The concentration curl braces the back of your upper arm against the inside of your thigh, so the elbow physically cannot move and the shoulder cannot help. It is one arm at a time with a light weight and no way to cheat, which makes it a finisher rather than a lift you push hard numbers on.
How to do it
- Elbow braced against the inner thigh, sitting with the torso leaning forward.
- One arm, full attention — the position makes cheating almost impossible.
Common mistakes
- Pushing with the leg against the elbow to help the rep.
What it trains
- Biceps
- the only thing that can move the weight once the elbow is pinned to the thigh
- Brachialis
- assists the elbow flexion, as it does in any curl
- Forearms
- hold the dumbbell and keep the wrist from rolling in at the top
Variations and alternatives
Common questions
Is the concentration curl worth doing?
As a last exercise, yes. It gives you a very strict rep with no momentum available, which is a useful contrast after heavy barbell curls. As your only biceps work it is too light and too slow to build much, since you can only ever train one arm at a time.
Should I sit or stand for concentration curls?
Sit, with your elbow braced on the inside of your thigh. The bent-over standing version people call a concentration curl has no bracing point at all, which loses the single thing this movement is for.
Do I have to twist my wrist at the top?
No. Your hand is already supinated when you start, so the extra twist adds very little. Squeezing at the top and lowering slowly does more than the wrist rotation people spend effort on.
In StackUp. Logged as weight and reps per set, and your heaviest working set decides whether the weight goes up next time. Get the app.
Arms
