How to do Standing Barbell Curl Arm Exercises

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Manny Castro, Exercise Physiologist. With this exercise, we’re going to be targeting the biceps. Now there are so many different variations for the biceps, and I’ll show you quite a few in the coming clips. Now this particular variation is with the barbell. We’re going to do what’s called a standing barbell curl. Basically, all you need to do is grab the barbell about shoulder width apart. Now, you’re targeting both biceps muscles. In other words, you’re targeting the outer and inner muscles. The variations that I’ll talk about, I’ll also talk about variations and positioning of the hands so you can target inner or outer, depending on what it is you want to accomplish. For this particular exercise, we want to target, basically, the whole biceps. The way we’re going to do that is position our hands about shoulder width apart. Actually, I want to say hip width apart is better than saying shoulder width apart. What you want to do is with your arms at your side, you’re going to keep your elbows right near your ribcage here, right near your side and just curl up. Now, you don’t want to bring your elbows up as you flex. What happens is you take the emphasis off the biceps and put it up on the shoulder. So, what you want to do is a nice slow count of 3 on the way up. 1, 2, 3. A nice slow count of 3 on the way down. 1, 2, 3. Okay, you probably want to pause at the top for a second, just like this, and then bring it right back down. Again, you want to do about 3-4 sets. "