Do Deadlifts Work the Biceps?

The deadlift is a powerful, effective exercise that targets multiple muscle groups in the upper and lower body. The exercise develops raw strength, helps build lean muscle mass and gives you an important quantifiable benchmark for total-body strength. While the lift engages many of your body’s major muscles, the motion by itself does not affect the biceps. However, you can combine the deadlift with other exercises to engage your biceps.

  1. Deadlift Form

    • The standard deadlift begins with a weighted barbell on the floor. Using an overhand grip, you bend at the knees and waist, hold the bar with your hands slightly wider than your shoulders, then stand up straight pulling up the barbell as you rise. When you’re standing straight, the barbell will rest at the middle of your thighs. After remaining straight for a moment, you then return the barbell to the floor by reversing the motion. Your arms remain locked and straight throughout the deadlift.

    Muscles Worked

    • The form of the standard deadlift concentrates on your lower body, primarily targeting your quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, gluteals and lower back. The deadlift also incorporates your latissimus dorsi and trapezius. It’s one of the few lifts that engages major muscle groups in both your lower and upper body, but the one area that does not engage is your arms. Neither arm moves during the deadlift as they remain locked and fixed throughout the exercise. Your forearms engage slightly as stabilizers to facilitate carrying the bar, but beyond that, your arms are not involved, especially not your biceps.

    Variations for Biceps

    • To involve your biceps, your arms must compress, meaning you must bend your arms at the elbows. While the standard deadlift doesn’t work your biceps, you can add a couple of different motions to the exercise to make it a two-phase lift that incorporates arm movement. For example, once you straighten and bring the barbell to your thighs, you can pull the bar up by bending at the elbows and lifting it as high as you can. This is a deadlift high pull, and the high-pull phase targets the biceps. Once you’ve lifted the bar as high as possible, control it back to thigh level, then back to the floor. Another variation is adding a curl to the end of the deadlift. To do the curl, bring the bar off the floor until you’re standing straight. Curl the bar to full compression, then return it to thigh level and then to the floor. You can also add a press following the curl by pushing the bar directly overhead.

    Considerations

    • When combining a second phase to the deadlift to target the biceps, remember that you’ll need to lift considerably less weight than you would for a standard deadlift in most cases. This is because your lower body is capable of handling much more weight than your biceps. For this reason, adding one set of deadlift high pulls or deadlift curls at the end of a set of standard deadlifts will provide a well-rounded workout. Use a spotter to help guide your form and ensure that you don’t attempt to lift too much. Get at least one full day of rest following your deadlifts to ensure complete muscle recovery.