Best Exercises for building Strong Forearms
Big and strong forearms are definitely considered an important part of the overall muscle development for bodybuilders. Functionality wise strong forearms help you with your grip. So if you are the guy who finds it hard to open a sealed can for your sweetheart then you need to build strong forearms. The key to building big and strong forearms is to build up your grip strength. The stronger grip you have the stronger and bigger will be your forearms.
Forearm Structure
Forearm is a complicated structure with many layers of muscles, which we will not go into the details. In general you can break the muscles down into wrist flexor muscles, which are used in flexing the wrest, wrist extensor muscles, which are used in extending the wrist and brachioradialis muscle used in flexing the forearm at the elbow.
Forearm Function
The muscles in the forearm are used to perform following functions
- Opening and closing the arms and gripping an object
- Raising and lowering the palms at the wrist
- Twisting the wrist
- Flexing the forearm at the elbow
Exercises for Strong Forearms
Deadlift
If you are mostly interested in building strong forearm and don’t worry much about the size, just performing deadlift is sufficient for your forearms. Deadlift is a full body exercise, which targets multiple muscle groups. If you want to learn more you can refer to my previous post on deadlift. Since you will be grabbing very heavy weights in your palms during deadlifts, this will improve your grip and as a result make your forearms strong.
Farmer’s walk
This is another great functional exercise, which is going to really hit your forearms. Grab hold of very heavy dumbbells in your hands and walk with them as far as you can. If dumbbells are too easy, you can also hold barbells with a handle in the middle. If you really want to make this exercise difficult grab hold of the weight plates in your palms and then perform this exercise.
Weight Plates Grip
Take two plates and keep them side-by-side. Grip them with your fingers and thumb and lift it up. Hold it like for as long as you can.
Collar grip
This is a common grip building exercise that will enable you to build strong forearms. Take a spring collar used for securing the weights on the barbell and hold it between your thumb and fingers. Now squeeze them as much as you can and then let go and repeat. Squeezing these collars is a great exercise for your grip and will help with building your grip and so your forearms
Wrist Curls
Grab a barbell or dumbbells in your palms. Rest the for fore arms on a bench or your knees, now flex and extend your wrist to perform the wrist curl. Perform with your forearm pronated and supinated.
Originally published at www.kaa-yaa.com.
