Equipment
Bodyweight biceps exercises
Biceps is the one muscle group where training without equipment comes out clearly worse than training with load. The reason is mechanical: the muscle bends the elbow, and bodyweight is hard to position so that it resists that one movement. Hence the short list below.
That does not mean you cannot build arms without equipment. It means you build them with pull-ups rather than curls - a chin-up loads the biceps with your entire bodyweight, and you will find it in the atlas under back, not here.
Exercise library
All Bodyweight biceps exercises
2 exercises
Training guide
About training Bodyweight biceps exercises
Choose one movement, perform it well, then progress it over time.
Why is this list short?
Because it should be. You train chest without equipment using push-ups, legs using single-leg squats, back using pull-ups - every one of those puts your bodyweight opposite the working muscle. The biceps bends the elbow in a movement where the forearm travels through an arc, and there is no natural position in which the body itself becomes the load.
That leaves two workarounds: resistance from your other hand or a leg, and hooking onto something fixed like a door frame or a countertop. Both work, but neither lets you measure progress the way a weight on a bar does.
Which does more, curls or pull-ups?
Pull-ups, and it is not close. Underhand, hands about shoulder width, the biceps works against your whole bodyweight - a load no equipment-free curl reproduces. Those exercises sit in the atlas under back, because that is where their biggest share goes, but arms grow from them just as well.
If you have a pull-up bar at home, or anything you can hang from, start there. Treat the curls on this page as filler for days when there is no bar within reach - or as a sign that the cheapest resistance band you can buy will open up far more than they do.
Where to start
Progress the movement
Learn to apply the tension
With self-resistance the whole difficulty is getting the opposite hand to actually push back. Start with a few sets where that is the only thing you watch.
Stretch out the lowering
Three seconds, then four, then five. It is the one variable you fully control without equipment.
Move to pull-ups
Once the above stops tiring you out, you need a bar - and that is the right next step, not another set of curls.
Explore further
Add this exercise to a workout and track your progress
Add it to a plan or to your current session, log sets, weight and reps, keep the instructions and tips at hand while you train, and check your previous results, records and volume.
- Plan - add this exercise to a workout
- Log - sets, weight and reps
- Progress - history, records and volume