Resistance Training

INTRODUCTION

Resistance training has fundamental importance in improving athletic performance as it allows

the increase of muscular strength, power and speed (Kraemer & Ratamess, 2004). In strength

athletes such as bodybuilders, resistance training plays a key role since it induces muscle

hypertrophy. Therefore, to maximize muscle hypertrophy, bodybuilders construct training

programs which involve exercises isolating specific muscles with different exercise variants or

different ranges of movement, with the aim to increase muscle activity.

These training approaches have been examined by the scientific literature investigating

both lower and upper body exercises which target specific muscle groups. For instance, the effect

of feet position …show more content…
As reported in bodybuilder manuals (Hatfield, 1993) it is well accepted that two of the

most employed dumbbell curls, the incline curls and the hummer curls, pre-stretch the biceps

long head and enhance the involvement of the brachialis, respectively. On the other end, a very

popular barbell curl named the Scott curls, unload the long head of the biceps placing greater

overloading on the short head (Hatfield, 1993). Furthermore, performing barbell curls with a

reverse handgrip resulted in an increase in brachioradialis activation (Hatfield, 1993). These

exercises aim at inducing muscular hypertrophy of the elbow flexors, and can be performed

using a straight bar, an undulated one (named “EZ”) or dumbbells.

To extend the findings of previous work and considering that there is no clear consensus

in the employment of the straight bar rather than the undulated bar or the dumbbells when the

aim is to increase the EMG activity of the biceps brachii and brachioradialis, the purpose of the

present study was to investigate if the execution of barbell curls with straight bar (BC), barbell

curls with undulated bar (EZ) and alternate dumbbell curls (DC), affect the EMG activity …show more content…
The almost semiproned forearm position during the EZ barbell curl

could explain the higher muscle activity in this variant, accordingly to Basmajan et al.

(Basmajian & De Luca, 1978) who reported that biceps brachii, brachialis and brachioradialis act

maximally when the weight is lifted flexing the elbow maintaining a semiprone forearm position.

Although significant differences were found between variants, some limitations of the

present study need to be acknowledged. First, in the present work we did not assess EMG

activation of the brachialis muscle. Even if it is still unclear whether its activity can be accurately

assessed with surface electrodes at high level of contraction (Staudenmann & Taube, 2015), its

exclusion in the analysis of the three variants of curl has to be acknowledged as a limitation to

the present study since this muscle is relevant for elbow flexion. Second, a different ROM was

reported in the three exercises variants. Nevertheless, the presence of little differences between

the ROM was specific of the technical execution of each variant of curl and thus standardizing its

value could have prevented the participants from a correct execution of the

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