The History of the Preacher Curl

A piece of equipment ubiquitous across the gym floor, the Preacher Curl is a go to exercise for gym bros and dedicated trainees alike seeking to build their biceps. Combined with the EZ Bar, whose history is covered here, the Preacher Curl is likely an exercise we’ve all turned to in need of arm development.

When did this piece of equipment enter the gym zeitgeist, what was its original purpose and how did it become so popular? Furthermore, how does one perform the exercise correctly? Well strap in folks as we take another trip down memory lane…

Part Guru, Part Inventor

Despite the fact that the Preacher Curl, and its various spin offs, are so commonplace nowadays, it’s interesting to learn that the device is a relatively new invention. Indeed, its history dates as recently to the 1960s. A time when the Mr. Olympia competition was beginning to gather steam, when steroids had just begun to take a hold of bodybuilding and a time when Vince Gironda, the ‘Iron Guru’, was at the height of his training career.

Indeed it’s to Vince that we turn to in our particular tale. Having discussed his dietary advice and exercise variations in some detail, we now turn to his inventive streak. Though not possessing the inventiveness of an Arthur Jones regarding machine design, Gironda nevertheless imparted some great pearls to the training community. The Preacher Curl being one of them.

Relatively secretive himself during this period, our knowledge of the Preacher Curl comes not from Vince Gironda, but rather one of his proteges Larry Scott. The first man to win the Mr. Olympia, a feat he repeated the following year, Larry Scott was renowned for his remarkable arm and forearm development. A steadfast disciple of Vince’s training methods, Larry was the first to disclose information about the Preacher Curl, a device Vince had created and insisted on Scott using to isolate and increase the peaks of his biceps. Interestingly, by the 1970s, Scott had actually become so synonymous with the Preacher Curl that it was referred to as the Scott Bench by many gym goers.

A Bench is Born

For many years, the bench appears to have been a Gironda exclusive, a point noted by the highly informative work West Coast Bodybuilding Scene: The Golden Era. In it we learn that elite bodybuilders, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, were first introduced to the Preacher Curl during their visits of Vince’s gym. As these stars moved quite frequently amongst the iron building moguls of the time, it wasn’t long before news of the machine travelled to the likes of Joe Weider, Bob Hoffman and others.

In fact, here is a photo of Vince’s golden boy, Larry Scott, performing reverse Scott Curls on a preacher bench under the watchful eye of Joe Weider.

Courtesy of LinkedIn. 

Similarly by the 1980s we already see nondescript Preacher Curls appearing in larger scale gyms such as World Gym.

Courtesy of Ric Drasin. Source.

That being said however, it appears that the Preacher Bench itself and its variations, all stemmed from the Iron Guru’s own gym. Here we see Arnold performing Preacher Curls on the seated bench

Courtesy of West Coast Bodybuilding Scene. 

Here we see Larry Scott using a machine variation in Vince’s.

Courtesy of Ironguru.com.

Finally we see the lesser seen standing version, again from Vince’s gym.

Courtesy of Dave Draper’s Forum.

So while Vince’s exercises such as the Guillotine Press and Sissy Squat are quite rare in the gym world, his Preacher Curl, and it’s spin offs, are commonplace in the heart’s of lifters.

But how does one do the Perfect Curl?

Here we defer to the ‘Iron Guru’ Vince Gironda himself.