Spider Curl
You lie chest-down over the steep front face of a preacher bench with your arms hanging vertically and curl an EZ bar up to your chin. Because the upper arms point straight at the floor, there is no position in the range where the load rests on your skeleton — the biceps is loaded from the first millimetre to the last.
Own the movement
Set up first, then execute. Every cue below is something you can check on your next set.
Before the first rep
- Set the preacher bench upright and lay the loaded EZ bar on the seat pad where you can reach it once you are in position.
- Lie chest-down against the steep front face of the bench so your torso is supported and your arms hang free.
- Plant your toes wide on the floor and press your chest into the pad — you should be stable without gripping anything.
- Reach down and take a supinated grip at shoulder width or slightly narrower on the angled part of the bar.
- Let the arms hang dead vertical with elbows locked out. If the pad pushes your arms forward, you are lying too high on it.
Every rep
Breathing & tempo — Exhale as you curl and keep exhaling through the squeeze, inhale on the descent. One to two seconds up, one second held at the top, three seconds down.
Sets, reps & load
Where to start, and what to change when it stops being hard.
Start with an empty EZ bar at 7-10 kg. Expect around half your standing barbell curl load — the vertical arm angle is unforgiving. Good looks like a full one-second squeeze at the top of every rep with your chest never leaving the pad. Add 2.5 kg only after you hit 15 clean reps on all sets.
What goes wrong
The errors that show up most often, and the cue that fixes each one.
Use roughly half your standing barbell curl weight. The vertical arm position removes every mechanical break in the range, so a spider curl weight looks embarrassing and is correct.
Press your sternum into the pad and think of pushing yourself away from it. If your torso rises at all, strip a plate and restart.
Hold every rep for a deliberate second at full contraction. The peak-contraction tension is the whole reason this movement exists, and rushing through it makes it a worse preacher curl.
Let the arms hang completely straight between reps and start each one from a dead stop. Partials here cost you the stretched portion of the range entirely.
Why bother
In a standing curl the bar is closest to your elbow's line of action at the bottom and again near the top, so the two ends of the rep are nearly free. Hanging your arms vertically over a bench moves the hardest point to full contraction and keeps meaningful tension across the whole arc. The top of a spider curl is the part that burns, which is the opposite of almost every other curl.
Lying prone also fixes the shoulder in a slightly flexed position, which shortens the long head of the biceps before the rep begins. That reduces its contribution and hands more of the work to the short head and brachialis. It is the reason a spider curl feels weaker and more localised than the same weight on a preacher bench.
Where it fits
Last curl of the session, two to three sets of 10-15, when you want to finish the biceps off rather than move weight. It pairs well after incline curls, which load the long head at length — the two cover opposite ends of the muscle's range. Do not open an arm session with it; the load is too low to be worth your freshest sets.
If this one isn't it
No kit, too hard, or too easy — here's where to go instead.
Same job, different kit
Asked and answered
What is the difference between a spider curl and a preacher curl?
Arm angle. A preacher pad sits at roughly 45 degrees, so the bottom of the rep is a hard stretch and the top is comparatively easy. A spider curl hangs the arms vertically, which makes the top the hardest point and the bottom relatively light. They load opposite ends of the same range, so run both across a block rather than choosing.
Can I do it without a preacher bench?
Yes — set an adjustable bench to about 45 degrees and lie chest-down on it with your arms hanging off the top end. That is the more common setup in a busy gym and it works identically. What you cannot do is replicate it standing.
Do spider curls build the biceps peak?
No, and nothing does. Peak height comes from the long head and the shape of the muscle belly you were born with; no curl variation moves where that belly sits on the bone. What a spider curl does give you is hard tension at full contraction, which most curls lose, and a position with no cheat available. Those are good reasons to run it. The peak is not one, whatever the exercise gets sold as.
Should I use a straight bar or an EZ bar?
EZ bar. With the arms hanging and the shoulders fixed, a straight bar forces full supination under load in a position you cannot adjust away from, and the wrists take it. Dumbbells work too and let each arm find its own rotation.