There is definitely something a little showy about a guy or a girl holding an Olympic bar and curling two pills and then some.
If you’ve never seen gladiator curls let me explain, and give you a little insight as to why they may have a place in your biceps workout routine as one of the most important (and fun!) of all arm exercises.
To perform a gladiator curl, simply take an Olympic bar and load it up with your current five or six rep barbell curl max less 45 pounds to allow for the bar weight. Now unless you can curl it least 135 pounds you’re going to look a little silly. But there are still reasons to incorporate this arm exercise into your biceps routine.
The Olympic barbell is 7 feet long. The ends of the bar have rotating sleeves. These two aspects of this particular piece of equipment provide with some unique characteristics when it is used to do barbell curls. The length of the bar forces you to use your entire upper body including your abs, lower back, and shoulders to balance the bar during the movement.
The rotating sleeves add an element of instability, which also forces your torso, shoulders and all the other little supporting muscles, tendons, ligaments and other structures to go to work and keep things stable.
I recommend that if you do this exercise that you keep your ego in check and do not load the bar up with your three rep max. I also recommend that you do not place yourself at risk for injury by doing this exercise in the squat rack.
Yes, I know, it’s a hell of a lot easier to load up an Olympic bar when it’s resting on the catches in the squat rack than when it is resting on the floor. But believe me, you don’t want to be the guy taking up space in the power rack when the really big guy in the gym wants to use it for squats.
To incorporate this movement into your workout, load the bar with a reasonable amount of weight. Something around your 10 rep max would be perfect. I recommend sets of 6 to 8 reps, done slowly and with good form. What were trying to do here is to take advantage of the geometry of the Olympic bar and get the most we possibly can out of the exercise.