Down with the Hammer Curl
By
Mathew Bertrand
This is a quick story of how I got back to benching pain free. I wanted to
share it because I feel it could probably help some guys out there who are going
through the same thing.
I was lucky enough to have guidance in the weight room. Jason Hawkins, a former
professional hockey player and my own coach at the time, was my first mentor. He
took me to the weight room for the first time and gave me my first program.
Right from the start, I was squatting. I can still remember my big lesson that
biceps were basically useless, therefore I barely ever bothered with them.
Fast forward to my first year of college. I was reading a lot of articles, and I
saw that a leading powerlifter recommended hammer curls after bench workouts to
balance the arms. Regular curls generally hurt my forearms, but I could perform
hammer curls pain free, so they were all I did for arms for the next four to
five years.
For the past two years, I had terrible elbow pain or so I thought. I heavily
researched elbow pain and joint pain in general trying to figure out what was
going on. I tried the basic stuff, including high rep band press downs,
liniments, various elbow sleeves, and so on. I eventually figured out that it
wasn’t elbow pain but bicep tendonitis. This is another common injury, but it
seemed that the only remedy was some time off. Of course, that worked for a bit,
but after a couple months, it reared its ugly head again.
My next shot was to not go so heavy on back work. That helped a bit but nothing
life changing. It got to the point where holding the bar on my back was
excruciating, and nothing I tried was helping. Massage did nothing, though I did
pick up a very useful stretch for the bicep. It’s exactly like the pec stretch,
but instead of the palm of your hand on the wall, you put the back of your hand
on the wall with your thumb down.
My chiropractor suggested I do high rep dumbbell curls in the 100-rep range, and
my physiotherapist said she had never seen anything like my injury. She kept
jamming IMS needles in my arm for a good 15 minutes until the muscles stopped
contracting. She didn’t even know what was going on, but it was that session
that finally made me realize what was happening. I was pretty damn sure it was
the hammer curls that were doing me in. It seemed like that was the area where I
felt the blood rush to when I was performing that movement.
I’ve lost track of the professionals I’ve seen who couldn’t do a damn thing for
me—doctors, chiropractors, experts, and guys who have been lifting half their
lives. But now that I knew where the area was, I immediately jumped on the foam
roller. I avoided this movement before because I thought I was doing something
wrong. I figured there was no way to get to this area. The movement that saved
me was tucking my arm to my side and rolling the outside of my biceps. This
didn’t just hurt. It felt like it was going to make things worse. I stuck with
it though, and within a week, I felt a big improvement.
The final piece of the puzzle was just some offhand advice a training partner
had heard. Apparently Jim Wendler recommended empty barbell curls for 5 X 10 as
a warm up if you’re having bicep problems. I rolled my arms, did the 5 X 10,
stretched a little bit, and proceeded to have my first pain-free training
session hitting PRs that I’ve had in a few years.
So if you’re having some bicep pain or what you think is elbow pain, take a look
at how often you’re doing hammer curls and where the pain is when you press. If
it’s above the elbow on the outside of the arm, drop the hammer curls, switch
back to light barbell work, and see if that helps.
Mathew Bertrand is a powerlifter in the CPO. His best competition lifts are a
700-lb squat, a 396-lb bench, and a 575-lb deadlift in the 242-lb weight class.
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