3 Great Forearm Exercises

Article by Jared DiCarmine

I remember just starting out in my fitness journey when I was just a young boy, I was absolutely obsessed with finding some of the best and most effective exercises for each body part, specifically forearm exercises because at the time I was huge into baseball and I knew the quickest way to speed up my bat and hit the ball further was to strengthen my forearms and wrists. I was 12 years old at the time and I came across one exercise that involved a wrist roller with a string through the middle and a weight dangling at the end. I had my dad make me one of these with a broomstick and all I did everyday was do multiple sets of wrist rollers. Holding my arms out straight and flexing and extending my wrists up and down to roll the weight up and then back down. After a few weeks I could see noticeable different in the size of my forearms. Looking back, they were obviously newbie gains because I had never done anything like that before, but it was still awesome to notice a little pop in my forearm when I made a muscle. Now you might be thinking or believe you should rest a muscle every other day so that it can recover. That is partially true, but it’s also false because it’s really dependent on the muscle being worked, the trainee, and the program design. Forearms can be worked quite often everyday because they are built to withstand a lot of total volume without tiring. They also recover quite quickly. If you had to take a break every time you used a muscle, then how would mechanics make a living?So this brings us into the next part of this article and various exercises that you can do for them so they can grow and become larger and stronger. When you really do your research you can find that there is a ton of exercises to work for your forearms. I think forearm exercises are some of the most creative for any body part and there is definitely too many to list in this article because they can go on forever, but I’m going to give you five right now that you can implement into your training to start seeing immediate results. Awesome Forearm Exercise #1: Farmers WalksFarmers walks are popular in strength and conditioning circles as well as power lifting events. They really test not only your grip strength but also your anaerobic endurance and core strength. Holding a heavy weight in both hands then having to walk with it really takes a lot out of your body as well as your grip. It’s a lot harder as opposed to just holding two heavy weights in each hand and being stationary. The walking part adds a slight twist to the exercise really forcing your grip to keep those heavy dumbbells and weights in place. And the best part is that you don’t need any crazy equipment to do this exercise like you see the professionals use on t.v. All you need is two heavy dumbbells from your local gym. So what I want you to do is pick up 2 heavy dumbbells and literally just go for a walk. Record the distance and try to beat it week after week. Feel free to do exercise for 3-4 sets in your forearm workout.Awesome Forearm Exercise #2: Reverse Barbell CurlsWhen you look at an anatomy chart of the all the different forearm muscles, you’ll notice that there is a lot of them and one of the most important ones to really bring out that pop in your forearms and make them look like you have a pair of bowling pins attached to your biceps are the brachioradialis and brachialis. The brachioradialis resides on the forearm and the brachialis resides slightly underneath the bicep. When these two muscles are developed, it really adds extra thickness throughout your lower arm. And when the brachialis is developed, it can actually pop out your biceps and increase circumference around your upper arm. These 2 muscles best respond to high volume and a long time under tension. A neat little trick you could do to really hit these muscle groups is hard is use the 1 and a half rep method. So for example you do 1 repetition and curl the bar all the way up. When you lower the bar, only lower it half way and bring it back up. This all equals only 1 repetition. Feel free to do 3-4 sets of 12-15 repetitions. Awesome Forearm Exercise #3: Add In Fat GripzI know this isn’t really a new exercise, but seriously hear me out for a quick second. The thicker the bar in any type of movement that requires you to use your grip, the more your forearms will be worked. It’s pure physics and backed by science. The larger your grip circumference, the more your forearms work to hold everything in place and over time you’ll build up these muscles without adding in any extra exercises. The best athletes and the biggest strength coaches and trainers all use fat gripz on their bars if they don’t have access to a thick bar. Fat gripz are easy to use and implement. All you have to do is pop them on the bar and that’s it. But let me warn you that you might have to lower some of your weights on some exercises. It really does take some time for your grip to catch up if you decide to go this route. But trust me its well worth it. Just image doing bicep curls with a grip the size of a coke can. Now tell me that’s not good for your forearms? I thought so.All in all, you don’t really need a lot of different forearm exercises to help them grow and become stronger. All you need is a sound training program. If you add in these 2 exercises above and include fat gripz on every back and biceps exercise in your program, I guarantee that you’ll be able to spark new found growth in your forearms without a shadow of a doubt.

Forearm, Grip Strength Training, and Hand Strengthening Workout routines

Article by Jacob Blackhite

In my opinion, forearms and hands are some of the most underrated muscles in the body. You won’t actually add mass or help to build good-looking muscles when you do exercises for hand strengthening or forearm and grip strength training, but what you will do is increase your overall functional strength. General forearm strength is required for a number of different lifts. If you’re forearms aren’t strong, they can be a limiting factor. Also, when you begin performing forearm exercises, you may be astonished at how much better you can execute other lifts. In fact, if you were to improve your grip and hand strength, you would see benefits in sports that require grip, such as baseball, football, wrestling and martial arts.

Building strong forearms can help you get stronger at other lifts. If you don’t have the strength to hang onto the weight bar, it’s really hard to do a pull-up or a deadlift successfully. Broadly stated, the forearms tend to get a sufficient amount of work just through exercises involving pulling. However, it can be beneficial to add additional forearm training exercises to your routine.

When performing forearm movements, I typically like groups of ten repetitions. This is one area of strength training that I think benefits from a slight endurance approach. Forearm training is a good starting point for anyone hoping to gain functional strength and improve their ability to perform lifts, but those hoping to go even further should concentrate on hand and grip training.

In my estimation, it is possible to have great forearm strength without hand strength, but impossible to have good hand strength without substantial forearm strength. Grip strength training should help improve both hand strength and forearm strength.

To properly train your hands, you should try to include training for each specific grip type. For pinch grip strength, you can hold a heavy object such as a weight plate (or two weight plates) between your thumb and fingers. You can build supporting grip strength by grasping significantly heavy things, including dumbbells, or by hanging from a chin up bar. You can train your extensors, the muscles responsible for opening your hand, by wrapping rubber bands around your fingers and opening your hand against the tension.

For crushing grip strength, you’ll need hand grippers. You don’t want to use the popular versions that are sold in stores as they won’t give you the workout you need unless you do a whole bunch of reps. You’d get just as good a workout from simply trying to crush a tennis ball. Make sure you go out of your way to find Heavy Grips or Captains of Crush in order to get a truly beneficial strength training workout for your hands. They are products meant for hardcore strength trainers, and you will never lack a challenge, because these grippers offer 350+ lbs of torque resistance. You don’t need me to show you a full routine, just be sure to include a combination of standard squeezes with inverted squeezes and add in negative training exercises that require you to squeeze onto the heavy duty gripper for as long as you are able. Since hands do not require significant recovery time, it is possible to do these routines 4-5 times weekly. However, I typically perform these exercises three days a week.

If you haven’t given forearm, grip strength training, or hand strengthening exercises a try, I’d recommend including a few of the above exercises in your routine. When you improve your hand strength you will see the results in improve functional strength and your ability to effortlessly complete various pulling exercises. If you train effectively, you might even be able to do some of the amazing things that Bruce Lee was able to accomplish. As a beginning point, simply attempt to gain enough strength to haul a 60lb piece of luggage without relying on its wheels.