There is no doubt that developing muscular forearms will improve your appearance, but that is 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 good muscular 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 enough that you can place your forearms on the bench between your legs. Grab a barbell with your palms facing up. Extend your wrists, lowering the bar toward the floor. Unfold your fingers so you can 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 to the ground slowly and repeat the exercise.
Farmer walk
This is one of the best forearm exercises that are traditionally used to increase forearm strength. It is seen often in many strongmen competitions. Take a fairly heavy dumbbell in each hand. With your arms down to 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 so your arms have a chance to recover. After a short break, get back to lifting the weights and keep walking.
Back bar curls
This is another one of the best forearm exercises to strengthen your forearms and biceps at the same time. Grab a barbell with an overhead grip, hands spaced approximately hip-width apart and feet spaced shoulder-width apart. Make sure your thumbs are on top of the bar, not wrapped around it as usual. With your arms straight and the bar across your thighs, bend the bar down to shoulder level. Let the bar slowly return to the starting position and perform the exercise again.
Hand grippers
This exercise can be done anywhere and at any time. All that is needed is a small hand gripper, one of the best forearm exercisers ever invented, which is available at any sporting goods store. One exercise is simply to grasp the clamp, close it as far as possible, and hold it in the closed position for as long as possible. Another good exercise is to progressively increase the number of grabs made with each hand. Squeeze the clamp once with one hand and 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 more.
Newspaper scrunch
This is certainly an unusual name for an unusual exercise that is great for strengthening the fingers and forearms. Take a single sheet of newspaper and grasp the corner with your thumb and forefinger. With just these two fingers, gather the sheet of paper into a ball and then squeeze the ball tightly in your hand until your grip gets tired. Do this again with the other hand. Continue alternating hands until you have crumpled all of the newspaper.