You probably work your biceps and triceps on arm day, but are you remembering your forearms, too? The muscles in your forearms are responsible for a strong grip, as well as balancing out those other arm muscles if you want an all-over muscular (or “toned”) look. Here’s a guide to the best ways to work them.
Forearm muscles are (mostly) wrist and grip muscles
Let’s take a look at the muscle groups in your forearm. You may not realize it, but the muscles that control your fingers are almost all in your forearm! Wiggle your fingers, while putting your other hand on top of the meaty part of your forearm, and you may be able to feel those muscles working.
There are long tendons that connect those muscles to our fingers. Imagine if we had those muscles close to our fingers—they would have to all crowd into the palms and backs of our hands. Not very convenient for being able to pick things up.
Our forearms contain lots of muscles for different purposes. Here are some of the main muscle groups:
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Finger extensors, which help you straighten your fingers. These are on the back of the forearm.
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Finger flexors, which help you curl your fingers. These are on the underside of the forearm.
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Wrist extensors, which help you straighten your wrist or cock it back. These are on the back of the forearm, near the finger extensors.
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Wrist flexors, which help you bend your wrist forward. They are near the finger flexors.
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Supinator and pronator muscles that help you turn your forearm palm-up or palm-down. (The biceps is also a supinator, but it lives in the upper arm and we covered it in another post.)
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The brachioradialis is a big meaty pronator on the outside top of your forearm, so that deserves special attention if you’re trying to make your forearms look big and powerful.
With that in mind, we can break down forearm exercises into three main groups:
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Finger and wrist flexion
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Finger and wrist extension
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Pronation, either turning your forearm palm-down or just holding it in a palm-down position.
Let’s look at some of the best ways to work each.
The best exercise for the bottom/inside of your forearm: finger and wrist curls
There are many ways to do wrist curls, and many ways to do finger curls. Conveniently, you can combine them into the same workout.
My favorite is to do one then the other, with a barbell, while standing. I’ll have my palms facing away from me (underhand grip), and I’ll do the finger curls first: let the bar roll slowly toward the end of my fingers, then clench my fist. Repeat for several reps.
Then I’ll do the wrist curls: from the ending position of my last curl, I’ll keep the bar in my hand, and flex my wrists. It’s the same idea as a bicep curl, except instead of bending your elbow, you bend at the wrist.
You could also combine these in the same rep, curling the fingers, then the wrist. One popular way to do that is a seated wrist-and-finger curl with your forearm resting on your knee, as in the video below. You can use a barbell or dumbbells.
The best exercise for the top of your forearm: reverse wrist curls
Keeping it simple, you can do the exact same thing in reverse to work the muscles on the other side of your forearm. Either standing (with palms facing toward you) or seated (with palms facing downward), raise the backs of your hands toward the ceiling without bending your elbows. This only targets the wrist extensors, not finger extensors, so if you want to get those too, consider using rubber bands to challenge your finger extensors separately. (You can either use regular rubber bands you already have, or buy a set made specifically for hand exercises.)
The best exercise for the brachioradialis: Zottman curls
What about that brachioradialis, the muscle that rotates your forearm downward? Reverse-grip bicep curls can help with that. (You work your biceps in addition.) To do reverse-grip bicep curls, just grab the dumbbells or barbell with your palms facing down, and do curls as usual. This works your pronator muscles isometrically.
But I actually prefer a Zottman curl for this purpose. Use a dumbbell at the same weight you would use for a normal set of curls. Raise the dumbbell palm-up, then turn your hand palm-down and slowly lower it back to the starting position. You’ll be able to use more weight for these than for reverse-grip curls, since they’re an eccentric (lowering or lengthening) overload exercise. Also, they just look cool.
The best exercises for static grip: holds and carries
Forearm training will improve your grip, and grip training will work your forearms, so these concepts overlap a bit. With that in mind, I can’t end this list without talking about exercises for support grip.
Support grip is what we call the position where we’re holding something—like a barbell—in our hand. We’re not moving it through any range of motion, and we’re not pinching it with our thumb (that’s a different category of exercises), but rather, we’re just holding it and trying to hang on.
The classic exercises for support grip are these three, and you can choose whichever is most convenient for you:
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Dead hangs from a pullup bar: Just grab the bar and hang on. If these are too hard, prop your feet up on a bench. If they’re too easy, use one full hand and only a few fingers on the other hand. (Or just do them one-handed if you are a grip rockstar.)
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Barbell holds: These are great at the end of a deadlift session. You can take some weight off the bar, if you like. Then pick up the barbell and hold it as long as you can.
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Farmer’s carries: I like these best with strongman-style farmer’s handles, loaded up real heavy, but you can also do these with heavy dumbbells. Carry them across the room, or if space is limited, march in place.
For any of these exercises, you won’t do sets of reps. Instead, aim to hold the weight for a certain length of time—30 seconds is a good target to aim for—and once you can do that for three or more sets, add weight or increase the difficulty.
