Forearms are an often overlooked muscle group by people trying to boost their overall muscle mass. To be fair, many upper-body workouts, and even some lower-body workouts such as deadlifts, work out the forearm muscles to some degree. But if you want your forearms to get bigger, you have to work them on their own just like any other muscle group.
In Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, he emphasizes the importance of training the forearms early and often, stating (on pages 419-420), “forearm training should be included as part of your regular workout schedule right from the beginning.”
“Because forearms are involved in so many other exercises, you will not need very many forearm exercises to start with,” Arnold writes. “I do not recommend doing as many sets for forearms as for legs, back, or other body parts, but I have found that doing sets of relatively high reps gives the best results.”
Why Some People’s Forearms Lag Behind
Arguably the biggest reason why some people have bigger or smaller forearm muscles than other people is genetics. Genetics plays such a massive role in natural muscle definition and size for all muscle groups, and some people win the genetic forearm lottery and others do not.
Another major contributing factor, and this is an obvious one, is that some people do not focus on their forearms enough during their lifting sessions compared to other people. As previously mentioned, some people think that by using their forearms during other lifting sets they do not need to do exercises specific to their forearms. If you want to improve your forearm muscle size, you need to put in the work.
Lastly, some people’s forearms lag behind because they use lifting straps too often in their weightlifting sets. Straps can be a two-edged sword – they help you lift heavier on some specific lifts, but it comes at an expense to your forearm muscle development potential. I am certainly not saying to never use straps, but it is a consideration that needs to be made if you are wondering why your forearms are not as beefy as you would like them to be despite lifting weights regularly.
The Best Workouts For Building Forearms
According to researchers affiliated with the University Health Shreveport at LSU, the forearm muscles have “two muscular compartments – an anterior (flexor) and posterior (extensor) compartment” and they “contain together twenty muscles.” You need to exhaust the muscle fibers of all of them if you want to get the best-looking forearm muscles.
Arnold lists his recommendations for the best workouts for forearms on page 425 of his Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, categorizing them by the ‘upper’ forearm and the ‘inner’ forearm. He recommends working them out more than once a week.
Upper:
- reverse curls (barbell, dumbbells, and on a preacher bench)
- One-arm cable reverse curls
- Hammer curls
- Reverse wrist curls
Inner:
- One-arm wrist curls
- Barbell wrist curls
- Behind-the-back wrist curls
Arnold urges lifters to focus on proper form, and to do a long range of motion on every rep, stating that “working through only three-quarters of the range of motion is not that beneficial because you already use this part of the muscle in a variety of other exercises.” With that in mind, stick to a weight that is heavy enough to exhaust the forearm muscle fibers, but not so heavy that you cannot do the long range of motion for each rep.
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