After reading this week’s ‘Exercises You’ve Never Tried’ article, I went to the gym and tried the Overhead Cable Curls. Sure enough, just like the article said, someone asked me what the F I was doing on the first set! LOL. Great biceps exercise though, very unique feeling movement. Love those articles!
Glad you liked the exercise. Did you find it to be more of a “shaping” exercise or one that you could use for “bulking or size”? I would guess shaping but was wondering what your thoughts were after actually perfroming the exercise. Thanks.
I read the article too and was shocked to see this ones addition. I may try just to avoid being “that guy” but what is so different? The max force occurs at 90 degrees of elbow flexion. There is one that a few guys are trying, don’t know if there is a name for them beyond what I call them, clown lifts, cable crossover machine, high setting, stand with arms supinated and curl. straight line from L to R embow. Now these are unique, but the clowns are loading with too much weight, form is atrocious.
This exercise was covered in an old larry scott article (I think it was him) in M&F many many many years ago…
Well, I’m no fan of the term shaping, but I don’t think this is an overall “big” mass movement, just something different to use to shake things up. It’s also mentally stimulating to try somethig different in the gym, even if this exercise isn’t ideal. Does it work? Well, it works the bi’s that’s for sure, and I was a little sore the next day where I normally don’t get sore doing standard stuff like curls. Nice change of pace if anything. It won’t replace incline dumbbells curls and bar curls but it’s a cool exercise that got me pumped about training arms again. That in itself is valuable.
I absolutely adore going to the gym and overhead squatting what the putzes can?t even squat with, doing 20 rep breathing squats, goodmornings, pulldown abs, saxon side bends, pullthroughs, zercher squats, JM presses floorpresses: I just love it when they stop and stare : )
And it is always good to blow them away with my strength while me and my training partner are urging each other to stay explosive and not go to failure…
That almost pisses them off as much as using their top weight for warmups…
I tried those overhead cable curls last night at the end of my weekly arms routine. I found that with my arms so tired when I tried them, I couldn’t get a good feel for them, but at low weight and really strict movement, they did hit my biceps nicely, but not as well as most other bicep exercises I’ve tried.
High rope rows, lying inclined dumbell shrugs, one-sided dumbell shrugs- I learned early on that if I wanted to look like the career gym rats who haven’t gotten bigger or stronger in 10 years (we all have them in our gym), I should do the same old shit they do.
One thing about the biceps - you’re not going to get a totally full contraction without having your elbow elevated above the plane of your shoulder. One reason why you can “feel” this type of exercise more than a regular, standing-up-with-your-arms-hanging-down curl.
The long head of the biceps crosses both the shoulder and elbow joints. As such, flexing the shoulder to greater than 45-degrees while simultaneously flexing the elbow puts the long head of the biceps in active insufficiency (or “on slack”), a scenario in which it is shortened beyond its optimal length for torque production. As such, the short head of the biceps takes on most of the load anytime that you flex the shoulder by more than 45 degrees (e.g. preacher curl).