October Challenge: The Biceps Curl

October is Biceps Curl Month in Strength & Balance!

Each month, our Strength & Balance classes spend a little extra time with one exercise. By revisiting the same movement throughout the month, you have more opportunities to practice your form, try different variations, adjust the resistance, and notice how the exercise changes as you get stronger and more comfortable with it.

After challenging our legs and balance with lunges in September, we’re shifting our focus to upper-body strength in October with a familiar strength training exercise: biceps curls.

Why Biceps Curls?

The biceps curl may be a simple movement, but strengthening the muscles at the front of your upper arm has plenty of practical benefits.

Your biceps bend your elbow and assist with many of the pulling, carrying, and lifting movements you use throughout the day. Carrying groceries, picking up a bag, and lifting objects around the house all require upper-body strength. Building and maintaining that strength is an important part of functional fitness as we age.

The curl is also a great exercise for practicing something that matters in all of our strength training: control. Rather than simply getting the weight from point A to point B, we want to pay attention to how we move it. Keeping good posture, limiting unnecessary movement through the shoulders and torso, and controlling the weight as you lower it are all part of getting more from the exercise.

Your October Challenge

Throughout October, we’ll explore different ways to perform the biceps curl and gradually adjust the challenge. You may work with different weights, grips, positions, tempos, or curl variations depending on what’s appropriate for you.

As you practice, pay attention to more than how heavy a weight you can lift. Can you keep your elbows controlled? Can you maintain good posture without leaning or swinging? Can you lower the weight slowly instead of letting gravity do the work?

Progress might mean moving up to a heavier weight, but it could also mean improving your form, increasing your control, completing more repetitions comfortably, or getting more comfortable with a variation that was challenging at the beginning of the month.

That’s one of the reasons we like our monthly challenges: progress can look different for everyone.

So grab your dumbbells and get ready to curl! We’ll see what stronger, more controlled arms can do by the end of October.