Cheat Curl

What the cheat curl actually trains

A cheat curl is a barbell curl in which you deliberately use a small hip drive to move a heavier than usual bar past the hardest part of the range, then lower it slowly under control.

It has a bad reputation it only half deserves. The version that deserves it is the one you see most often: someone loading a bar they cannot curl, heaving it up with their whole body, and dropping it. That is not an exercise, it is a bar being moved.

The version worth doing is different in one respect. The swing is used only through the sticking point, and the lowering is strict, slow and deliberate. What you are buying with the cheat is the ability to load the eccentric with more weight than you can lift concentrically, which you cannot otherwise do on a curl without a training partner.

The biceps brachii, both the long head running over the shoulder and the short head on the inside of the arm, do the curling. The brachialis underneath contributes throughout. The trunk musculature works to control the hip drive, and if you get sloppy the lower back ends up doing more than you intended.

Roig and colleagues found eccentric training produced greater strength gains than concentric training, and Schoenfeld and colleagues found the two produce broadly similar hypertrophy when equated. Read together, that is a modest case rather than a dramatic one: loading the lowering harder is a reasonable thing to do, not a secret.

So judge this exercise on one question. Does it let you accumulate hard, controlled work you could not otherwise do? Sometimes yes. It is not a moral failure and it is not magic.

Setting up and executing

Load a bar roughly ten to twenty per cent above your strict curl. If you need more than that, you have gone too far.

Stand with the feet hip width and take a shoulder width underhand grip. Brace the abs and set the shoulders down and back.

Dip slightly at the hips and knees, then drive the hips forward to start the bar moving. The movement is a small pulse, not a lunge.

Stop assisting as soon as the bar clears the sticking point, roughly the point where your forearms pass parallel to the floor. From there the biceps finish the rep alone.

Hold the top for a beat, then lower the bar over three to five seconds with the elbows tucked at your sides.

Reset your stance before the next rep rather than bouncing out of the bottom.

The mistakes that cost you the most

Cheating the lowering as well as the lifting is the fault that empties the exercise of value. If you heave a bar up and then let it fall, you have done no work in either direction. The concentric was assisted and the eccentric was skipped. Every rep should take longer to come down than it did to go up.

Swinging from the lower back rather than the hips is the fault that gets people hurt. Cholewicki and colleagues measured very high lumbar loads during heavy lifting, and a whipping lumbar extension under a loaded bar is an unnecessary way to invite that. Keep the ribs down and let the hips do the work.

Cheating every rep from rep one misunderstands the method. The swing is there to extend a set past the point where strict reps fail, not to replace strict reps. Start strict, cheat only when you need to.

Loading far too heavy is self limiting in the worst way, because the ability to control the descent is the ceiling. If you cannot lower it for three seconds, you cannot use it.

And using it as your main curl is simply inefficient. Most of your biceps volume should be strict work through a full range, which Pallarés and colleagues found produces better outcomes than partial range training.

Sets, reps and rest by goal

This is a supplementary method, so keep the dose small.

For muscle gain, two sets of six to ten with two minutes rest. For strength, three sets of five to eight with two minutes. In a fat loss phase, two sets of eight to twelve with ninety seconds, although in a deficit this is one of the first things to drop.

The standard way to use it is as an extension of a strict set. Curl strictly until you cannot complete another rep, then use a small hip drive to get three or four more, lowering each one slowly.

Rest properly. These sets are more systemically taxing than they look, because the trunk is working hard to control the load.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy, and cheat sets do count towards that total. They just should not be most of it.

Refalo and colleagues found stopping short of failure produces comparable growth to training to failure, which quietly undermines the main justification for cheat curls. If you do not need to reach failure, you do not need a technique whose only purpose is to get past it. Use them because you enjoy the loaded eccentric, not because you think growth requires them.

Where it fits in your split

At the end of a pull or arm session, once the strict work is done.

On push, pull and legs it belongs on pull day as a finisher. On a bro split it is the last biceps movement of arm day. On an upper and lower split it should appear in at most one upper session a week. On a full body programme it rarely justifies the fatigue.

Frequency should be low. Once a week is enough, and once a fortnight is defensible. The heavy eccentric loading produces more muscle damage and more soreness than strict curling, and soreness in the elbow flexors will interfere with your pulling.

Never put it before rowing, chin-ups or deadlifts. A fatigued biceps under a heavy pull is the classic setup for an elbow that aches for a month.

The honest summary is that a cheat curl is a tool for someone who is already curling seriously and wants one more way to overload. If your strict curl volume is inconsistent, fixing that will do far more than adding this.

Variations worth knowing

The strict barbell curl is the reference movement and should make up the bulk of your curling. The cheat curl exists only in relation to it.

The EZ bar cheat curl is worth preferring once the load rises, since the angled grip spares the wrists at weights a straight bar starts to punish.

The eccentric only curl removes the ambiguity entirely: lift with both arms or a knee assist, then lower with one arm over five seconds. It is the purest version of what a cheat curl is trying to do.

The cheat hammer curl uses a neutral grip, which shifts load to the brachialis and brachioradialis and allows even heavier weight.

The dumbbell cheat curl works one arm at a time and lets your free hand provide the assistance instead of your hips, which keeps the lower back out of it completely.

And the drag curl, where the bar is dragged up the torso as the elbows travel backwards, is the opposite approach; it removes swing by changing the mechanics rather than by asking you to behave.

What the evidence says

Marcolin and colleagues compared curl variants and found hand and arm position measurably change the contribution of the biceps brachii and brachioradialis, which is the background for treating curl selection as a matter of emphasis rather than of better and worse.

Roig and colleagues reviewed eccentric against concentric training and found eccentric work produced greater strength gains, which is the strongest support for the slow lowering that defines this exercise.

Schoenfeld and colleagues examined concentric against eccentric actions for hypertrophy and found broadly similar outcomes when the work was equated, which keeps the claims about heavy eccentrics in proportion.

Cholewicki and colleagues measured spinal loads during heavy lifting and found extremely high compressive and shear forces, which is why the hip drive here must stay small and controlled rather than becoming a lumbar swing.

Pallarés and colleagues found full range training beat partial range training, supporting a complete descent to straight arms on every rep rather than a shortened cheat rep.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy, so cheat sets count towards your weekly total.

Refalo and colleagues found proximity to failure matters less than assumed for hypertrophy, which means a technique designed to push past failure is optional rather than necessary.

Common questions

Is cheating actually acceptable?

On the way up, in small amounts, at the end of a set, yes. The swing is a tool for getting a heavier load into the lowering phase. What is not acceptable is a swing so large that the biceps never work, or a descent that is not controlled. If you cannot lower the bar for three seconds, the weight is not doing anything for you.

How much swing is too much?

If your torso is moving more than a few degrees or your lower back is arching, too much. The hip drive should be a pulse that gets the bar past the sticking point, after which your arms finish the job. A useful test is whether an onlooker would describe it as a curl or as a clean.

Should I do these instead of strict curls?

No. Strict curls through a full range should be most of your biceps work, and cheat curls should be a small addition at the end of a session. The evidence on training close to failure suggests you do not even need this method to grow, so treat it as optional.

Will this hurt my back?

It can, if the swing comes from the lumbar spine rather than the hips. Studies of heavy lifting show spinal loads rise quickly, and a whipping extension under load is an avoidable risk. Keep the ribs down, brace, and drive with the hips.

How is this different from a drag curl or an eccentric only curl?

An eccentric only curl is doing the same job more precisely, with no swing at all, and is the better option if you have a way to assist the lift. A drag curl is a different exercise entirely, changing the path so that swing becomes impossible. Cheat curls are the crude version and are only worth it when you have neither a partner nor a preference for the alternatives.