The One Biceps Exercise Wasting Your Time — and 3 to Try Instead

If you're looking to build arm strength, you won't want to skimp on biceps exercises. But doing the right moves is just as beneficial as filling your upper-body workout with tons of biceps supersets — if not more so.

To get the most out of your upper-body workouts, skip the barbell curl and opt for a standing dumbbell curl, incline curl and spider curl to strengthen and sculpt your biceps.

Although there's no bad biceps exercise necessarily, some moves make it easier to commit some common errors. The barbell curl is one move you perform with caution (or skip entirely), according to Samuel Chan, DPT, CSCS, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and physical therapist Bespoke Treatments in New York. Here's why:

Swinging the weights is one of the most common biceps exercise errors Chan sees people make. Using momentum to curl the barbell causes your elbows to shift away from the sides, which takes the work out of the biceps.

To fix this mistake, lower the weight you're lifting until you can perform each rep with the strength of your biceps, rather than the momentum of the weight. Using a mirror can also help you catch any unwanted movement of the elbows.

Unless you're performing your biceps moves with a full range of motion — from your arm fully extended to your elbow fully bent — you're cheating yourself out of the exercise's benefits, Chan says.

"The end ranges of any motion are typically the weakest, so don't simply work mid-range and perform half curls," Chan says, noting that it's easier to do this with a barbell. "Fully curl, then fully extend your elbow with each rep to get the most benefit our of your biceps exercises."

Lastly, using a barbell can be taxing on the wrist, causing pain or discomfort, as you're unable to bend or flex your wrists as usual, Chan says.

Instead, Chan recommends you substitute the barbell with an EZ-bar instead. Because of this bar's grooves, the EZ-bar will place the elbow and wrist in a more comfortable position. Or, try some more effective exercises (keep reading).

The best biceps exercises will hit your upper arm from different angles, Chan says. Because your biceps is a two-muscle joint, crossing both your elbow and your shoulder, you can lift weights in slightly different positions to get a better workout.

You also want to select exercises that enable you to contract as much of the muscle as possible. The more of the muscle you're able to activate and use during your workout, the stronger your biceps will become, according to the American Council on Exercise (ACE).

Choose weights that allow you to perform each exercise with good form. You want your biceps exercise to feel comfortably challenging.