Forearm Building

[Truestar]

Just wondering to what variations people use to build up their forearm strength.

[tallgeese]

Most of my forearm training comes from gripping during training and holding db's and pull up bars. That said, I'll occasionally work into a weight routine with wrist curls and reverse wrist curls.

I'll also use one of those grip training devices between sets on a couple of lift days just between sets.

[the beast]

Wrist curls and reverse wrist curls are great, you could also use a wrist roller. another good and cheap devise is a tennis ball for gripping.

[bushido_man96]

Loren Christensen has some nice drills for the forearms in his book Solo Training 2. He does one drill where he takes two plates, 5 or 10 pounds, and holds them together between his fingers, and swings his arms gently. You can do it for time, or reps. Another was with a softball with a hole drilled in it, string through it, and at the end of the string you tied a weight.

Another exercise is to take a length of dowel that you can hold in 2 hands, put a length of string on it, attach a weight, and then roll up and unroll the weight. Antoher that I have found fun is to hold an escrima stick in one hand, at the top of the stick. From there, you "walk" the stick up using your fingers, and when you get to the bottom of the stick, you let it flip back down, and do it again.

[RichardZ]

We did wrist curls and arm movment with 2x4, then 4x4's. this also helped with grip, but it is in the placement of the hand-fingers along with the size and type of wood.

Edited November 24, 2009 by RichardZ

[KarateGeorge]

I use grippers that I purchased from the store and wrist curls with the free-weights. I also do the wrist roller with the dowel rod that bushido_man96 suggested as well. It's cheap and works really well.

[bushido_man96]

The gym I go to has a machine that does this now. I am going to try to make a habit out of stopping by it when I am there.

[isshinryu5toforever]

When I was younger I did things the "old school" way using Chishi and Nigiri Kame, but those can be expensive. For forearm strength now, I hold 10 pound dumbells by the weight end instead of the handle and do shoulder raises, it works on many parts of your arm.

[The BB of C]

I use the spring-loaded finger grips from Century. I'm not sure if they have a real name or not. Look them up. They're pretty good for forearms.

[tonydee]

I find my martial arts training overall keeps my forearms pretty solid. Also, lots of push up variations... most basic perhaps where only the two striking knuckles touch the ground, and the front of the fingers is kept elevated. Need to be careful though; if you collapse and twist the wrist - not good. Arm wrestling is also really good, but I did most of that in high school... ;-P. Not so cool as a grown man.