I dumbell bench the 25kg??? Per arm?? So thats 1/5th of what i bench.
Oh for the love of Dio, why didn’t you say you are not using dumbbells for curls lol?
30lbs for dumbbell curls = 30lbs in each arm
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Im confused as. I do use dumbells
Oh sorry my mistake you were referring to single arm benching. I thought you meant combined.
Yes. When you are using dumbbells, you just need to say the weight of ONE dumbbell. When I say I’m curling the 40lbers, I’m actually curling 80lbs. We’re meatheads. I’m not going to fucking add the weight of both dumbbells up and do math and shit when I don’t have to lol.
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lol
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I’m not sure I understand lol.
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Me either. Aside from things I wish I knew when I started, this RPE scale sneaked in when I wasn’t looking.
I’m reading up on it a little now.
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I agree with this post entirely - I’ll add this for the young ones though:
Try barbell preacher curls with a free weight for 15-20 reps. Reason for preacher curls is that even a novice can’t make a mess of them. It’s important to go from full extension to full contraction.
A potential problem advising guys over the internet who aren’t feeling dumbell curls is that we have no idea what they’re form is like - nobody can fuck up a preacher curl though = )
Through trial and error I’ve been using your set rep curl method (although on a preacher bench) for years with great results. Nothing else added volume to my arms… not heavy curls, not cables, nothing. From memory I even mentioned the preacher bench earlier in this thread.
I like the movement because it’s the only exercise I can think of that I don’t even bother ‘feeling’ the muscle with and still get kick ass results - it’s great fun, switch off from the burn and enjoy the rhythmic tempo and watch the fuckers blow up.
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Preacher curls are great for eliminating any cheating. I’m a fan of Incline DB curls too. I’d consider anyone using 35lb DBs with strict form a beast.
I personally haven’t drifted over to the slow tempos. But since reading CT’s Best Damn Workout For Naturals I’ve been doing double rest/pause training on selected isolation exercises such as curls and press downs. It goes against not training to failure but arm muscles are small (compared to doing this on squats) and I can handle it. This method has made my shirt sleeves tighter. Not sure if it’s necessarily new growth but it’s helped me reclaim some size I’ve lost.
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Lots of advice on curls and bicep for our younger selves here.
I personally wish I wouldn’t have fucked around with curls AT ALL until I spent A LOT of time working on my Squats, Deadlifts, OHP’s, and Bench. I probably wasted weeks collectively of valuable training time on curls when I should have been focused on the big lifts.
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As someone that did exactly that, I wish I did more curls, so I wouldn’t have to play catch up now.
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I dunno man, I’d rather have gotten real strong like you first and then play catch up on the arms too. 
The curls topic showed up late and kind of ton over. I don’t regret my early training (except for the crap we did in high school weights) but I wish I’d added to it.
When I was 17 I lifted with my older brother and his roommate and learned their bodybuilding routine. It was a bro split but we hit everything twice a week.
Chest/tri’s
Back/shoulders/bi’s
Legs
We did 3 exercises per muscle group including arms lol
Thank God I was an adolescent with lots of testosterone. I think this was my prime training window in regards to that. I gained 20lbs over the summer. I’ve been hooked ever since. Unfortunately I weigh the same now albeit with some changes in body composition.
Wish I’d added full depth squats and deadlifts to my program during this stage. I think I’d squat a lot more now instead of struggling with mediocre weights.
If you’ve done genuine heavy work chances are it won’t take long to build arms with this method - I don’t know if it’s a sarcoplasm thing or what, but I’m betting someone who has built genuine pulling strength on compounds will see results very quickly.
I discovered it by accident. I always went nuts on compounds but my arms never grew to the point I actually stopped training them directly. It seemed like a waste of time.
One day I was in the gym and grabbed a 20kg barbell and finished off my workout with 2 sets of repping the thing out until I couldn’t do any more and loved the feeling so much I did it again every workout (5 days per week)
I wasn’t expecting any results, my arms never grew before no matter what I did and I figured the weight would have been to light to do any damage or overtrain - I was doing it for fun and something different to do to break the monotony.
Two weeks later and I’m in the shower and it’s like ‘holy fuck what the hell has happened to my arms’
I bounce around from doing a couple of sets frequently to a few sets twice each week… thinking about it now, it’s possible the mind state is helping. I think of ‘pulling’ the weight towards the contracted position rather than ‘lifting’ it upward if that makes sense. I’m also not looking in the mirror - it’s head down looking at the bench and ‘pulling’ while slowly lowering making damn sure it reaches full extension
It’s a lot of fun, you almost reach a meditative state blocking out the burn
I have no idea why but all 3 gyms I go to now have their resting pads set at a fixed 45* angle and the old school preacher benches were maybe 10*
On the new equipment you only have tension through 40% of the ROM and you have zero contraction at the top half of the exercise
I hope anyone considering barbell preacher curls has access to a preacher bench with a steep enough angle that allows for full contraction through the entire ROM
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Yep - easier is sexy and sexy sells I guess, which brings up another issue that should go without the need to mention but I will just in case someone’s unsure: stay the hell away from machine curls… they usually lock you into an unnatural groove and might end up causing joint/connective tissue problems while stimulating less muscle growth than free-weights could
Talk about a great way for gyms to blow 7 grand on a waste of time… Imagine the gym that could be custom built with the 500K that’s been spent on the absolute bullshit some of these places are filled with?
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You know what they call a guy who is really strong excpet for in one spot?
4th place.
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oh my god yeah I forgot about that!
The NUMBER ONE piece of advice I’d give myself is not to neglect isolation moves. For years I thought the big compounds were enough for everything.
For some people they are, I get that, but for me they’re definitely not!
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I wish I would have done more direct low back work. Also, I wish I wouldn’t have put so much emphasis in benching and more in overhead pressing.
On this curl debate, I too tend to only use the 20-30s, but have you guys ever curled heavy dumbbells as top sets or anything? I used to a year or so ago, at the end of my workouts I would do something like a 10, 8, 6, 4 and work up to 60s or so and I had great arm development then tbh. I think there is a place for heavy bicep work, but not as a main focus honestly. I would agree that sticking to the lighter ones to get a feel for your arms is the way to go 96% of the time.
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