Barbell Curl
Also works: Forearms
Both hands on a straight bar, shoulder-width apart, palms up, elbows pinned to your ribs. The fixed grip means you can load the biceps heavier than any dumbbell variation, and it is also why the straight bar bothers some wrists — the forearms cannot rotate to find a comfortable position.
Own the movement
Set up first, then execute. Every cue below is something you can check on your next set.
Before the first rep
- Grip the bar at roughly shoulder width, palms up, thumbs wrapped rather than hooked over the top.
- Stand with feet hip-width and the bar resting against your thighs, arms straight.
- Tuck the elbows in against your ribs so the bar travels in an arc around them rather than straight up your body.
- Keep the wrists straight, in line with the forearms — not cocked back under the bar.
- If the wrists already ache holding the bar at arm's length, swap to an EZ bar now rather than three sets in.
Every rep
Breathing & tempo — Inhale at the bottom with the arms straight, exhale through the curl, and keep the abs tight through the top. One to two seconds up, a one-second squeeze, three seconds down; when the bar starts dropping faster than that, the set is finished.
Sets, reps & load
Where to start, and what to change when it stops being hard.
The empty 20 kg bar is a real working weight for a beginner and is the right place to start. A strict curl of 40 kg for reps is respectable for most trained lifters, and half your bodyweight for a clean set of 8 is genuinely strong. Add 2.5 kg only when every rep of every set goes from straight arms to vertical forearms with no torso movement — this is the lift where people add load fastest and lose range fastest.
What goes wrong
The errors that show up most often, and the cue that fixes each one.
Stand with your back and heels against a wall for a set. Whatever weight you can curl there without your shoulders leaving the wall is your real strict curl weight — start again from that number.
Keep the knuckles in line with the forearm and squeeze the bar hard. If the wrist still hurts, switch to an EZ bar — that is what its bends are for.
Stop the rep when the forearms are vertical. If you want more tension at the top, hold there for two seconds rather than raising the bar higher.
Pause for a beat with the arms fully straight and the bar hovering a centimetre off your legs. If the pause is impossible, the weight is being lifted by the rebound, not the biceps.
Film a set from the side once a month. If the bar is no longer travelling from straight arms to vertical forearms, take 20% off and rebuild the load with full range.
Why bother
Two arms working against one bar is the most loadable curl there is. You can add 2.5 kg at a time indefinitely, both arms are locked into the same range, and there is no stabilising cost to bleed off effort. If you want progressive overload on the elbow flexors written into a logbook, this is the movement that gives you clean numbers to write.
The trade-off is the wrist. A straight bar holds your forearms in full supination for the entire set, and if you have limited forearm rotation that gets forced into the wrist joint instead, showing up as an ache on the thumb side. An EZ bar tilts the grip about 20-30 degrees and solves it for most people at the cost of slightly less biceps supination. Neither bar is more correct — use the one your wrists tolerate for the whole set.
Where it fits
After your rows and chin-ups, 3-4 sets of 6-12, once or twice a week. Treat one of those sessions as the heavy one where you chase the logbook, and the other as strict, slow work at 60-70% of that load. Curling heavy three times a week does not work: the biceps are already loaded by every vertical and horizontal pull you do, and elbow tendons complain long before the muscle does.
If this one isn't it
No kit, too hard, or too easy — here's where to go instead.
Same job, different kit
Start here instead
Asked and answered
Straight bar or EZ bar for curls?
Whichever your wrists tolerate for a full set. A straight bar gives complete supination and a slightly stronger biceps contraction; an EZ bar angles the grip and removes most of the wrist strain, at a small cost to that contraction. If both feel fine, alternate them between blocks. If the straight bar aches on the thumb side of your wrist, that is not something to train through.
Is any body English acceptable on the last reps?
On the last one or two reps of a final set, a small controlled lean is a legitimate way to push past failure — that is a cheat curl and it has a place. What is not acceptable is doing it from rep one and calling the number in your logbook a curl. Decide before the set which kind of set it is.
How wide should my grip be?
Shoulder width is the default and suits almost everyone. Narrower shifts a little emphasis to the long head, wider to the short head, but the difference is small — smaller than the difference between a strict rep and a swung one. Pick the width where your wrists sit straight and stop worrying about it.
Do I need direct curls if I already do rows and chin-ups?
If size is the goal, yes. Pulling movements load the biceps well but stop where the back stops, and never take the elbow through full flexion with the arm loaded. If you only care about strength for its own sake, you can skip curls — but almost nobody who wants bigger arms gets there without them.
How often can I curl?
One heavy and one moderate session a week is the sweet spot for most people, spaced at least 48 hours apart, and only if your back training is not already stacked with rows on the days between. Elbow tendinopathy from too-frequent curling takes months to settle. Volume is worth adding before frequency is.