Alternating Incline Dumbbell Curl

Alternating incline dumbbell curls are a bicep curl variation that you do sitting on an incline bench. The best incline bench angle for this curl is 45 degrees. It puts your arms behind your body, so your biceps get more of a stretch and an extended range of motion. To do this exercise, hold a dumbbell in each hand, facing your palms forward. Alternate curling one dumbbell at a time towards your body, letting the other arm hang down below your bench. Alternating incline dumbbell curls are a powerful exercise for both the long and short heads of your biceps. They put slightly more emphasis on the long head (the part at the outside of your arm when your palms face up) since the angle you use extends your range of motion. It’s an excellent way to build strength and a good bicep peak exercise to create more volume in your upper arms.

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How-to

Sit on an incline bench with a dumbbell in each hand, arms extended down by your sides, with palms facing forward.
Keeping your elbows tucked by your sides, raise your right arm towards your shoulder. Squeeze and hold.
Lower the dumbbell back to the starting position, and repeat with the other arm.

Muscle Worked

Primary Muscle Groups

Biceps

The biceps are muscles that sit at the front or your upper arms between your elbows and shoulders

Secondary Muscle Groups

Forearms

The forearms help you grip objects and move your hands, wrists and fingers

Pro Tips

Start by Flexing. Your Wrists Before you curl, add a slight flex of your wrist at the “down” position of the exercise when your arms are hanging by your sides. It’s a small but powerful way to enhance your curls. This micro movement engages your forearms more and helps create a better connection with your biceps. Starting your curl from here primes your muscles to contract more fully.
Control Your Negative (Eccentric Phase). You’re probably thinking about the “up” portion of your lift on a curl— hoisting your dumbbell up toward your body. But slowing down the lowering phase (eccentric phase) is something many of us tend to overlook. Try to control the lowering action of your dumbbell, timing it out to about a 3-4 second lower time on each rep. This increases the time under tension for your biceps. This puts more stress on your bicep muscle fibers, forcing the muscles to grow and build endurance over time.
Focus on Elbow Position, Not Hand Position Don't overfocus on your wrist or hand position. Instead, concentrate on keeping your elbows set behind you. This lets your biceps’ long head assist your movement more effectively. Often, in alternating incline curls people tend to let their elbows swing or move forward on each rep. Instead of mostly isolating the biceps, this turns your curls into more of a shoulder exercise. Keeping your elbows still is a better bicep isolation exercise and creates a more focused muscular contraction.

Equipments

Dumbbell

Dumbbells are hand-gripped bars loaded with equal weight on both ends

Incline Bench

The incline bench is a variation of the traditional bench that is tilted at a 45-degree angle

Benefits

The key benefit of working on an incline is that it allows for a deeper stretch across your biceps at the bottom of the movement. In a traditional curl, it’s not as easy to get this stretch since your range of motion is more limited. Extending the range helps to recruit more muscle fibers, especially your biceps’ long head. If you’re focused on aesthetic workouts for arm definition, targeting the long head can help create a higher bicep peak.
Unlike your standing or seated curls, using an incline bench helps keep your shoulders and upper body more stable. In turn, they don’t involve themselves as much in alternating incline dumbbell curls. The muscular isolation you create when your shoulders are still letting your biceps do almost all the work. The shoulders don’t kick in to compensate so you may see better bicep growth over time by favoring this curl variation over traditional bicep curls.
Alternating lets you give your maximum “oomph” to each rep. This is an example of unilateral training (vs. bilateral, where both sides of the body move together). Singling out one arm at a time allows many people to generate more power per arm on each lift. If you have bad bicep genetics, this can help correct imbalances in size between your biceps. Since you're working one arm at a time, this setup helps ensure both your arms get the same workload, so one arm doesn’t overpower the other.

Warm Up & Cool Down

Warm Up

Arm Circles- Make big circles with your arms in one direction, then the other to warm up your arm and shoulder joints. This will help get your blood pumping and activate your mobility before you curl.
Intro Curl Set- Activate your biceps with a few light, bodyweight curls or resistance band curls. You’ll start to initiate the curling motion but you won’t max out your efforts by using a heavy load here.
Shoulder Shrugs- Hold a light weight or no weight at all, and shrug your shoulders toward your ears. Lower them slowly. This helps to warm up your trapezius muscles and shoulders. Ideally, we want these areas to stay still when we’re curling, but it’s useful to understand what these muscles feel like when they’re active so we can reduce their involvement when it comes to working with heavier weights.

Cool Down

Bicep Stretch- Stick one arm out in front of you with your palm facing up. Pull your fingers back gently to stretch your bicep.
Tricep Stretch- Reach one arm over your head. Bend your elbow to touch the opposite shoulder blade, and use the other hand to try to gently push the bent elbow down. This balances your stretch between biceps, triceps and shoulders to cool your whole upper body down after a bicep-focused workout.
Wrist Stretch- Come onto all fours, bringing your shoulders over your wrists. Externally rotate your arms so your fingers face back toward your body, then lean your hips back, trying to sit on your heels. This provides a deep stretch that relieves your wrists of their efforts during alternating incline dumbbell curls.

FAQ

They don’t prevent imbalances. Most people naturally have a dominant side that varies from person to person. That being said, alternating incline dumbbell curls can help correct bicep imbalances since they allow you to focus all your effort on one arm at a time. Doing each curl separately lets you fine-tune your form and stops your dominant arm from taking over the movement. This is an example of unilateral training which is a great way to get more balanced muscle growth.

No, but skipping the bench makes it a different exercise. The power of your incline bench position is the increased range of motion. From a simple standing position, you’d have to swing your arms back in space behind your body to get the same range of motion an incline bench gives you. The bench actually helps make your job easier here, since the gravity created when you’re working on an angle naturally pulls your arms back behind you. If you skipped the bench, you’d basically just be doing a traditional curl with an added tricep extension.

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