Drag Curl
Trains the Biceps.
- Equipment
- A barbell
- Mechanic
- Isolation
- Force
- Pull
- Level
- Intermediate
How to do it
- Stand holding a barbell with an underhand grip about shoulder-width apart.
- Stand tall with the bar resting against your thighs.
- Curl the bar upward while dragging it up the front of your body, keeping it in contact the whole way.
- Let the elbows travel backward behind your torso as the bar rises — that is what keeps it against you.
- Stop when the bar reaches the lower chest and the elbows are behind you.
- Lower along the same path, keeping the bar touching.
Common mistakes
- Letting the bar swing away from the body. The drag is the exercise; a bar that leaves the torso is an ordinary curl with an unusual finish.
- Expecting a full curl's range. The bar cannot travel far while staying against you, so the range is short by design and the top is nowhere near the shoulders.
- Loading it like a standard curl. The elbows travelling backward puts the biceps in a shortened position at the shoulder, which is a weaker place to work from.
- Doing it instead of a normal curl rather than alongside one. It trains elbow flexion with the shoulder extending, which is a position most curls never visit — and it is a supplement to the range they do cover, not a replacement for it.