Why You Should Work Your Chest With a Curl Bar — Plus 9 Exercises to Try

If you're training at a full gym with lots of equipment, you may see a rack full of weights that resemble barbells except they're shorter with several bends in the middle. This is called a curl bar — also known as an EZ bar — and you can use it to train most muscles in your body.

Some curl bars are empty, allowing you to load plates onto each end to create your desired weight. Other curl bars are set at fixed weights ranging from 20 to 100 pounds.

A nice benefit of curl bars is they can be more elbow- and wrist-friendly than traditional barbells. Many people find that holding a curl bar feels better on their wrists than holding a straight barbell.

You can create a great chest workout with a curl bar. Here are a few reasons you might consider performing chest exercises with one:

• ‌The gym is crowded‌. Barbells and bench press stations are a hot commodity at most gyms. You can substitute the EZ bar for a barbell without having to totally overhaul your workout (as long as you're not benching several hundred pounds).
• ‌You train at home‌. An adjustable weight EZ bar is cheaper and takes up less space than barbells or bench press stations.
• ‌You want to mix things up.‌ Sometimes you just want a little variety in your workouts. Occasionally using different pieces of equipment to perform familiar exercises is a great way to keep your workouts interesting. Curl bar workouts can be fresh, fun and effective.

Below, we share 10 different chest exercises that can be performed with an EZ bar. Eight of them are different variations of bench pressing using one or two arms. The remaining two exercises are accessory movements that target your chest in different ways than the bench press variations do.

It's not advisable to do all of these exercises in a single workout. You're likely to end up incredibly sore, which could keep you from staying consistent at the gym. Furthermore, it's important to leave a few exercises on the back burner so you can swap them in when your progress starts to stall.

Pick one to two of the pressing exercises to work on for at least 4 to 6 weeks before switching it up. Add in one or both of the accessory movements (pullovers and flyes) depending on your goals, injury history and how much time you have to train.

Be careful using a heavy EZ bar that's close to your barbell bench press personal record. Because you don't have a rack to help you set up for the lift, it's advisable to use a slightly lighter weight so you can safely get in and out of position. For example, if your max bench press for 5 to 8 reps is 95 pounds, consider starting with just 5 to 60 pounds on the EZ bar.

EZ bars can also bend at a weight far less than that of an Olympic standard barbell, so you need to be careful when loading your EZ bar with weights.

A good solution is to recruit a training partner for your EZ bar chest workout. A partner can hand you the EZ bar when you're already in position and take it out of your hands when your set is complete. This will save you a lot of energy, allow you to use heavier weights and reduce your risk of injuries.

If you're looking to press weight that exceeds the capacity of an EZ bar, you still have options. Experiment with using higher rep sets and taking less rest or supersetting your EZ bar pressing with other chest, shoulder or triceps exercises to challenge yourself.

There are a few different workout structures you could use for your EZ bar chest exercises:

• ‌Body part split:‌ Combine chest exercises with either biceps, triceps, or shoulder exercises.
• ‌Push day:‌ Combine chest exercises with other pushing movements for your upper and lower body.
• ‌Full-body workout:‌ Include some exercises that target each muscle in your body.

Remember to include plenty of upper back and pulling exercises such as face pulls, pull aparts and rows throughout your training week. It's possible to overdo it on the chest training if you don't also train the opposing muscles on the back of your body; this is known as creating muscle imbalance.

The standard bench press is a classic exercise that trains your chest, triceps and shoulders. Most of the other curl bar exercises for your chest listed below are variations on this move using different body positions.

The close grip bench press utilizes the middle grip on the EZ bar to change which muscles are worked. Using the inner grip recruits much more help from the triceps than using the outer grip.

Single-arm bench presses are perfect for when you want increase the difficulty of a chest workout without using heavier weights. Training just one side of your body at a time requires more assistance from your core and places greater stress on the pressing side, which is useful for targeting smaller stabilizing muscles.

Using a curl bar for single-arm bench press is especially challenging because you need a strong grip to keep the bar in position. Also, the balance and stabilization necessary to perform this exercise would necessitate significantly lower weight.

The incline bench press hits the upper portion of your chest as well as the front of your shoulders more than the flat bench press. Choose this option if you want to strengthen those areas or if you're looking to mix up your workouts.

The incline bench is also a helpful option for anyone who can't comfortably get up and down from the floor or lie flat on their back.

Floor pressing can be more shoulder-friendly than bench pressing because you use a shorter range of motion. Choose the curl bar floor press if regular bench pressing tends to bother your shoulders. You could also choose a floor press if you're at the gym during busy hours and all the exercise benches are taken.

Adding a glute bridge makes the basic curl bar floor press more challenging. Holding a glute bridge throughout your set helps target your core, glutes and hamstrings as well as your chest and upper-body muscles.

The single-arm floor press is identical to the single-arm bench press, except you use a smaller range of motion. Choose this option for the same reasons you may choose a floor press over a bench press: The floor press may feel better on your shoulders, you don't have access to an exercise bench or you want to mix up your training.

And, similar to single-arm bench press above, this move also works smaller stabilizer muscles.

Pullovers target your chest muscles as well as the muscles of your upper and mid back, including your lats.

Flyes are an accessory exercise that target your chest muscles using a loaded stretch.