Control Is Everything

I see many lifters who attend the gym curling weight that is incredibly too much for them to handle. One indication of "bro lifting" as some like to call it or lifting without worrying about form is the way they throw their backs into the lift. If you are straight bar lifting or barbell lifting you are essentially working the long head of the bicep. Yes... there are two heads of the bicep that's why they call it a BI-cep. Just like there are three heads of a TRI-cep. Now if you want the muscle to look aesthetically pleasing to the human eye and symmetrical you have to hit both heads during the course of your workout. My best advice to you is to slow your reps down and don't worry about the weight that's on the bar. Remember: Muscle adapts to tension and the way it adapts is it grows. The reason you started lifting the weights is to gain muscle I'm guessing so let's try to do just that. So we slow our reps down and control the contraction of the muscle concentrically and eccentrically. Eccentrically means the down phase of the barbell curl and concentrically (you guessed it) is on the way up. This is just one example of how to effectively and efficiently work the long head of the bicep. If you want to focus on the long head of your biceps, extend the shoulder or get your elbow slightly behind your body. This is most-easily done using incline curl variants. In contrast, moving the elbow in front of the body is going to put more stress on the short head of the biceps.