There’s no question, but developing muscular forearms will improve your appearance, but that’s only part of the benefit. Muscular forearms will also improve your performance when participating in a sport or while exercising. Pull-ups, deadlifts, and bicep curls are much easier to perform when you have well-muscled forearms. The following article looks at some of the best forearm exercises to build those muscular forearms.
barbell wrist curls
Barbell wrist curls have long been recognized as the best forearm exercises for building muscle. Perform this exercise sitting on a bench, leaning forward far enough so that you can place your forearms on the bench between your legs. Grab a bar with your palms facing up. Extend your wrists, lowering the bar toward the floor. Uncurl your fingers to allow you to lower the bar a little more. Tighten your grip on the bar and bend your wrists up to lift the bar as high as you can. Lower the bar back to the ground slowly and repeat the exercise.
farmer’s walk
This is one of the best forearm exercises traditionally used to build forearm strength. It is often seen in many strongman competitions. Pick up a fairly heavy dumbbell in each hand. With your arms down by your sides and your shoulders down and back, walk as far as you can until you can no longer hold the dumbbells. Place the weights on the floor to give your arms a chance to recover. After a short rest, pick up the weights again and continue walking.
Reverse barbell curl
This is another one of the best forearm exercises to develop your forearms and biceps at the same time. Grasp a bar with an overhead grip, with your hands hip-width apart and feet shoulder-width apart. Make sure your thumbs are on top of the bar, not wrapped around it like normal. With your arms straight and the bar resting on your thighs, curl the bar to shoulder level. Let the bar slowly return to the starting position and perform the exercise again.
hand pliers
This exercise can be performed anywhere and at any time. All it takes is a small hand gripper, one of the best forearm exercisers ever invented, available at any sporting goods store. One exercise is simply to hold the clamp, close it as far as it will go, and hold it in the closed position for as long as you can. Another good exercise is to gradually increase the number of grips made with each hand. Squeeze the clamp once with one hand, then do the same with the other. Each time you change hands, increase the number of times you squeeze the clamp by one. Keep doing this until you just can’t do any more.
newspaper scrunch
This is certainly an unusual name for an unusual exercise that is great for strengthening fingers and forearms. Take a single sheet of newspaper and grasp it by the corner between your thumb and forefinger. Using just these two fingers, gather the sheet of paper into a ball, and then squeeze the ball tightly in your hand until your grip tires. Do this again with the other hand. Keep alternating hands until you have crumpled the entire newspaper.
