Drag Curl

[Sareen]

Exercise of the Week: The Drag Curl


For some reason, curls are often tossed into the wimpy exercise pile along with triceps kickbacks. Yeah, yeah, we should all be doing weighted close-grip chin-ups, but let's set one thing straight: every bodybuilder with big, muscular arms did curls to help him build them. He did not just "stick to the big compound movements" to get those sleeve cannons to explode.

That being said, there are a lot of good curling options out there besides the standard EZ-bar curl. One of them is the drag curl.

As T-Nation's Christian Thibaudeau demonstrates above, you simply keep the bar in contact with the body at all times as you lift it. The elbows should be kept as close to the torso as possible. This is why it's called a drag curl: you "drag" the bar up your body.

Squeeze extra hard in the peak contraction position, then lower it the same way, keeping it in constant contact with the body.


Notes and Variations

• Both a regular and reverse grip can be used effectively.

• You'll need to use less weight than you typically use with a standard curl, so leave the ego in the locker room.

• The range of motion is shorter than a regular curl, especially if you have big honkin' arms. Compensate by squeezing extra hard in the peak contraction position.

• Once you master drag curls, try the "ski jump" variation. This is a drag curl performed with a cable stack.

Simply attach a handle to a cable and face away from the stack. Take a step away from the weight stack and lean forward like a ski jumper so that your arms are at a 45-degree angle relative to your torso.

Without moving your shoulders or changing the angle so much as an inch, curl the cable grips up and forward. If you're doing them properly, your hands will end up roughly parallel with your lats.

Try the drag curl this week and let us know what you think!

From t-nation..

[Sareen]

For incredible gains and a skin-splitting double pump, eliminate delt involvement in yoru biceps routine by incorporating this seldom-seen biceps punisher.

Look around any gym and you’re bound to see more than a few guys trying to build bigger arms with standard biceps exercises. They focus on staples such as barbell curls, alternating dumbell curls and preacher curls; invariably they pay little attention to form, lugging the heaviest weights they can manage and relying on momentum-based swinging movements to heave the heavy loads toward their shoulders. The result, of course, is often the same: By shifting their upper bodies and moving their upper arms throughout their curls, they allow their delts and lats to take over, greatly diminishing the stress on their biceps. Only the strictest trainers are able (or willing) to completely isolate their biceps for standard curls.

By rediscovering the largely forgotten body-drag curl, however, you’ll eliminate any possibility of cheating – you’ll be forced to completely isolate your biceps, producing a killer pump you won’t soon forget. This month MMI shows you how this double-pump wonder can breathe new life into your stagnant biceps routine.

The Body-Drag Curl
For those too young to remember, the body-drag curl was a favorite of the late, great Vince Gironda, better known as the Iron Guru. In fact, he advocated almost no other type of curl. Unfortunately, despite his full endorsement, the body-drag curl never achieved widespread acceptance. To execute this curl, your biceps will raise a straight bar along the front of your body. One of the central benefits of this exercise is that it completely isolates your biceps by alleviating the deltoid activation that is common with most biceps curls. The body-drag curl is all biceps, and talk about a pump! The pump is so great you’ll want to take it home to meet Mom, but don’t. It’s better left in the gym.

So what makes this curl different from other biceps curls? The difference is in the way it forces you to lift the bar. Despite its name, the body-drag curl isn’t really a curl – at least not in the traditional sense. Rather than moving in an arc, your biceps will raise the weight in a straight up-and-down movement. Therefore, your biceps will act more like the high pulley of a cable crossover. You’ll have to use less weight than with a traditional barbell curl, but don’t worry; this exercise is just as effective. The lighter-weight requirement could be the reason it never garnered much favor among weight trainers, whose egos compel them to lift as much weight as possible, diminishing the effectiveness of most biceps exercises in the process. This shouldn’t dissuade anyone from doing this exercise, though. Set your ego aside and try to remember that your biceps can’t read the number printed on the side of the plates. After a decent warmup, load up a barbell and give this biceps punisher a try. Just don’t come crying to us when you can no longer lift your arms high enough to wipe the sweat from your brow.

From Muscle Mag

[Sareen]

By Alan Palmieri... Excellent article with illustration.

www.palmieribodybuilding.com/Body-drag%20Curl.pdf

[Sareen]

So if any of you haven't been doing these get in the gym give it a try and torch those biceps and make em grow to baseball proportions. Doug had me doing them during DC training.

[Sareen]

Another great illustration on the Drag Curl....

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YItJcwyS1ZE

[beckie]

I love these-they really hit my biceps hard!