Forearm Pain Doing Biceps Curls: Cause and Solution

I solved my forearm pain that occurred during biceps curls.

If you’ve been suffering forearm pain from biceps curls, you might be experiencing exactly what I experienced.

I’m a former certified personal trainer, but even personal trainers can get muscle tweaks every now and then.

I had to stop doing biceps curls because of the discomfort in my right forearm.

But the forearm pain was not caused by the biceps curls.

It was caused by neutral grip pull-ups, using the “V” bar slung atop a standard pull-up bar.

When you do pull-ups with the “V” attachment, it creates a unique stress on the lower arms.

The problem didn’t all come at once, however. After a pull-up session one day, I noticed a little discomfort in my right forearm that I connected to the pull-ups, but didn’t think too much of it.

The following week, I repeated the pull-up routine, and afterwards, felt more of the “pain” in my forearm.

In fact, while doing the pull-ups, I felt it, but didn’t think it was a big deal.

I also had been feeling the forearm “pain” while doing biceps curls.

The discomfort was located at the brachioradialis muscle, right up to the part where the arm bends.

The next week, again I did the pull-ups, and afterwards, realized that whatever was going on in my brachioradialis wasn’t going away too soon.

My chest-biceps workout came three days after my pull-up workout, and I noticed that my forearm really bugged me when doing biceps curls.

The next week, I was able to do pull-ups, while still detecting the annoying tweak. But from that point, biceps curls were a problem.

For some reason, I never had to give up pull-ups; the discomfort was marginal and doable.

But during biceps curls, my forearm felt injured, and I had to finally admit it:

I had to stop doing biceps curls in order for my forearm to heal.

My elbow joint was not affected. This was a self-diagnosed muscle problem with no tendon involvement.

If a tendon were indeed involved, it should have made pull-ups painful.

On the other hand, this was the slowest-healing muscle-only injury I’ve ever had.

It kept me from doing heavy biceps curls, and in my case, I either do them heavy, or I don’t do them at all.

I hate working biceps, and doing them heavy (4-10 rep max) gets the job over more quickly.

I also couldn’t do heavy hammer curls without forearm pain.

And this forearm pain carried over to dumbbell shoulder presses, in that upon bringing the weights down to my lap after completing a set, caused pain in my brachioradialis (a forearm muscle).

To bring the weights down requires the same muscle action as the negative of a reverse biceps curl or hammer curl.

And thus, bringing the dumbbells down incited forearm pain; I use only heavy dumbbells for military press, and thus, had to replace this exercise with machine military press.

Solution to Forearm Pain During Biceps Curls

Do hammer curls with 5-pound weights, 20 reps, three sets, one minute in between sets.

If this causes annoying discomfort, stop at fewer reps, maybe 12 or even 8. If the forearm pain is really nasty, use even lighter weights.

The goal is to reintroduce the injured muscle to the concept of weightlifting, but in a baby-steps way.

Do this every time you’re at the gym if you can remember. I’d remember to do it 2-3 times per week.

The 5-pound weights actually bought out a subtle pain in my forearm, but it was very doable.

Ironically, throughout all this, I was able to keep doing the pull-ups. Strange, I know.

When 20 reps of the 5-pound weights no longer brought out forearm discomfort, I moved up to 8-pound dumbbells, and repeated the protocol: three sets of 20 reps of hammer curls.

I felt mild tweaking in the forearm, but it was very tolerable. When it disappeared, I switched to 10-pound dumbbells. You get the picture.

It took a few months before 20 reps of 15-pound dumbbell hammer curls no longer brought out the forearm pain.

At this point, I considered myself completely rid of whatever happened to my brachioradialis, and deemed myself ready to return to heavy biceps curls and dumbbell military presses.

Oddly, despite a two-month absence from biceps curls, I hadn’t lost much strength; I was at about 95 percent.

There was also no forearm pain upon bringing dumbbells down to my lap after finishing a shoulder press set, though there was some loss of strength.

Forearm pain while doing dumbbell curls?

Avoid that which really brings out the forearm pain, and commit yourself to a “baby-steps” type of rehabilitation. BE PATIENT.

Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, health and personal security topics for many years, having written thousands of feature articles for a variety of print magazines and websites. She is also a former ACE-certified personal trainer who helped her clients achieve fat loss, muscle growth, strength and improved fitness.  

 

 

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