|
Every so often you may hear mention of an exercise called
the hammer curl. While it’s one of the less popular
biceps exercises, the hammer curl has its place in bodybuilding
workouts. It also has a purpose for those who have wrist,
hand or elbow injuries.
The hammer curl is a two-arm dumbbell curl performed with
your palms facing each other. In a basic dumbbell curl your
palms face up or they rotate from a palms-facing position
at the bottom of the movement to a palms-up position at the
top. The wrist rotation is called supination, and the palms-facing,
thumbs-up position is called either semisupination or semipronation.
It goes by both names due to the neutral wrist position when
your palms face each other, and that relatively neutral position
is precisely what makes the exercise advantageous for some
trainees.
Nearly everyone suffers various injuries in life, whether
they’re training related, work related, sports related
or just due to long-term wear and tear on the joints. Such
problems can occur in the wrist as well as in any other joint,
and they can make it virtually impossible to perform a standard
barbell curl due to wrist pain.
One relatively common wrist injury is a tear in the triangular
fibrocartilage complex (TFCC). If you extend your hand in
front of you with your palm down, the TFCC is located on the
outer region of the wrist, near the bony prominence. As suggested
by its name, the TFCC is made of ligaments and a cartilaginous
structure. Unusual torque or stress, either chronic or acute,
can wear down the cartilage and produce a tear. For example,
a trainee who was experiencing significant wrist pain and
clicking after he performed curls with a Trap Bar and with
his wrists tilted downward recently came to our office. The
tilt is called ulnar deviation. Performing curls with a Trap
Bar and the wrists positioned that way caused a tear in his
TFCC. Unfortunately, he required arthroscopic surgery to resolve
the injury.
Even more common than TFCC tears are sprains and strains of
the wrist. A sprain is an overstretch and/or tear of ligaments
that attach bone to bone. A strain is an overstretch and/or
tear of tendons that attach muscle to bone. The wrist is made
up of eight small bones known as carpal bones that are positioned
in two rows. The eight bones are connected to each other and
to the two forearm bones, the ulna and radius, as well as
to the five long bones of the hand, the metacarpals. Tendons
and muscles run throughout the wrist and hand, and there are
many combinations of sprains and strains that can occur there.
Sports that can easily lead to wrist and hand sprains include
hockey, football and the martial arts, particularly jujitsu,
which is enjoying peak popularity today thanks to the Grace
and Machado families. In addition, healed fractures of forearm
and wrist bones can make it very difficult to get into the
proper position for a barbell curl due to pain or loss of
range of motion.
One of the first variations that trainees make in their workouts
is to substitute dumbbells for barbells on certain lifts.
Wrist pain can even prevent you from performing the standard
dumbbell curl either with your palms up for the entire rep
or with your hand rotating from a neutral position to a supinated
position.
The hammer curl is so named because you hold the dumbbells
the way you would hold a hammer, except that your wrist remains
straight throughout the rep. Do not tilt your wrist either
upward or downward, which would be radial deviation and ulnar
deviation, respectively. If you do tilt your wrists down and
up during hammer curls, you may injure them, as described
above.
The hammer curl can be a blessing for anyone who suffers from
wrist pain and who thought he or she would have to stop doing
curls. Even so, the emphasis is different from what you get
with a standard dumbbell curl. The standard curl develops
the biceps brachii; the brachialis, or lower biceps, which
is located underneath the biceps near the elbow; and the brachioradialis,
as well as the wrist flexor muscles.
The hammer curl significantly targets the brachioradialis.
This muscle, if it’s developed, is the large muscle
of the forearm. If you extend your forearm out in front of
you with your palm down, the brachioradialis is the muscle
located on the top inner area. Its function is to bend, or
flex, the elbow and to turn the wrist to a neutral position
(palms facing each other) from either a fully pronated (palms-down)
or fully supinated (palms-up) position. The brachioradialis
is a semisupinator and semipronator in that it performs the
first half of both movements but does not complete either.
(The brachioradialis is also developed during back exercises
such as pullups and rows.)
Hammer curls are usually performed with the dumbbells being
curled either simultaneously or alternately. If you curl both
dumbbells together, you must be careful not to arch your back
too much. That can cause a chronic ache in your lower back,
or it can actually cause a lower-back injury, so try to maintain
good posture when you do hammer curls. You can help protect
your back by keeping your abdominal muscles tight during the
exercise.
If you’re an advanced recreational trainee or a competitive
bodybuilder and you don’t have a wrist, elbow or hand
injury that you’re working around, hammer curls will
add development to your forearms due to their more direct
effect on the brachioradialis. Other weight-training athletes
have turned to this exercise as well. A few years ago Superheavyweight
World Powerlifting champion Bill Kazmaier, who also won the
World’s Strongest Man contest several times, used the
hammer curl regularly. Kaz was and a trim 325 pounds, and
he performed lifts of 661 pounds on the bench press with a
relatively close grip, 885 pounds on the dead-lift and 920
pounds on the squat. He felt that the brachioradialis development
he got from doing hammer curls helped him in the bottom position
of the bench press. There are many doctors and therapists
who will argue against that idea; however, we don’t
know if the brachioradialis development really did help or
if Kaz was simply a great bench presser who happened to perform
hammer curls. Either way, he had tremendous brachioradialis
development and was a very impressive-looking individual.
If you’ve found that the hammer curl works well in your
program, whether or not you have an injury, please don’t
rush in and add set after set. Anything can be overdone, especially
if you aren’t used to it. The brachioradialis has a
long tendon that goes from the area where the bulk of the
muscle stops all the way to the wrist. Overuse of it can produce
tendinitis in the area and will require time off from any
exercise that produces pain. If you’ve never performed
hammer curls, add just one to two sets to your workouts for
one month. After that you can add another one or two sets
over the next month if you feel you need them.
Related Articles
Bicep Building Workout
How to
Build Big Biceps and Big Arms
The 5 Best Bicep
Exercises
| Popular Products! |
BSN
Nitrix
Nitrix has just tapped into one of the most powerful
muscle building.. |
|
 ALRI Venom Hyperdrive 3.0
ALRI Venom Hyperdrive 3.0 is a supplement designed for adults age 21 or over only. This is a product |
|
 MuscleTech Creakic
When you’re laying down the cash for supplement – specifically a creatine pill.. |
|
