Shoulder pain can make holding dumbbells at your sides painful. Such is my predicament…
That means alternate dumbbell curls are out as my ideal exercise. I cringe just thinking about it…
I’ve found that concentration curls work well in their place. In fact, I actually feel concentrations better, plus I notice that I develop more peak with one small tweak…
For the first set, I keep my palm forward throughout all 18 to 20 reps. Then I rest 20 seconds and repeat; however, for the second set I supinate my hand…
Try it. When your arm is straight down, your thumb should be pointing toward you. As you curl, rotate your palm until your little finger is higher than your thumb at the top.
Two reason for doing one higher-rep set with palm forward on all reps and the second set with supination…
1) The first palm-forward set will give you better continuous tension on the biceps in order to fatigue the majority of slow-twitch fibers.
2) With the second supination, or hand-rotation, set you include that function of the biceps and bring in even more fast-twitch fibers.
Back in my Iron Man editor days, this was a favorite exercise of my training partner Jonathan Lawson—and it did amazing things for both of our biceps, but his responded incredibly well (genetically gifted bastard)…
Photographer Michael Neveux knew how to light Jonathan perfectly to make his biceps pop. Neveux said many times that Jonathan had the best arms of any natural bodybuilder he’d ever photographed. High praise indeed.
Mike even made mine look pretty good, considering my genetics are more from from a family tree made up of twigs…
If you want to make the supination set more challenging, grip the dumbbell so your thumb is next to the plates on that side and there’s a gap between your little finger and the plates on the other side…
That off-balance weight will provide some resistance on the hand twist as you curl. That’s a tactic Arnold often used—and his biceps weren’t too shabby…
Latest Release: Get the ideal exercise for each muscle, the best add-on moves for ultimate mass, complete 35-minute workouts, exercise start/finish photos and details on building muscle fast and efficiently in Old Man, Young Muscle.
And you still get The Muscle-On, Belly-Gone “Diet” ebook FREE for a limited time when you add Old Man, Young Muscle to your mass-building library. Go HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
Recommended
FIX YOUR SHOULDER PAIN
Shoulder pain can affect your workouts forever. That’s not good!
That’s why we’re recommending advice from injury specialist Rick Kaselj, MS. His tips can help make your shoulders nearly bullet-proof.
Here are a few general tips from Rick (he goes into more detail in his program)…
Top 5 Tips To Bullet-Proof Your Shoulders
- Build Tension in Your Lats. When doing shoulder exercises, activate your lats and keep your shoulders happy.
- Prime Up Your Muscles. Most people do a warm-up that just lubricates the joint, but you need to activate and turn on all the muscles in your upper body.
- Technique, Technique, Technique. This is the number one reason why people injure their shoulders. You can’t go to the gym every day and work on your max lift.
- Watch Out for Fatigue. Cooking your smaller muscles in your shoulder complex, and that increases the risk of shoulder injury and pain.
- Work on Your Shoulder Blade Muscles. Many strength coaches will say you’re wasting your time on this, but if you want to have bullet-proof shoulders, you need to work on them.
Get all of Rick’s tips and tricks for pain-free workouts below: