Google Search.