How To: Preacher Curl
Are you a cheater?
Like, do your elbows move instead of staying stationary by your side when you do standing barbell curls or seated and standing dumbbell curls? If your elbows travel forward past your torso during those biceps movements, then you’re rocking your body to move the weight or getting assistance from your front delts. Either way, you’re a cheater.
When you cheat in the manner described, your arms get robbed of the benefit of traditional curls. The solution is to correct your form and possibly use less weight, as trying to lift too much itself may be the reason for the improper technique. Another remedy is the preacher curl, which is so named for the preacher bench it’s performed on, which in turn has to do with the resemblance to the slanted pulpit that preachers deliver their sermon from.
In its simplest description, the preacher bench consists of an angled pad that you rest your upper body on while the rest of the body is immobilized behind it. While it’s still possible to cheat with preacher curls like any other exercise, the design of the preacher bench increases the difficulty in two ways. The first is that the fixed position of the arms makes it hard for the shoulders to provide a lot of mechanical assistance. Second, the ability to use your lower body to generate momentum is minimized, though possible. Given these two elements, it takes real deliberate intention to cheat on preacher curls.
As we see, the setup of preacher curls limits cheating. Apart from that, another benefit of the way the bench is constructed is that with the stability provided by the pad, you’re able to control the eccentric portion of the lift, which places the biceps under constant tension and creates a lot of muscle damage, thus increasing the potential for greater biceps growth. Taken as a whole, all of these things make preacher curls perfect for isolating the biceps and are why the exercise should be included in your arm training program. Continue reading How To: Preacher Curl
