watchnerd
Level 8 Valued Member
I know, I know....
Curls.
Why in the world would I talk curls at Strongfirst?
This is supposed to be a serious strength school, right?
But some comments / notes from my lifting coach that the unexplored territory in improving my snatch lockout may be to get stronger biceps (???) and do some curls.
What?
It turns out, coach was right.
Some notes:
1. Since beefing up my biceps, the strength of triceps lockout has improved.
I don't completely understand the biomechanics of it, but apparently your body will inhibit maximal triceps force if it thinks there is a danger of elbow hyper-extension. Beefing up bicep strength apparently counteracts this.
2. Beefing up my shoulder girdle made it easier to beef up my bicep
Pre-season hypertrophy block meant a lot of volume accessory work that normally gets back-burnered during deep competition prep -- including chest work (incline presses, decline pushups, landmine presses, chest flyes, ring work, chest dips) and rear delt work (behind the neck presses, rear delt flyes).
Somehow, my arms responded much better when throwing in curls after all this than they ever have when I threw in curls after squats and jerks.
3. The pump mattered more than the amount of weight curled
This one completely mystifies me. One would think if I'm trying to counteract the force of, say, 100 kg jerk on my triceps, my best bet to make my biceps stronger would be to do super low reps of maximal weight bicep curls, using a barbell or EZ curl bar with 50+ kg. I thought taking a performance / strength approach to curls would be the way to go.
Basically curling in my squat rack, with heavy a#@ weights.
That did NOT work *at all*.
What worked far better was just going completely bro-school with concentration curls, sitting on a bench, staring at my biceps, working on the "mind muscle connection" and doing one side at a time burn-out reps using light, 10 kg dumbbell.
And then dropping the weight down to 5 kg and going completely old school with Zottman Curls:
So maybe...just maybe...
There are legit performance reasons to go occasionally go completely gym rat and do some curls?
Curls.
Why in the world would I talk curls at Strongfirst?
This is supposed to be a serious strength school, right?
But some comments / notes from my lifting coach that the unexplored territory in improving my snatch lockout may be to get stronger biceps (???) and do some curls.
What?
It turns out, coach was right.
Some notes:
1. Since beefing up my biceps, the strength of triceps lockout has improved.
I don't completely understand the biomechanics of it, but apparently your body will inhibit maximal triceps force if it thinks there is a danger of elbow hyper-extension. Beefing up bicep strength apparently counteracts this.
2. Beefing up my shoulder girdle made it easier to beef up my bicep
Pre-season hypertrophy block meant a lot of volume accessory work that normally gets back-burnered during deep competition prep -- including chest work (incline presses, decline pushups, landmine presses, chest flyes, ring work, chest dips) and rear delt work (behind the neck presses, rear delt flyes).
Somehow, my arms responded much better when throwing in curls after all this than they ever have when I threw in curls after squats and jerks.
3. The pump mattered more than the amount of weight curled
This one completely mystifies me. One would think if I'm trying to counteract the force of, say, 100 kg jerk on my triceps, my best bet to make my biceps stronger would be to do super low reps of maximal weight bicep curls, using a barbell or EZ curl bar with 50+ kg. I thought taking a performance / strength approach to curls would be the way to go.
Basically curling in my squat rack, with heavy a#@ weights.
That did NOT work *at all*.
What worked far better was just going completely bro-school with concentration curls, sitting on a bench, staring at my biceps, working on the "mind muscle connection" and doing one side at a time burn-out reps using light, 10 kg dumbbell.
And then dropping the weight down to 5 kg and going completely old school with Zottman Curls:
So maybe...just maybe...
There are legit performance reasons to go occasionally go completely gym rat and do some curls?
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