How to do the Zottman Curl

Steps

1. Stand up with your torso upright and a dumbbell in each hand being held at arms length. The elbows should be close to the torso.
2. Make sure the palms of the hands are facing each other. This will be your starting position.
3. While holding the upper arm stationary, curl the weights while contracting the biceps as you breathe out. Only the forearms should move. Your wrist should rotate so that you have a supinated (palms up) grip. Continue the movement until your biceps are fully contracted and the dumbbells are at shoulder level.
4. Hold the contracted position for a second as you squeeze the biceps.
5. Now during the contracted position, rotate your wrist until you now have a pronated (palms facing down) grip with the thumb at a higher position than the pinky.
6. Slowly begin to bring the dumbbells back down using the pronated grip.
7. As the dumbbells close your thighs, start rotating the wrist so that you go back to a neutral (palms facing your body) grip.
8. Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.

Tracking it in OneRep

Add the zottman 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.