Tim’s Tips are Written by Tim Rigby, M.A., NSCA-CPT
The preacher curl apparatus is very effective for isolating your biceps, especially the inner “short” head. If you’re looking to target your biceps peak (which is located on the outer “longer” head), then you need to perform other exercises where your arms are behind the plane of your torso – not in front. Nevertheless, when if comes to the preacher curl, the overwhelming majority of gym-goers perform this move sub-optimally, all thanks to one bad habit which nobody seems to correct for them: positioning the seat too low.
It’s easy to figure out why people do this – they typically assume that if they’re an average height person, the seat should be somewhere in the middle of the vertical seat adjuster. Tall people especially make this mistake, because they often overcompensate for the seat height and mistakenly believe it needs to be near the bottom.
What it all comes down to, however, is making sure that the back of your upper arms do not leave contact with the 45-degree pad employed in the preacher curl. This way you can avoid possible injury from excessive strain to your elbow ligaments and upper forearms. If you need to reduce the weight in order to fully stabilize your upper arms, then by all means do that. What’s more, this also happens to be the more ideal way to isolate your biceps (as opposed to inadvertently letting your front shoulders and upper back get into the mix, when your arms lift off the pad).
So, position the preacher curl seat higher than you’ve been doing. Keep your upper arms stable and nuke your biceps short head the right way!