All about the Alternating Dumbbell Curl
(Biceps)
BENEFITS & MUSCLES WORKED: Biceps
Watch: Dumbbell Curl video
START POSITION: Hold only one dumbbell at a time and dig your elbow into one side of your body. Place one leg (the one on the same side as the dumbbell) in front of you, off to the side a bit, and bend the knee slightly. Extend the weighted arm down to rest along the side of your body, on top of your front-facing thigh.
Lean back slightly so that most of your bodyweight is leaning onto the rear leg, and that rear leg should also have a slightly bent knee.
Your free arm should be either bent with your hand on your hip or reaching straight across your chest with a flat palm, so that the fingertips dig into the upper bicep of the weighted arm. This is my favourite stance because it gives maximum stability, along with a more central Center of Gravity.
Now you’re good to go.
NOTES: Difficulty Rating: 54%
The Alternating Dumbbell Curl was one of the first exercises I grappled with when I started going to the gym way back in the mists of bygone days. It’s a perfect place to start for beginners who often haven’t yet built up a strong enough foundation to tackle other, more challenging Bicep exercises.
By working each arm alternately, you essentially isolate each Bicep while the rest of the body remains stationary. This means that Dumbbell Curls can be easily adapted to serve as a good ‘Drop Setting’ routine. When I was a track runner, I managed to knock vast chunks of seconds off my Personal Best times for various middle distances (from 400m upwards) by doing Drop Sets for both Biceps and Triceps, which together gave my arms a superb boost of strength and endurance. Practice switching your stance and swapping the dumbbell to the opposite hand in one smooth movement, backwards and forwards, as you alternate between each Bicep isolation. Always try to match the reps done on both sides. When you start to reach the moment of failure (the burn feeling), swap arms again and begin dropping the weight and/or the reps until you are struggling to do even six reps with a mere 2 kg dumbbell. Yep, I’m serious! Please don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
Even back in those long-gone days, I remember telling other club runners that they needed to train their arms, and not just their legs. Some good club runners just thought that lots of jogging and running were ample training to progress with their achievements. Still, I noticed that many of them had relatively weak arms, which were quite floppy, and they appeared to be out of balance with the rest of their body. I have never changed my views on this and many other fundamental truths of training, which I learned through sheer determination, trial and error, and a desire to be a successful young competitive runner.
I have been there, done it, and got the T-shirt. This site is my platform to teach the same ‘laws of the jungle’ to all the modern, aspiring young athletes who are constantly bombarded with too much information, much of which is misleading or downright incorrect. I also regularly teach more mature students, and I teach them the same principles, because EVERYONE can draw some form of benefit from the Mojoh Method teachings. Of this, I am 100% certain.