What we’re going to talk about today is how to work the powerful, yet often undertrained forearm muscles. I say often undertrained because many bodybuilders overlook this particular group of muscles. Let’s get ready to RUMBLE!When people think of working arms, they tend to think mainly of the bicep and tricep muscles. They pay rare attention to the muscles below the elbow. If they only knew that training those muscles would help their other lifts and workouts, they would be concentrating on them morning noon and night. What do the forearms do? Your forearms help you do many things such as turning door knobs, shaking hands, and holding things. They help you when you work back by helping you keep a tight grip on the bar. Have you ever done pull-ups and you couldn’t do anymore because your grip was slipping and not because you didn’t have the strength. Well, that’s the lack of strength in your forearms. I’m going to show you a few exercises to help build the forearms.
The first exercise we’ll do is dumbbell hammer curls. These work the biceps and forearms. A hammer curl is done almost in the same fashion as a regular curl with the exception of holding the dumbbell like a hammer. Your curls will be done with your palms facing inboard, towards each other, vice facing up or down. You will do one warm up set of hammer curls and two heavy sets. You will do 8-12 repetitions (reps) on the warm up set and 5-10 reps on your two heavy sets to total failure. Next, you are going to do reverse curls. These are done similar to hammer curls except your palms will be facing the ground vice inward. They are done with the same one warm up, two heavy set rep scheme.
One last exercise to help with the forearms is roll-ups. You will need a special piece of equipment for this one. If your gym does not have one, they’re easy to make. The piece of equipment consist of a short bar or stick (10-18 inches long) with a hole drilled through the center and a long rope (4-6 ft. depending on your height) stuck through the hole. On the end of the rope not attached to the bar, you may or may not attach a hook to hold the weight you lift. What you are going to do is take about a ten pound plate and hang it on the end of the rope. Grab the stick with both hands and hold your hands out in front of you with your palms facing downward. Keep your arms parallel to the deck. Start to roll the rope onto the stick by turning the stick as if you were revving up a motorcycle ensuring that you keep your arms out in front and parallel to the deck. Once you’ve rolled the weight all the way up, let it unravel back to the ground.
Repeat the roll-up process once or twice more to give you a very good burn. I guarantee that after you’ve done this workout, you’ll have some steam going through those forearms. Once you’ve built those forearms up, I sure all of your other lifts and exercises that require a good strong grip will be improved.
Well, that’s it from Semper fitness this week. Hope you join us next time where we’ll have some good scoop on workout and eating programs. Once again, stay pumped, stay motivated and OO-RAH!
Semper Fidelis!
