How to Do the EZ-Bar Curl

How to do it

1. Stand with feet hip-width apart, grip the EZ-bar on the inner angled portions of the bar so your palms face roughly 45 degrees upward, and let the bar hang at arm's length in front of your thighs.
2. Pull your shoulders back and down, brace your core lightly, and pin your elbows to the sides of your torso. They should stay there for the entire set.
3. Begin the curl by contracting your biceps and pulling the bar upward in a smooth arc, not by rocking your torso backward.
4. As the bar rises past your mid-thighs, exhale and continue the arc until the bar reaches roughly chin height, pausing briefly at the top to let the biceps fully shorten.
5. Resist the temptation to let the elbows drift forward at the top, which would transfer load off the biceps onto the front deltoids.
6. Begin the descent with control, taking roughly twice as long to lower the bar as you took to lift it. Slow eccentrics are where a lot of the muscle-building work happens.
7. At the bottom, allow a brief pause with the arms almost fully extended but without completely unlocking the elbows and dumping tension entirely.
8. Reset your position if anything shifted, then initiate the next rep from a dead stop rather than bouncing off the stretch.

Form cues

• Elbows nailed to your sides. Not floating, not drifting forward.
• Squeeze hard at the top, don't just chase height.
• Lower it like it matters. Two-count down, minimum.
• Chest up, ribs down. Don't lean back to help the bar move.
• Grip the angles, not the flat center of the bar.

Common mistakes

• Swinging the torso back to initiate the rep loads the lumbar spine unnecessarily and removes the biceps from doing the majority of the work. Keep the reps honest by dropping the weight until you can complete the full arc without any body English.
• Letting the elbows travel forward at the top turns the top half of the curl into a front raise hybrid and shifts stress onto the anterior deltoids. Elbows stay pinned at the sides all the way through the top.
• Gripping the flat center section of the bar negates the whole point of the EZ-bar and can put your wrists into the same stressful position you'd see on a straight bar. Always use the angled outer grips.
• Rushing the descent and letting the bar drop under gravity skips the eccentric phase, which is a significant portion of the stimulus for forearm and biceps development. Control the bar on the way down on every single rep.
• Going too heavy too soon produces a combination of all the above mistakes at once. The EZ-bar curl is an isolation exercise, and the loads that are appropriate for it are far below what you might move on a compound press or pull.

Why do the EZ-Bar Curl?

• The angled grip reduces forearm supination stress, which allows many lifters to accumulate higher curl volume over a training week without aggravating elbow tendons or wrist joints.
• Direct biceps training drives the kind of arm size and peak development that compound pulling movements alone rarely maximize, and the EZ-bar makes that direct work sustainable session to session.
• Forearm musculature gets meaningful time under tension as a stabilizer throughout the curl, contributing to grip endurance that carries over into rows, deadlifts, and pull-ups.
• Because the bar is fixed and the path is consistent, the EZ-bar curl is easy to track for progressive overload. Adding small amounts of weight over weeks and months produces reliable arm development.

EZ-Bar Curl variations

Straight Barbell Curl

A regression or alternative for lifters whose wrists tolerate full supination well, though many find it more uncomfortable over time with heavier loads.

Preacher EZ-Bar Curl

Performed on a preacher bench to eliminate any possibility of body swing, useful when a lifter needs to isolate the biceps more strictly or is working around a lower back issue.

Close-Grip EZ-Bar Curl

Gripping the innermost angles of the bar increases the supination angle slightly and can shift more emphasis to the outer portion of the biceps for lifters chasing a different feel.

Incline EZ-Bar Curl

Seated on an incline bench with arms hanging behind the torso creates a longer range of motion at the bottom of the curl, increasing the stretch on the biceps and forearms for a different training stimulus.

How to program it

The EZ-bar curl most commonly shows up as an accessory movement near the end of an upper-body or arm-focused session, after compound pulls like rows or pull-ups have already fatigued the biceps partially. Many lifters work in the 8 to 15 rep range for hypertrophy purposes, though some include heavier sets in the 6 to 8 range to build strength on the movement. It fits well in a superset paired with a triceps exercise, since the opposing muscle groups can rest while the other works. Total weekly volume across multiple sessions tends to drive arm development more than any single heroic set.

EZ-Bar Curl alternatives

Dumbbell Curl

Dumbbell · Isolation

Hammer Curl

Dumbbell · Isolation

Cable Curl

Cable · Isolation

Incline Dumbbell Curl

Dumbbell · Isolation

Concentration Curl

Dumbbell · Isolation

Spider Curl

Dumbbell · Isolation