Whether you do full or half curls, your arms still get stronger and a bit bigger—so you don’t need to do one over the other to see results.

54

Pro

0

Against

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (1)

54

Community contributions welcome

54

Partial Range, Full Gains? The Effect of 8 Weeks of Partial Range of Motion Training at Long Muscle Lengths on Elbow Flexor Hypertrophy and Strength in Trained Individuals

Randomized Controlled Trial

Human

2025 Dec

Both ways of doing bicep curls — bending the arm only partway and bending it all the way — made people’s biceps stronger and bigger, with almost no difference between them. So either method works fine.

Contradicting (0)

0

Community contributions welcome

No contradicting evidence found

Gold Standard Evidence Needed

According to GRADE and EBM methodology, here is what ideal scientific evidence would look like to definitively prove or disprove this specific claim, ordered from strongest to weakest evidence.

Source Study

Partial Range, Full Gains? The Effect of 8 Weeks of Partial Range of Motion Training at Long Muscle Lengths on Elbow Flexor Hypertrophy and Strength in Trained Individuals

Score: 54

DOI: 10.1002/ejsc.70087

Similar Assertions

Doing bicep curls only halfway up might help you push harder when your arm is bent at 100 degrees, even though you didn’t train that angle—possibly because your muscle got a bit bigger in the stretched part.

0

54

85%

Doing bicep curls only halfway up (keeping the arm stretched) might make the lower part of your bicep grow a tiny bit more than doing full curls, but the difference is very small.

54

0

82%

If you're lifting weights and stretch your biceps and triceps really far—like at the bottom of a curl or overhead extension—you'll build muscle just as well as if you move all the way up and down, as long as you get that deep stretch.

67

0

81%

Whether you do full or half curls, the upper part of your bicep grows about the same amount—so where you curl doesn’t matter much for that part of the muscle.

54

0

79%

If you use the same weight and do the same number of reps, it doesn't matter if you curl with your arm in front or behind you — what matters is just doing it consistently and getting stronger over time.

54

0

75%