Geschatte leestijd: 6 minuten
Long, long time ago, when I started training, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book was pretty much the only source of information for developing muscle mass. So, we did everything Arnold did, including his 25-set biceps workouts… We didn’t know any better than that this was the way to get big arms! Arnold had big arms, so it had to work!
Following Arnold’s way of training had other benefits as well. He believed in hard training of your entire body, not just chest and arms like many athletes do now. This meant that all muscle groups were trained twice a week, including calves and… forearms!
Training the Forearms
And that’s what I want to talk about in this story:
forearm exercises
Nowadays, you see very few people in the gym – especially in fitness centers – training their forearm muscles, and certainly not with the attention and intensity they reserve for other muscles. Often, it is thought that your forearms will grow when you train your biceps and back, and that’s true for some. Someone like Dorian Yates never trained his forearms because they grew from his intense back training.
However, for most athletes (including myself), this doesn’t work…
The intensity with which most people train their back and biceps is usually not nearly enough to also make their forearms grow. Also, it depends on your genetic heritage; if you don’t have the predisposition to develop large forearm muscles, you won’t get them from just your back training. However, it is possible to develop your forearms. Your forearm muscles need to be directly targeted with special exercises to make them grow big.
Many women will now think, ‘This is not for me. I don’t want big forearms!’. I can understand that because many women are afraid of looking like a man. However, I can promise you, that won’t happen! The average woman really doesn’t have the potential to make her forearms grow out of proportion.
However, the advantage of forearm training is that you can much more easily maintain the other exercises without a barbell or cable slipping out of your hands due to fatigue. Also, doesn’t a nicely shaped forearm look better than a stick?
How Do I Train Those Forearm Muscles?
The forearm muscles are quite simple in their range of motion. The forearm muscles move the hand up and down and side to side, nothing more. The wrist joint is the joint that needs to move to train the muscles in the forearms, and your hand only goes up and down (with a little bit of movement to the sides).
If you want to train the muscles on the inside (underside) of your forearms, you need to move your hand upward with the palm facing up. If you want to train the muscles on the outside (top side) of your forearms, you need to move your hand upward with the palm facing down.
Additionally, there are also muscles that run over the elbow joint but are still counted as forearm muscles. These are the brachioradialis and the brachialis. To train these muscles, the arm must be bent at the elbow while your palm is facing down. Especially the brachioradialis has a dramatic enlarging effect on the top of your forearm.
An additional benefit of a well-developed brachialis muscle is that it increases the circumference of your upper arm!
What Exercises Should I Do Then?
To train all those muscles in your forearms, you will need to mimic the movements the muscles can make in your exercises. This means you need to do three different movements to train all those muscles properly. I must note that the muscles on the top of the forearm are almost never trained separately; they get a large part of their training when doing the brachioradialis and brachialis exercises. I will indicate how you can best train them directly.
The Inside of the Forearms (Palm Side)
You train the inside of the forearm by bending your hand with the palm facing up towards your body. The basic exercise for these muscles is the wrist curl. All other exercises for the inside are derived from this.
Wrist Curls
The wrist curl is a very simple exercise. Usually, the wrist curl is performed as follows:
- Sit halfway on a flat bench with your legs on either side
- Grab a barbell in both hands with a short distance – more than a few centimeters – between the hands
- Place the tops of your forearms on the bench with your wrists just over the edge of the bench
- Let your hands hang down
- Curl the weight upward from your wrist. So, you bring your hand towards your body by moving only your wrist
- Go as far as possible until your muscles are fully contracted. Then slowly lower the weight again
Oh yes, it doesn’t matter if you let the weight roll into your fingers. Nice for your tendons, but your muscles won’t benefit much from it!
You can also do the wrist curl with your forearms on your legs or kneeling beside a bench with your forearms on the bench.
It is advisable to have your partner hand you the weight and take it back when your arms are already in position; with a light weight, you can still do it yourself, but if you go heavier, the risk of injury becomes very high.
I recommend not to forget your forearm muscles when you train. It’s the same as with your thighs and calves: big biceps and triceps are a lot less cool if you have sticks for forearms!
Behind The Back Wrist Curls
The movement is the same, only you stand with a barbell behind your back and your hands shoulder-width apart. With each repetition, bring your hands as far up as possible and perform the exercise slowly.
The Outside of the Forearms (Back of your Hand)
You train the outside of the forearm by bending your hand with the back facing up towards your body. The basic exercise for these muscles is the reverse wrist curl. These muscles are further trained by the brachioradialis/brachialis exercises.
Reverse Wrist Curls
The reverse wrist curl is – as the name suggests – a reversed wrist curl. You perform this exercise with the palms facing down and you bring your hands upward from your wrists.
Unlike the execution of the normal wrist curl, you cannot easily perform the reverse wrist curl sitting on a bench with your forearms on the bench. Usually, the exercise is done with the forearms on the legs. You can sit behind a bench with your forearms on the bench.
Warning: with the reverse wrist curl, you can handle much less weight than with the wrist curl! Start with a light weight and gradually increase it.
Wrist Roller
This vicious exercise is a killer for the outsides of your forearms!
The wrist roller is a deceptively simple device consisting of a stick, a rope, and a weight. The weight is usually 2.5 kilos and that’s really enough!!!
You use the wrist roller as follows:
- Grab the handle with both hands with an overhand grip (so with your palms facing down)
- Extend your arms forward (not completely straight)
- Rotate the handle in your hands so that the weight goes up and the rope rolls around the handle
- When the weight is up, reverse the movement and lower the weight by moving your hands (so don’t let it roll down!)
- Once the weight is down, keep rotating in the same direction so that the weight goes back up again
The Brachioradialis and Brachialis Muscles
You train the brachioradialis and brachialis muscles by moving your forearm towards your shoulder with your palm facing down. For this, there are two very good exercises with countless variations:
Reverse Curl
The name of the reverse curl gives away a bit how this exercise goes. It’s basically a normal barbell curl but with your palms facing away from you, so with an overhand grip.
You can perform the reverse curl standing, but a very painful variation is to do this exercise on a preacher bench. Because your upper arms cannot help, all tension is placed directly on your forearms, which also means you can use less weight.
My advice is to try both variations and alternate. The reverse curl is a strength exercise while the reverse preacher curl is an isolation exercise. Doing both in one workout is not recommended!
Hammer Curls
You still see hammer curls being done in the gym. They are regular dumbbell curls with the dumbbell held like a hammer, so with the palms facing the sides of your body. You can perform hammer curls sitting, standing, with two arms at once, or alternating.
A very fun version of the hammer curl is the cross body hammer. The difference with the normal hammer curl is that you bring the dumbbell up in front of your body. This also makes it impossible to move with both hands at the same time; the dumbbells will then come into contact with each other with all the consequences… I can definitely recommend this version!
I recommend not to forget your forearm muscles when you train. It’s the same as with your thighs and calves: big biceps and triceps are a lot less cool if you have sticks for forearms!
