How To Do The Incline Dumbbell Curl Correctly

Coach Josh here from Colossus Fitness, your online fitness coach, and today I'm going to show you one of my favorite movements, the laying down incline dumbbell curl. This is a phenomenal alternative to the normal curl because you have no opportunity to create momentum, instead you just got to work those biceps and a nice full range of motion. So first things first is going to be bench setup and this is where a lot of people go wrong. The higher it is, the easier it's going to get. There's actually a full variation that you can see me doing here, where I'm fully laying down. I find this a little awkward, but this theoretically would be the hardest variation. The most optimal position to be in though is 45 to 60 degrees. This bench, as you can see on the screen, has it labeled which is phenomenal. Makes it nice and easy, but case in point, you just want to make sure you're in a good position where you can lay back, remove momentum, and not have your hands hit the ground as you do this movement. Next up, we're going to go ahead and grab our dumbbells here. We're going to lay back and control. So where there's a lot of debate is whether your head should be up. This is a little awkward on your neck. It's actually recommended you push your head back so you don't get any pain. I'm a little guilty where I do prefer to keep my head up a smidgen. I find it's more natural. This could cause neck pain, so do it at your own risk. So I like to be here. We'll do it properly for the sake of demonstration. You want to almost have your head just nicely padded into the back, leaving an indentation. From here, you want your arms to feel like they're glued to the bench. So I have my chest up, my scap back, and my arms are glued to the bench. They're not coming forward like this. This is a big mistake and the second you start hooking, I'm actually bringing my shoulders in and this is incorrect. Instead, I'm gluing them to the bench, keeping my wrist nice and tight, curling up into a full range of motion with a big squeeze, coming down in that fixed position to full extension, but not removing tension. Okay, this is a big mistake. Second you lose tension like this, I could sit here all day. When I'm here, my biceps are engaged. This is hard and I'm feeling the burn. So from here, I'm coming up with a full squeeze, coming down with control, maintaining that tight balance. We want to remove as much momentum as we can. Use a humbling weight, get a big squeeze, come down with control. Next mistake you want to avoid is hooking your wrists. A lot of people will do this, where they'll just turn their wrist in and they'll feel like they're getting a little more out of the movement. This is not what we're trying to do. This is taking tension off the bicep. Instead, we're coming down, those wrists are in a fixed position. We're keeping them fixed. You can see I can actually get a fuller curl. If you want a bonus, you can actually turn your pinky outward to get a little bit more contraction in that bicep. Come down with control. When you put it all together, it's going to look like this. And that, quite simply, is how it's done. If this helped you out today, free form guide, totally free, over 70 movements, going to break down what to do, what not to do. If you're stuck in the gym, whip out this PDF, have it on your phone. It's a personal trainer in your pocket, my gift to you, no exceptions, no anything crazy you need to do to get it. Just want to support you, help you improve with your form. If I did help you, you can support me by subscribing, liking, all that good stuff. Get out there, crush it in the gym, get some killer results.