X3 Bicep Curl

The bicep curl that we recommend, and really this is the only way to do any bicep curl, is called the drag curl. So you’re dragging the bar, not literally, but you’re keeping the bar close to your body.

The reason is when you do a standard curl when you’re at this point, the center of gravity is close to the elbow joint, and you’re actually not loading the bicep very much at all right here. It’s got a tremendous amount of load of the lever arm on it, plus the resistance in your hand, so it’s got sort of a weird backward curve. That isn’t how your biomechanics works at all with a standard curl.

Instead, you keep the X3 Bar closer to your body, which is how you would normally pick up anything heavy, and keep it close to your center of gravity. Then pull it up. So that way, at the top position, you have a very hard contraction and a lot of resistance into the bicep at the top. And performed slowly and controlled.

The bottom is just not with your arms perfectly straight, but there’s a slight bend to them, so you keep a partial contraction for constant tension purposes. To get set up for the bicep curl, you want to place the ground plate on the ground and single the band through the bottom. So not doubled, singled.

Grab the bar with a supinated grip, which means hands pointed outward or upward.

Stand up straight with your elbows slightly bent. Remember, you want to keep constant tension. Then you can begin the movement. As you pull the bar upwards, don’t do this like a traditional curl. This is a drag curl.

So you’re pulling it, almost dragging the bar up the front of your body. Your elbows go back. Your hands don’t go out in front of you.

When you move the bar up, notice where Malachi stops at the top. Just sort of mid to lower chest, and that’s where the biceps are fully contracted. You don’t want to go any higher than this because if you do, you break the isolation of the biceps, and you bring other muscles into play.

And that’s not what you’re trying to do. If you watch closely, the bar follows a straight up-and-down path. Very slow and controlled. Two to three seconds up, two or three seconds down. You can see Malachi squeezing the biceps hard when getting to the top. This establishes a great mind-muscle connection.

Also, you can see there is constant tension, so no resting at the bottom. No locking out of the top; there’s also no way to do that with the biceps anyway.

You can see the mid-range difficulty and stronger range difficulty as he goes through more and more repetitions. So this is the beginning of diminishing range.

As he does more repetitions, he’ll be unable to get to the top, and they will shorten and shorten until he goes to complete fatigue. Now also keep in mind in those stronger ranges of motion, this is a much higher load than you would ever be able to use with the weights because it’s variable. And therefore, you go to a greater level of fatigue, and you trigger more growth.