Zottman Curls

Why Is This Exercise So Effective?

This exercise combines two variations of the dumbbell curl into one movement. You curl up using the regular palms-up grip and come down using the reverse or palms-down grip. This works several muscles of the upper arm at the same time (the biceps and the brachialis).

How To Do It

• Start in the regular dumbbell curl position, with your knees slightly bent and your shoulders back.
  
  
• Curl up using the regular dumbbell curl grip.
  
  
• At the top, rotate your hands so that they are in reverse grip position.
  
  
• Lower and repeat.
  
  
• This allows you to work all the muscles in your arms in one movement.
  
  
• Since you can use more weight during the regular curl portion of the movement, the brachialis gets worked on the negative with more weight.
  
  
• These are not as effective if done reverse style, i.e. using the reverse grip up and the regular grip down.
  
  
• This exercise is more easily done alternating style (where you lift only one dumbbell at a time) rather than with both arms simultaneously.

How to incorporate this exercise into your workouts:

This exercise can be placed anywhere in your biceps workout.

Common Errors

1. Using too much weight

If you have to go to a hammer style on the way down, you’re using too much weight.

2. Typical curl errors

Typical bicep curl errors should be avoided. These include:

• not bending your knees
  
  
• swinging the dumbbells up
  
  
• leaning back excessively
  
  
• using momentum
  
  
• dropping the dumbbells quickly

Tricks

1. Hand positioning

There are a few hand positioning tricks that will force this exercise to work better.

• When you curl up, hold the dumbbell so your thumb and forefinger are against the inner plate. This will help by increasing the resistance you get via supination.
  
  
• At the top, rotate your hand then slide it over so that the pinky side is against the outer plate.
  
  
• The counterbalance effect of this will force your hand into pronation, rotating it so that your palm is facing down (like the top of a reverse dumbbell curl).
  
  
• The slide at the top will entail a little jump of the weight in order to slide it.
  
  
• Switch grips again at the bottom, shifting the dumbbell back to the thumb and forefinger against the inner plate, then curl up again.