Cheat Curls | Form Check | Men's Health Muscle - video Dailymotion

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1 year ago

TK

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00:00The irony of growing big arms is this. In order to build muscle, we have to lift

00:04heavy. But in order to really isolate our biceps and triceps without involving

00:08other muscle groups, a lot of times we can't lift as heavy as we want to. That

00:13creates a problem because the quest for growing big arms means we have to

00:16isolate but we still have to lift heavy. How do we solve that problem? That's

00:20where a move like the cheat curl comes in. By cheating, just with a little bit of

00:24extra body English, we're able to do our curls with extra heavy weights. And while

00:28that's gonna cost us a little bit in terms of a strong concentric contraction,

00:32it sets us up for an ultra good eccentric contraction. And that is

00:35critical for muscle building, as is the fact that during the cheat curl we can

00:39spend extra time in the stretch position. We're gonna get plenty of time under

00:42tension as our muscle is extending. The cheat curl can be a really excellent

00:47move in any biceps workout, but it is not a move that we want to abuse in our

00:51workouts. Here are four ways not to use the cheat curl in your training. So in

00:55order to understand how to do the cheat curl, the basic fundamental thing you

00:59have to remember is how to do a basic biceps curl first. All we're gonna do

01:02with the cheat curl is we're gonna break a couple of those rules so that we can

01:06go extra heavy when we're doing this curl. When we do a standard biceps curl,

01:10whether we're doing this with dumbbells or a barbell, we're gonna make sure to

01:13set up with our shoulder blades squeezed tight, our glutes squeezed tight, and then

01:17our abs working to keep our ribcage down. We're gonna work to keep our elbows at

01:21our sides as we curl up, and that winds up being our standard biceps curl. In

01:25order to do the cheat curl, we're gonna get our hips involved in this. That way

01:29we can lift an extra heavy weight up, then you've got to organize your body,

01:33get all that tension back in it, and then we're gonna lower slowly back down. If we

01:37are doing this with dumbbells, we have one extra option. We can alternate sides.

01:41We're still gonna make sure to keep ourselves back as tight as possible and

01:46making sure that our shoulder blades are squeezed, but we can lean a little bit to

01:50get into the weight a little bit more. That's gonna, again, set us up for a nice

01:53strong eccentric, but we can get that good hip rock, then lean into it a little

01:57bit, and then we can lower down, and that's gonna be one thing that we can do

02:00with dumbbells that we can't do as effectively with the barbell or an easy bar.

02:03The other thing we don't want to do with our cheat curl, we don't want to come

02:07down fast. The entire point of the cheat curl is not about cheating the weight up.

02:11It's about getting yourself in position to lower the weight with control because

02:16that's when we get that really, really good eccentric contraction. We get that

02:19eccentric overload that's going to eventually spur growth and get us used

02:23to working with that heavier weight. In order to do that, you have to make sure

02:26to think very carefully about your cheat curl. Once you cheat the weight up, we

02:30want to pause for a split second. Think about squeezing your glutes, squeezing

02:34your abs and getting your ribcage nice and tight, and then squeezing your

02:37shoulder blades. Once you've done that, then we can focus on slowly lowering the

02:41weight. You want to think about lowering for four full seconds. If you aren't

02:45fighting to lower for at least four seconds, you're wasting the entire

02:49purpose that you cheated the weight up for in the first place. So really battle

02:53for that. You are going to go heavy with this curl, but you still want to make

02:56sure that you really, really get that good eccentric. The other piece when we're

02:59doing the cheat curl that we want to avoid, you don't want to flex your wrists

03:02as you're lowering. So we want to create as long of a forearm lever as possible.

03:07That's not going to happen when we're flexing our wrists. So what you want to

03:10do, once we get into that top of that cheat curl position, instead of flexing

03:14our wrists and lowering, which is also going to lead to us using our forearms

03:18more instead of our biceps, what we want to do is extend ever so slightly. So

03:22think about just getting a little bit of open bend at the wrist. This is true

03:26whether you're using dumbbells or barbells. We want to just get that

03:29extension, maintain that position. That's going to force this to be all biceps as

03:32we lower, and that's what we're really, really going for on the cheat curl. Once

03:37you have mastered the cheat curl, it is a tremendous move that you can use for a

03:41ton of biceps gains. It's going to get you through a ton of plateaus too, but

03:44the thing you have to remember is that you're never going to do this move for

03:48high reps. This is something that's meant to be done for four to six reps max, and

03:53we can do this one of two ways. Either A, you can do this as a lead exercise within

03:57your biceps workout. Think about doing it then for three sets of four to six reps,

04:01and we're going to curl up and get that nice slow lower. By keeping the reps low,

04:05we're going to ensure that we can really focus on the eccentric. We're not going

04:09to overwhelm our mind by trying to do ten reps of this. The other way that you

04:13can do this is we can do a full set of curls with, say, a weight that we can

04:18control, and you can do, say, eight to ten reps of that, and then when you can't do

04:22any more reps with that weight that you can control, we can throw two to three

04:25reps on the end of that set, cheat the weight up, and then lower with control.

04:29Either way, those are your two options, and the better way is to use the cheat

04:33curl. This is not a high rep move, but it is a great move that's going to help you

04:36bust through your biceps plateaus and really, really grow your arms.

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