EZ Bar Curl: How to Do It, Grip Options and Muscles Worked

The EZ bar curl is a biceps curl done with the zig-zag shaped EZ bar, and it's the version most lifters can load heavily without their wrists complaining. The angled grip sections turn your palms slightly inwards, which keeps almost all of the biceps work of a straight bar curl while taking pressure off the wrist and forearm. If straight bar curls leave your forearms aching, this is the swap to make. Below is how to set up, which grip to use, the muscles involved and how to programme it.

How to set up: close grip vs wide grip

Look at an EZ bar and you'll see two pairs of bends. The inner bends sit close together, roughly shoulder width or a touch narrower, and the outer bends sit wider, about a hand's width further out on each side. Both put your hands at an angle rather than flat.

Close (inner) grip. Your hands sit on the inner angles, about shoulder width apart, with your forearms running straight down from your elbows. This is the grip most people should default to, because it keeps your wrists stacked and lets you move the most weight. The common gym claim is that a narrower grip shifts work towards the long (outer) head of the biceps.

Wide (outer) grip. Your hands sit on the outer angles, slightly wider than your shoulders. The usual claim here is the reverse: more short (inner) head. Some people find this grip pulls their elbows out and feels awkward on the shoulders, so don't force it.

Be honest about what that head-bias talk is worth. The difference between the two grips is a few centimetres, both heads of the biceps cross the same joints, and I'm not aware of any solid study showing one EZ grip builds a noticeably different arm. If you want genuine long head emphasis, change the shoulder angle instead, which is what our long head bicep exercises guide covers. Use the grip that feels strongest and switch now and then for variety.

How to do an EZ bar curl

1. Grip and stand. Hold the bar on your chosen angles with an underhand grip and stand tall, feet about hip width apart and knees soft. Let the bar hang at arm's length against your thighs.
2. Pin your elbows. Tuck your elbows against your sides, just in front of your hips. They should stay there for the whole set; think of them as hinges, not levers.
3. Brace. Squeeze your glutes and tighten your abs a little. This stops you leaning back as the set gets hard.
4. Curl. Bend at the elbows and bring the bar up in an arc towards your upper chest. Keep your wrists neutral, not curled back towards you or bent away.
5. Squeeze at the top. Stop when your forearms are close to vertical and the bar is around chin to upper chest height. Squeeze your biceps for a beat without letting your elbows slide forward.
6. Lower slowly. Take two to three seconds to lower the bar until your arms are fully straight again. Then start the next rep from a dead hang.

Muscles worked

• Biceps brachii. The main target. It has two heads: the long head runs up the outside of the arm and crosses the shoulder joint, while the short head sits on the inside. The biceps both bends the elbow and turns the palm up, which is why grip angle matters a little for how hard it works.
• Brachialis. It sits underneath the biceps and is a pure elbow flexor, so it works on every curl regardless of grip. A well developed brachialis pushes the biceps up and adds width to the arm when viewed from the front.
• Brachioradialis. This forearm muscle runs from the outside of the elbow to the wrist and does more work as your grip moves from palms up towards thumbs up. The EZ bar's semi-supinated position recruits it a bit more than a fully supinated grip does.
• Forearm and grip muscles. Your wrist flexors work isometrically to hold the bar steady, and your front delts and core do some stabilising, mainly when the weight gets heavy.

Why the EZ bar is easier on your wrists

A straight barbell locks your hands in full supination, palms facing the ceiling. Some people's forearms simply don't rotate that far comfortably, and once you add load the strain lands on the wrist and the inside of the elbow. The EZ bar's angles rotate each hand inward by a modest amount into a semi-supinated grip, somewhere between palms up and the thumbs-up position of a hammer curl.

Does that cost you biceps work? Barely. A 2023 study of competitive bodybuilders found the biceps worked hardest with a fully supinated grip and less with neutral or pronated grips (Sports, 2023), and the EZ grip sits between those positions. Yet when researchers compared the EZ bar, the straight bar and dumbbells directly, the EZ and straight bar produced very similar biceps and brachioradialis activity, and they described the choice between them as a matter of comfort (PeerJ, 2018).

EZ curl vs straight bar curl vs dumbbell curl

	EZ bar curl	Straight bar curl	Dumbbell curl
Wrist position	Semi-supinated	Fully supinated	Free to rotate
Wrist comfort	Good for most	Poor for some	Good
Loading	Heavy, small jumps with plates	Heaviest	Lighter per arm
Fixes imbalances	No	No	Yes, each arm works alone
Best for	Heavy curls without wrist pain	Lifters with no wrist issues	Full range and supination work

In that PeerJ study, the EZ bar actually produced higher biceps and brachioradialis activity than dumbbells. I wouldn't read that as "dumbbells are worse", though; dumbbells let each arm work alone and let you supinate through the rep, which a fixed bar can't do. The sensible approach is to run a barbell variation as your main heavy curl and use dumbbells for higher-rep work. Our bicep curl guide walks through the dumbbell version in detail.

Common mistakes

Swinging the weight. If your hips snap forward and your torso leans back to start each rep, the bar is too heavy. A tiny bit of body English on the last rep of a hard set is fine; using it from rep one means your lower back is doing biceps work. Drop the weight by 5kg and stand still.

Elbows drifting forward. As the bar nears the top, many lifters let their elbows travel forward and up, which turns the end of the rep into a front raise and takes tension off the biceps. Keep them by your sides and stop the bar when your forearms reach vertical.

Partial reps. Stopping halfway down each rep lets you lift more but skips the stretched position where the biceps is longest. Lower to a full lockout every time unless you're deliberately doing partials as a finisher.

Another one people miss: letting the wrists curl back towards the forearm at the top. It feels like an extra squeeze, but it shifts work to the forearm flexors. Keep your wrists straight.

Variations

• Preacher EZ curl. Rest your upper arms on a preacher bench pad and curl from there. The pad takes away any chance to swing and puts heavy tension on the bottom of the rep. Full instructions are in our preacher curl guide.
• Reverse-grip EZ curl. Hold the bar overhand on the angles, palms down. This shifts work towards the brachialis and brachioradialis, and the EZ bar makes the overhand grip far more comfortable than a straight bar does. See our reverse curl guide.
• EZ bar drag curl. Instead of curling in an arc, drag the bar straight up your torso while your elbows travel backwards. It reduces front delt involvement and the load you can use, and many lifters feel a stronger biceps contraction.
• EZ bar spider curl. Lie chest down on an incline bench set to around 45 degrees, arms hanging straight down, and curl. With no way to cheat and your arms in front of your body, the short head works hard at the top. Our spider curl guide has the setup.
• Tempo EZ curl. Use a four-second lowering phase. You'll need roughly 20 to 30 percent less weight, and the slow eccentric is a useful way to make a light home setup feel heavy.

Sets and reps

The ACSM position stand on resistance training recommends moderate loads for around 8 to 12 reps, done for multiple sets, as the core of training for muscle growth (ACSM, 2009). For EZ bar curls that translates to:

• Arm size: 3 to 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps, two or three times a week, resting 60 to 90 seconds.
• Strength: 4 sets of 5 to 8 reps with longer rests of 2 minutes. Curls aren't a great max-strength lift, so don't go lower than 5 reps.
• Finisher: 2 sets of 15 to 20 reps at the end of a pull session, or a drop set where you strip a pair of plates and keep going.

Add 1.25kg to each side once you can do 12 strict reps on every set. If your gym or home setup only has 2.5kg plates, add reps instead until the jump to the next weight feels manageable. Not sure how much your bar adds? Our guide to EZ bar weight lists typical figures for standard and Olympic bars.

Recommended reads

• The best EZ bars in the UK
• How much does an EZ bar weigh?
• Preacher curl: how to do it and muscles worked
• Reverse curl guide
• Hammer curl vs bicep curl