Retro Reps: Why Dorian Yates Began Biceps Days With Seated Curls

Some athletes enter the gym and repeat their training time after time, while others use each session as an opportunity to learn from both their successes and failures. Fortunately, in a recent Instagram post, the 1992–1997 Mr. Olympia brought us in on his experimental formula for pumping up the perfect biceps. Here’s how to try it for yourself.

Most of us know that to build big biceps, you’ll need to exhaust the long head of the outer bicep, the short head in the inner muscle and thirdly the brachialis aspect of the bicep that is closest to the triceps. Since you’ll need to hit the arms from different angles to stimulate these three areas, one size does not necessarily fit all when it comes to curls. What fewer people understand while picking up a dumbbell or a barbell, however, is how to get the best muscle activation. Fortunately, the man they called “The Shadow” shed some light on his thinking.

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Dorian Yates Began with Dumbbell Curls

Gaining granite like biceps was not just a passion for Yates but a science that the master of muscle approached with great detail. “First exercise for biceps, seated dumbbell curls,” confirmed the English bodybuilding icon of his winning strategy. “I did experiment over the years with the order of exercises and I found that when I performed barbell curls first, it brought my front delts and forearms into the movement too much,” explained Yates to his almost 2 million Instagram followers.

This was an issue for the competitive bodybuilder because when concentrating on biceps, you don’t want your shoulders to be, well, shouldering the load. One way to mitigate too much deltoid recruitment would be to lighten the weight on the barbell, but that’s not the type of “Blood and Guts” attitude that Dorian Yates brought to his Olympia outings. “So, I went with direct isolation exercises first such as seated curls, Nautilus curls, or dumbbell concentration curls,” explained the legend.

These seated bicep curl variations are a great isolation exercise because the body is stabilized by the seat, reducing the requirement for other body parts to become involved. After some trial and error, Yates decided that he would start out his sweat filled sessions with the most focused isolation movements possible, in order to target his muscles with the fullest of intention. Compared with a standing barbell curl, you will find less desire to swing with the momentum, so as you concentrate on controlling the motion, you’ll activate the desired bicep muscle rather than rock your core.

Dorian Yates’ Approach to Biceps Curls

The Olympia icon shared that when making his bicep curls, the aim was to produce a full range of motion, “with a big squeeze at the top,” he explained. Despite the heavy dumbbells that he’d work with, the big man still utilized a “controlled, slow negative,” for maximum time under tension, further focusing on bicep activation.

To get the most reps possible, the legend further explained: “You’ll see I start off the exercise using both arms and after getting 6-8 reps, I take a few deep breaths and switch to curling one arm at a time, which allowed me to get an extra rep or two with little assistance and pure focus on each arm.” Now that sounds like a timeless plan for building bigger biceps.

To follow Dorian Yates on Instagram, click here.