The forearms are a group of muscles located between the elbow and the wrist. They are responsible for flexing and rotating your arms. Although the forearms are sometimes neglected during weight training, strengthening them helps improve bone density, improves your grip, increases joint flexibility and reduces your chances of developing conditions like carpel tunnel. You can get extremely strong forearms with a 20-minute strength training session every other day.
Exercises to strengthen the forearm muscles include palms-down wrist curls, wrist circles, palms-up wrist curls, hammer curls and behind-the-back wrist curls. Or you can do dumbbell twists by sitting down while grasping a dumbbell. Lower your arm until the dumbbell is hanging between your legs. Rotate the dumbbell, twisting it back and forth. Repeat on the opposite arm. For extreme results, aim for two to three sets of 15 repetitions of each forearm exercise.
Grip exercises strengthen and increase the size of the forearms. Try holding a squash ball in your hand and squeezing it as hard as you can. Or hold something heavy, like a weight plate, with just your thumb and fingers. You can also wrap a towel securely around a barbell and hold the bar as tightly as possible. For best results, hold each exercise for at least 20 seconds. Do six to 10 repetitions of each exercise.
Avoid using weight lifting straps, which can be attached to weights to make the exercise easier to perform. Instead, make your forearm muscles do all the work to boost the intensity of your workout. Use overhand grips, in which you position your thumb on the same side of the weight as your fingers, when exercising. This also makes your forearms work harder as you lift.
Always keep the weight stable throughout each forearm exercise. Using momentum or allowing the weight to swing can injure your wrists. In addition, always perform each exercise slowly. This not only forces your forearms to work harder, it helps you keep better control of the weight. Immediately stop exercising if you experience any type of pain. Although you should expect to feel some tension in your forearms, pain is a sign that you have overdone it or injured yourself.
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