We’ve covered this move, known as the waiter’s curl, before. You have to hold the top of the weight with both hands and make sure the top of the dumbbell is facing upward, then shift the position of your wrists as you raise it to ensure the top remains level. The movement uses grip manipulation to really work your biceps—by resting the top of the vertical dumbbell on your palms, rather than gripping the sides, you put maximum tension on your bicep, and less on the forearm.
“When you get to the top, it’s an insane contraction,” says Cavaliere.
Jesse cut out traditional barbell and dumbbell curls from his workouts for that 30 day period. He did not, however, do the curl variation every day, but rather incorporated the move into his routines two to three times a week, meaning he did it somewhere between nine and twelve times in total. Even over that period, he achieved great results, developing more visible definition and height on his bicep.
“I wouldn’t say this is the only exercise you should do from now on, but I think it has some merit,” says Cavaliere. “Especially as an effective exercise to place some tension on the biceps, and all on the biceps, in the position that they can benefit the most, especially when it comes to activating the long head of the biceps and adding more tension to the peak.”
If you want to grow your own biceps’ peaks, add the waiter’s curl to your arm day workouts for 3 sets of reps till failure. Make sure that you don’t just depend on this one movement, as Cavaliere suggests—but it’s a great one to add to the mix.
This article originally appeared on Men’s Health