Are Hammer Curls Productive?

I have some elbow tendonitis that flares up when I bench heavy. Today I tried some hammer curls after benching and I think it stopped my elbows from hurting. Maybe the blood flow to the brachialis helped ease the inflammation. Has anyone else noticed this?

It isn’t the brachialis which cause you pain since that muscle is involved in every curl movement. With hammer curl, you radius turn on your ulna which change the pennation angle of the muscles of your forearm. Then, your tendon from the common extensor is less solicited and that tend to reduce your pain.

Ive noticed it .

when I neglect bicep work for too long , my elbow/forearm(s) get a bit cranky . hammers are about the only bicep movement I dont mind doing . doesnt take real long to notice improvement either …couple weeks .

Preacher curls helped me when my elbows were really bad. really slow reps, with really light weight for a million reps. That and rest, and slightly altering movements/workouts until the pain was all gone.

Interesting that heavy bench bothers them for you. For me speed bench was the worst thing ever.

My elbows get sore when I lose weight, or stop talking fish oil - I notice that after a fortnight or so.

If I find they are getting sore, I do a heap of tricep pushdowns for a warm up and a couple of times through the week.

I’d imagine doing bi/tri work would help even out the muscle pull through the joint.

I find more than biceps work alone is doing something really high rep with some sort of triceps pushdown followed by really high rep biceps work as a superset gets my elbows feeling good pretty fast.

Cool. Thanks guys, I will give the high rep stuff a shot.

x2 on the high rep stuff.

I do heavy bicep stuff occasionally, but for the past few months I have just done one or two sets with the bar for as many reps as possible, between 50-100. I dont claim to have huge guns, but I have seen a good size increase from that and have zero elbow pain.

Be very sure that you’re not overtucking your elbows on bench. It’s definitely possible to do.

What I have noticed and have read a bit about is, when working on the Bracs the soft tissue strengthens pretty fast. I had the same problem and when I started working on my bracs some more it really improved and I’m guessing that is it is the small tissues, but I’m not totally sure. Whatever it is it really helped me.

X3 on the high reps.

I do 5x20 hammer curls with very light weight, as strict as possible, supersetted with band pushdowns 5x25. Elbows feel way better now.