Steps
- Adjust the seat to the appropriate height and make your weight selection. Place your upper arms against the pads and grasp the handles. This will be your starting position.
- Perform the movement by flexing the elbow, pulling your lower arm towards your upper arm.
- Pause at the top of the movement, and then slowly return the weight to the starting position.
- Avoid returning the weight all the way to the stops until the set is complete to keep tension on the muscles being worked.
Tracking it in OneRep
Add the machine bicep curl to a routine and your previous weight and reps sit beside every set, so the decision to add load is made by what is already on the screen rather than by memory. Exercise history and volume trends are one tap away, and logging works offline for the gyms where signal does not reach.
Because OneRep tracks food on the same timeline, a stall on this lift can be read against what you were actually eating that month — which is the difference between a programming problem and an eating one. More on that in tracking progressive overload without a spreadsheet.
Where the instructions come from
The steps above come from free-exercise-db, a public-domain exercise dataset. They are general guidance, not coaching for your body: if a movement hurts, stop and get someone qualified to look at it.