Zottman Curl
A dumbbell curl that lifts with the palms up and lowers with the palms down, training biceps and forearms in one rep.
How to do it
- Stand upright with a dumbbell in each hand and your feet shoulder-width apart.
- Let your arms hang at your sides with your palms facing forward.
- Curl both dumbbells to your shoulders with your elbows pinned to your ribs.
- Rotate your wrists at the top until your palms face the floor.
- Lower the dumbbells slowly with the palms-down grip, taking three or four seconds.
- Rotate back to palms up at the bottom and repeat.
Key technique cue
Rotate the hands only at the top, then lower slowly.
Common mistakes
- ✕ Rotating halfway down instead of at the top, which loads the wrist rather than the forearm.
- ✕ Racing the descent, which skips the pronated eccentric that defines the exercise.
- ✕ Letting the elbows slide behind the body on the way down, which shortens the range.
- ✕ Using standard curl weights, which makes the palms-down lowering impossible to control.
Benefits
- ✓ Trains the biceps and the forearm elbow flexors inside a single repetition.
- ✓ The slow palms-down lowering builds grip and wrist strength.
- ✓ Needs only a pair of dumbbells, so it fits home and travel setups.
Progression: from easier to harder
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Step 1 You are here - Step 2
About the exercise
The Zottman curl fuses two curls into a single rep. You lift with a supinated grip so the biceps handle the way up, rotate the hands to palms down at the top, then lower slowly with the pronated grip, which puts the forearm elbow flexors in charge of the descent. It is an intermediate level curl with the forearms as the secondary target. The rotation has to happen deliberately at the top rather than partway down, or the wrist rather than the forearm takes the load.
Updated
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