Arm exercises can be a little tricky to get right when it comes to form and technique. The primary reason for this is the necessity to protect the back while lifting heavy weights. Extending the back can cause injuries so there’s a ceiling to how much one can curl. Overloading is not possible without risking this. This is why the best way to train the arms is to add as much variety to the workouts while learning ways to get the most out of the popular exercises.
The reverse curl is one such exercise. It stands apart as one of the few exercises for the forearms while giving the biceps a workout as well. Most people prefer doing it using cables, but you could use any barbell (EZ or straight) for this. The grip in this is pronated or palms-down, which is the grip one would use to hold the steering on a scooter. This means the mistakes made while doing this exercise are slightly different to the ones made during something like a bicep curl, which uses a supinated grip (palms-up). This is because a palms-up grip makes it easier to swing back, and a palms-down grip could lead to a wrist collapse.
“It may feel natural to extend your wrists during elbow flexion, but doing so causes unnecessary stress on the wrist joint and extensor muscles. Maintain straight wrists throughout the full range of motion for effective and proper execution of reverse curls,” says a verywellfit.com article on reverse curls. It’s worth resisting the urge to go heavy on this exercise, especially if you’re used to doing so in bicep curls. Reverse curls will start looking like upright rows with your elbows flaring if you lift too heavy, but this shouldn’t happen when the target is the forearms. If it does, then it’s a good marker that you’ve hit your current ceiling in terms of loading weights for this exercise.
So arrest momentum, and make sure the wrists are neutral and strong while doing this, with the elbows as close to the side of the body and make sure you maintain a full range of motion, slowing down in the eccentric rather than letting the cable pull you back into the starting position. Maybe that’s something you sacrifice for heavier weights, but the quality of the rep matters more in an add-on exercise like the reverse curl. One good hack to avoid the elbows from flaring is to use the outside edge of the dumbbell when you’re using them for this exercise. “Press your hand all the way to the edge and then move your hand outward. What this will do is offset your grip and force your palm down. If you’re holding the middle it’s very easy to start flaring outward and it’s very easy to end up in a hammer [curl] position which we don’t want,” says the trainer in a MuscleWiki YouTube video titled, Quick How To: Reverse Curl (Avoid These Mistakes).
Scott Herman has nearly 3 million followers on YouTube and what he said 12 years ago in a video posted in May 2014 still holds true. His basic message is to try different equipment for the same exercise and see what works best. “This exercise works the brachioradialis which is the muscle that runs from the bicep all the way into the forearm. Keep in mind that throughout the exercise your traps and shoulders are going to work as stabilisers and you’re going to be fatiguing your wrist extensors. Now if holding a straight bar puts too much stress on your wrist, you can use an EZ curl bar to complete the exercise. Just make sure you maintain a shoulder-width grip,” Herman says in the video titled, How To: Reverse Barbell Curl.
The type of grip you use will dictate the efficacy of any arm exercise. In fact, it’s all about that sometimes, given how popular the hammer curl is. The reverse curl has another popular gym hack. Called the false grip, this takes the thumb out of the equation. So remove your thumb from a gripping position and place it on top of the bar, with the rest of the fingers. This is a slightly advanced variation but it puts the entire load on the fingers and the forearms, without the support of one of the most crucial parts of the grip. I tend to use this when the arms are fatigued and I only have the capacity to lift lighter weights. It’s a simple but perfect way to maximise gains.
Pulasta Dhar is a football commentator and writer.