6 Best Bicep Curl Variation Exercises for Men

Bicep curl variation exercises make sure that you’re able to add mass to your muscles and create biceps that give your arms a lean and muscular appearance. Moreover, bicep curl variations ensure you’re activating the smaller muscles within the group and working on each of the two bicep heads, both long and short.

The short head of the bicep is responsible for making the biceps look bigger and fuller, while the long head is responsible for the overall bicep peak. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to target the long head and the short head separately with particular exercises. However, variations can help with impacting one head more than the other.

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6 best bicep curl variation exercises for growth

Here are some of the bicep curl variation exercises that you should try to trigger bicep growth along with improving muscle strength and endurance.

1) Barbell bicep curl

Barbell bicep curls are a great pick from the bicep curl variation exercises that enable the activation of the overall biceps. A shoulder-width grip works on your overall biceps, a short-grip works on the short head, and the wide-grips work on the long head.

It’s important that you begin with dumbbell curls before moving to barbell curls. This will ensure that the muscles first get used to the movement before you move to the barbell.

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2) Incline dumbbell curl

You’ll need a bench for this exercise, and you have to adjust the bench to an incline where your arms are slightly behind your upper body.

The incline dumbbell curl requires a full stretch. Therefore, it’s imperative you lower the dumbbell completely before beginning the second two. This allows the muscles to grow, even when using lighter weights. In fact, you can use lighter weights to perform higher reps during this exercise.

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3) Spider curl

Spider curls are another great pick from bicep curl variation exercises that you’ll benefit from if you use a lighter weight for higher reps.

When you’re hanging your arms from the bench, ensure that you’re completely stretching the arms and feeling the pull on your biceps, before engaging the biceps to curl the weight.

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4) EZ-bar reverse grip curl

EZ-bars should be a part of your bicep routine since the grips of the bar differ significantly from a straight barbell.

Hence, wide-grip and short-grip work on the heads like barbell curls, but activation is intense and allows for hypertrophy when you focus on higher reps.

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5) Zottman curl

Zottman curls are a unique pick from bicep curl variation exercises that will help you engage the biceps and forearms as well.

The exercise requires you to twist your forearm to change the direction of which side the dumbbell is facing. This twist has an impact on your forearms since you’re twisting the forearms and not the wrist for this exercise.

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6) Hammer curl

Hammer curls are often used as a finisher exercise in bicep routines, but you can incorporate it anywhere in your workout schedule. Interestingly, this is one of the rare bicep exercises where you keep a neutral grip while doing the exercise.

It’s important to keep your elbows tucked and stable when doing hammer curls.

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Bottom line

While it’s important to do bicep curl variation exercises to grow the muscle group for your arm to have a great appearance, you need to focus on your triceps and shoulders as well. Every muscle group in the body part is important if you want to ensure that it is visually appealing!