Ez Bar Curl
The ez bar curl is one of the most popular bicep exercises in existence and there’s a really good chance that it was one of the very first weight lifting exercises that you ever learned. While beginners can definitely gain more muscle mass by focusing on the hard and heavy basic compound movements like squats, dead lifts, pull-ups and bench press for some reason, that’s not where most people start out. Most guys hit the gym for the very first time with the goal of building bigger biceps and in the process, they ignore the fundamentals and focus on bicep exercises like ez bar curls, barbell curls and alternating dumbbell curls and see very little in the way of actual progress.
If you want to build bigger biceps and bigger arms in general, then you need to learn how to incorporate a few of the most effective bicep exercises into your workout routine in a way that makes sense and one of my favorite bicep exercises is definitely the ez bar curl. One of the reasons that I like the ez bar curl so much is because it allows you to really target your biceps with very heavy weights while minimizing any type of stress on your wrist. If you’ve had any sort of wrist injury in the past, there is a very good chance that the only bicep exercise that you will even be able to do is the ez bar curl.
How To Perform The Ez Bar Curl
Listed below are a few tips to help you get the most from this effective bicep exercise.
1.) Grasp the ez bar with an underhand grip and your hands spaced out to approximately shoulder width. You can either grab the ez bar with an inside grip which brings your hands closer together and isolates the short head of the biceps brachii, or an outside grip that spaces your hands right at about shoulder width and isolates the long head of the biceps brachii.
2.) Exhale and lift the ez bar up towards your chin while keeping your back straight and stabilizing your torso and spine. You can stabilize your torso during this exercise by squeezing your butt muscles and simultaneously contracting your abs.
3.) Slowly lower the ez bar back down to the starting position.
I like to work ez bar curls into my bicep workouts once in a while in lieu of barbell curls, just to switch things up a bit. I find that after a few months of really hammering my biceps with heavy barbell curls, I begin to develop some “over use” types of injuries and nagging pains and I find that ez bar curls allow me to continue to train with heavy weights while allowing the over use aches and pains to go away.
If you need a solid alternative to the standard barbell curl, then I highly recommend the ez bar curl. Not only is it pretty simple to perform, but it allows you to train your biceps effectively while eliminating some of the stress on your wrist.
