You’re Allowed to Cheat on Biceps Curls—if You Follow This One Rule

FEEL LIKE YOU’RE training your biceps all the time, but not making any progress?

You’re not alone. Because curls are so isolated to one small muscle, it can take a long time to add weight to the exercise, no matter how often you train. Muscle building plateaus are difficult to overcome, and there’s one biceps curl hack that might help you get over the hump: the cheat curl.

Hopefully you know by now that we’re all about good form here at Men’s Health. But, there’s an occasional circumstance that calls for breaking form. When training your biceps, “cheating” your way to the top of your reps to make the most of the lowering portion can help you gain strength and size.

“The irony of growing big arms is this: in order to build muscle, we have to lift heavy. But to really isolate our biceps and triceps without involving other muscle groups, a lot of times we can’t lift as heavy as we want to,” says Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., MH fitness director. “How do we solve that problem? That’s where a move like the cheat curl comes in.”

So, we grant you permission to break form—as long as you do so smartly. Here’s how.

How to Do the Biceps Cheat Curl

Changing your body angle to bring the weight up in a biceps curl might cost you a strong concentric contraction, but it will set you up for great eccentric contraction. And, the eccentric (or lowering) portion of the lift can be key to building muscle. Doing so correctly, though, requires a knowledge of how to do a regular biceps curl first. Traditionally, you would set up with your shoulder blades squeezed tight, glutes and core engaged. Keeping your elbow close in towards your ribcage, you would curl the weight up without moving at the torso or the hips.

On a cheat curl, you’ll engage the hips or torso a bit more to get the weight up to its top position. Exactly how you cheat will depend a bit on what equipment you’re using. Here’s how to do it with both a barbell, and dumbbells.

How to Do the Biceps Cheat Curl with a Barbell:

Set up by grabbing onto your barbell. Have your hands about shoulder-width apart on the bar.
Hinge softly at the hips, and use the glutes to explode forward and help power the bar to your chest.
Once in this position, stiffen the body. Engage the glutes, shoulder blades and core.
Lower slowly back down, keeping the elbows tucked into your sides and your wrists straight. Focus on going slow here to get the most out of your eccentric contraction— lower for at least 4 seconds.

How to Do the Biceps Cheat Curl with Dumbbells:

Set up with the dumbbells in hand.
Alternate your reps. Hinge softly at the hips, and lean the torso in towards the arm that you are going to curl up. Utilize that slight rock in the the hips and the angle of the torso to bring your dumbbell up.
Regain stiffness through the glutes, core, and shoulder blades. Slowly lower the dumbbell down, keeping your elbow tucked into your side.
Lower for at least 4 seconds, keeping your wrists straight.
Do the same thing on the other side.

How to Program Biceps Cheat Curls

The cheat curl can help you get past plateaus and start building serious muscle, if programmed correctly. There’s two ways to use the cheat curl.

First, you can make cheat curls a main set at the beginning of your biceps workout. If you do this, keep the reps low, and really focus on controlling the lowering portion with a heavy weight. Aim for 3 sets of 4 to 6 reps.

Second, you can add them into the end of a traditional biceps curl set to take your muscles to failure. Do a normal set of biceps curls, and once you can’t handle maintaining good form with the weights that you have, utilize the cheat mechanism to get the weights up to the chest and slow lower them back down. Aim for an extra 2 to 3 reps at the end of your standard set.

Tips for a Better Cheat Curl

Own the Lowering

If you lower too quickly out of a cheat curl, you’re missing the whole purpose of the move.

“The cheat curl is not about cheating the way up—it’s about getting yourself into position to lower the weight with control, because that’s when we get that really good eccentric contraction,” Samuel says. That overload is what will help build muscle, and get us used to lifting heavier weights, so eventually you can do strict curls with those heavy weights.

Every time you lower in a cheat curl, aim for a count of four seconds. You’ll want to go heavy with the weights, but make sure it’s a weight you can lower for at least that four count.

Don’t Flex the Wrists

In any kind of curl, you want to create as long of a forearm lever as possible. That means keeping your wrists slightly bent back throughout the movement—especially through that long lowering phase. If you flex at the wrist, you’ll wind up using more of your forearms, and miss out on targeting the biceps.