The Best Exercises for Forearms and Grip Strength

You probably train your biceps and triceps on arm day, but do you also remember to train your forearms? The forearm muscles are responsible for a strong grip and also balance out the other arm muscles if you want a muscular (or “toned”) look. Here’s a guide to the best ways to make them work.

The forearm muscles are (mostly) wrist and grip muscles.

Let’s look at the muscle groups of the forearm. You may not realize it, but the muscles that control your fingers are almost all located in your forearm! Move your fingers by placing your other hand on the fleshy part of your forearm and you can feel those muscles working.

There are long tendons that connect these muscles to our fingers. Imagine if these muscles were located close to our fingers, they would have to cluster on the palms and backs of our hands. It’s not very convenient to take things.

Our forearms contain many muscles for different purposes. Here are some of the main muscle groups:

• Digital extensors , which help straighten the fingers. They are located on the back of the forearm.

• Digital flexors , which help bend the fingers. They are located on the underside of the forearm.

• Wrist extensors , which help straighten or retract the wrist. They are located on the back of the forearm, near the extensor fingers.

• Wrist flexors , which help bend the wrist forward. They are located near the flexor muscles of the fingers.

• The supinator and pronator muscles , which help rotate the forearm palm up or palm down. (The biceps is also a supinator, but it’s in the shoulder and we covered that in another post .)

• The brachioradialis muscle is a large, fleshy pronator muscle on the outside of the forearm, so it deserves special attention if you’re trying to give your forearms a big, powerful look.

With this in mind, we can break down forearm exercises into three main groups:

• Finger and wrist flexion

• Finger and wrist extension

• Pronation: Turning the forearm palm down or simply holding it palm down.

Let’s look at some of the best ways to work with each of them.

Best exercise for the lower/inner forearm: Finger and wrist curls.

There are many ways to bend your wrists and many ways to bend your fingers. It’s convenient that they can be combined into one workout.

My favorite thing to do is do one or the other with a standing barbell. I’ll turn my palms away from me (underhand grip) and do a finger curl first: let the bar slowly roll toward my fingertips, then make a fist. Repeat several reps.

Next, I do wrist curls: From the end position of my last curl, I hold the barbell in my hand and curl my wrists. This is the same idea as a bicep curl, except you curl your wrist instead of your elbow.

You can also combine them into one repetition by curling your fingers and then your wrists. One popular way to do this is to do a seated wrist-finger curl with your forearm resting on your knee, as shown in the video below. You can use a barbell or dumbbells.

Best exercise for the upper forearm: Reverse wrist curls.

Simply put, you can do the same thing in reverse to work the muscles on the other side of your forearm. While standing (palms facing you) or sitting (palms down), raise the backs of your hands toward the ceiling without bending your elbows. This activity only targets the wrist extensors and not the finger extensors, so if you want those too, consider using resistance bands to train the finger extensors separately. (You can use regular bands you already have, or buy a set made specifically for arm exercises .)

Best exercise for the brachioradialis muscles: Zottman curls.

What about the brachioradialis muscle, which rotates the forearm downwards? Reverse grip biceps curls can help with this. (You’ll also work your biceps.) To perform reverse-grip biceps curls, simply hold dumbbells or a barbell with your palms facing down and do curls as usual. This works the pronator muscles isometrically.

But I actually prefer the Zottman curl for this purpose. Use a dumbbell of the same weight that you would use for a regular curl. Lift 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 with these than with reverse-grip curls because they are an eccentric (lowering or lengthening) exercise with overload. Plus, they just look cool.

Best Static Grip Exercises: Holding and Carrying

Training your forearms will improve your grip, and training your grip will improve your forearms, so these concepts overlap a bit. With that in mind, I can’t end this list without mentioning support grip exercises.

The support grip is what we call the position in which we hold something, such as a barbell, in our hand. We don’t move it through any range of motion or pinch it with our thumb (that’s a different category of exercises ), but just hold it and try to hold on.

The classic exercises for support grip are these three, and you can choose the one that is most comfortable for you:

• Dead hang on the bar : Simply grab the bar and hold on. If this is too difficult, place your feet on a bench. If they are too light, use one full hand and only a few fingers of the other hand. (Or just do them with one hand if you’re a grip rockstar.)

• Barbell Holds : These are great at the end of a deadlift workout. If you want, you can take some weight off the bar. Then grab the barbell and hold it as long as you can.

• Farmer’s Exercises : My favorite exercises to do are the strongman style farmer’s handle exercises with a very heavy load, but you can also do them with heavy dumbbells. Carry them across the room or, if space is limited, march in place.

You won’t be performing sets of reps on any of these exercises. Instead, try to hold the weight for a certain period of time (30 seconds is a good goal), and once you can do this for three or more sets, add weight or increase the difficulty.

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