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Well, I woke up this morning with a swollen ankle that only turns in one direction after an unfortunate stumble yesterday, and today was going to be calves day. The first minor and obvious improvisation for the workout today is a simple rescheduling – today is biceps and calves are postponed on a day-to-day basis.

But the thing is, with virtually any form of pressure or ankle rotation being an unpleasant and possibly recovery-impeding incident, my normal plan for a bicep workout just isn’t going to be possible. I could probably get through it, but not only would I be favoring one side of my body the whole time, I would also likely suffer in the amount of weight I could handle and, really, why waste any of your focus dealing with unnecessary pain in a body part unrelated to the muscle groups you are training?

So with that said, I am going to take my original biceps workout plan:

- Standing Straight Barbell Curls
- Seated Preacher Dumbbell Hammer Curls
- Standing Twisting Dumbbell Curls
- Seated Machine Curls
- 21’s (Standing Barbell)…

…and scrap most of it. It’s time to improvise. And life has a way of throwing curveballs at you, whether in the gym or in other areas of your existence, and rolling with the punches can keep you from losing ground.

First off, we are scratching everything that involves standing. I am going to be hopping to the gym like a pirate as it is, so adding any significant weight-bearing above and beyond my own frame would be poorly advised. Gone are standing barbell curls, 21’s and standing twisting dumbbell curls.

Now, you don’t see a lot of people doing a bicep workout with standing for any of it, but when the situation calls for it, we sit or lie down to get the job done. There’s no reason not to keep the seated preacher dumbbell curls or the seated machine curls (an exercise i primarily use at the end just to finish my arms off). And the fact of the matter is, I actually use 21s after the seated machine curls to really finish the job and make sure I have left nothing in the gym, so if I left that exercise out, it wouldn’t be a massive oversight. So today, I will be leaving out the standing 21s altogether. However, there is nothing to say that you could not replace them with any of the following:

- Seated Preacher 21s (Straight or E-Z Bar)
- Incline or Upright Seated (Suspended-Legs) Dumbbell 21s

Either of these options is a possibility if you really are hell-bent on blasting out the very last of your bicep capabilities for the day, but it is pushing overkill, so we’ll focus on replacements for the two more fundamental bicep curls that have become unduly challenging, impossible or inadvisable.

So, instead of Standing Twisting Dumbbell Curls, we are moving over to the adjustable bench, setting it to the lowest level of incline and taking a seat.

- Incline Suspended-Legs Twisting Dumbbell Curls

Lift both legs off the ground, crossing one ankle over the other, and keep them in the air. This isn’t like a straight leg raise – your quads won’t get tired. Just keep the feet off the ground so you can’t use the ground to cheat and, more importantly, so you can’t purposely or accidentally apply unwanted pressure to the bad foot or leg. Now, do you twisting dumbbell curls just like you normally would. You’ll still be able to extend your arms all the way down for a full range of motion.

And as a replacement for Standing Straight Barbell Curl, we are just going to move over to the Preacher and get roughly the same action, but seated to remove the element of legs from the equation. The legs will be even less of an issue compared to a normal seated exercise, given the weight and pressure that the Preacher Bench will be absorbing.

- Seated Preacher Straight Barbell Curls

As a quick note, you may have to adjust your weights, since the bars typically used on a Preacher setup are lighter and shorter than the 45-pound bar you may have been using if you were at a squat rack or bench press for your bicep curls. If not, then just use the normal bar and have at ‘er. There is also no reason you can’t use an E-Z Curl Bar or Super Curl Bar, either if that was going to be your standing exercise or if you want to throw in some variety.

The main difference here will be that your muscles will be working a lot harder at the bottom of your rep on a Preacher Bench than they would be at the bottom of a standing rep. The Preacher Bench will likely not have your arms perpendicular to the ground when extended, thus requiring effort to keep your elbows from hyperextending from the weight. As such, you may want to try your first set at a slightly lighter weight than usual to gauge what you will want to be lifting for your heavier sets (if you are doing a pyramid).

So there you have it. Quick fixes for your bicep workout if life’s little snags decide to create problems for you, as they so often do.

Properly augmenting your workout to deal with and circumvent injuries should allow you to get all or virtually of the benefits of your original plan without losing any energy, effort or focus on tolerating pain from an irrelevant body part. There are a hundred ways to skin a cat, and there are a hundred ways to work your biceps.