Sit on a bench with your forearms resting comfortably on your upper legs. Hold a barbell with palms facing up, slowly rolling your wrists up towards the ceiling until your wrists feel at rest.
Training grip muscles is often overlooked, yet having strong grip muscles can help you lift more weight and gain overall strength. These straightforward, effective exercises can easily be added into any workout program.
Wrist Rotations
Wrist rotation exercises are an excellent wrist mobility exercise to increase range of motion in your forearms and wrists while decreasing any tightness you may be feeling in these areas. Furthermore, these movements serve as a great warmup before performing activities such as Front Squats or Overhead Press that require you to move your hands out of their neutral positions – such as Front Squats or Overhead Press exercises.
This exercise requires sitting with both arms holding dumbbells with palms facing down and palms turned down, palms facing in towards each other. Lean forward and rest your forearms on top of your thighs with fingertips dangling loosely towards one another, before starting to rotate your wrists in a circular motion to try to create as large an arch within your tolerable range as possible before switching directions and repeating for your specified number of reps or time period.
This exercise targets forearm flexors and extensors as well as your biceps and triceps for targeted strengthening and toning exercises that improve range of motion while strengthening and toning these muscles.
To perform this movement you will require light to moderately weighted dumbbells for this exercise. Seated Dumbbell Wrist Circles/ Rotations is an exercise targeting the wrists and forearms; please refer to the free illustrated exercise diagram and instructions for proper form.
Understanding limb motion dynamics is a central objective in biomechanics and rehabilitation. Unfortunately, describing these dynamics within an experimentally controlled setting has proven challenging. To address this problem, we present a 2-DOF wrist rotation model which experimentally represents these dynamics by characterizing torques required to overcome passive mechanical impediments during rotation movements.
Bicep Curls
Bicep curls are a vital strength-training exercise, providing the ideal opportunity to strengthen the front of your upper arm muscles that play such an integral role in everyday activities like picking things up or placing them down, adding definition and strengthening them over time. Bicep curls also promote hypertrophy (increased muscle size). But without using proper form you risk injuring either your wrist or elbow joint if not performed with care.
To perform a bicep curl, stand with feet about hip distance apart and hold two dumbbells at arm’s length with palms facing toward your body. Inhale and raise weights until your biceps have contracted before slowly lowering back down until back at starting position.
Many people rely on momentum to lift weights, failing to extend their arms fully at the top of the movement and risk injury and diminish the effectiveness of curling exercises. Though it can be tempting to rest your biceps at the top of a curl, doing so actually reduces intensity of contractions; for optimal results it’s best to continue moving the movement through its entire range of motion.
One way to make bicep curling more challenging is by performing them on an incline, as this increases both its difficulty and targets more muscles in your forearms. Regular bicep curls performed either on an incline bench or exercise ball are both effective choices; or try doing an eccentric variation known as Zottman curls which involve rotating arms at the end of each curl and targeting both biceps and brachialis muscles of your forearm.
If you want a change, try boxing-inspired exercises. Hold an EZ bar in front of your thighs with both hands using an underhand grip, grip an EZ bar with curling action at your shoulder width, curl it to squeeze your biceps then lower under control back down underhand grip flexing at elbows for controllable arm strength training and adding variety to workouts. It is an effective way of increasing arm strength and power and adding variety.
Pull-Ups
The pullup is an iconic strength training move with many benefits ranging from increasing grip strength to building lean muscle mass.
Though a pullup may appear straightforward, there are still numerous aspects that you must master for maximum benefit and proper form. First off, ensure you are fully warmed up and in an ideal hanging position by holding onto a bar or pole with palms facing either away from you (whichever feels most natural) and slowly pull yourself up until your chest touches the bar before slowly lowering yourself down back down into a dead hang position.
Pullups are designed to target and strengthen the latissimus dorsi, or lats muscle of your back that extends your arm to hold yourself against pulling forces. In addition, this movement exercises other shoulder, upper back, ab, and abdominal muscles for improved posture – this movement should be included as part of any workout program for people of all ages and fitness levels.
One reason pullups are so effective is that they work the whole “pull” system rather than only your arms, making the move more efficient to perform and helping prevent any unnecessary scapular (shoulder blade) movement during movement.
Pullups are not only great strength training exercises; they can also be an invaluable way to enhance mobility and balance. By helping develop an upright posture, it may make walking, climbing and playing sports such as golf, tennis, rock climbing or bowling easier; not to mention carrying groceries or lifting heavy items with both hands!
For proper pullup form, it’s key to remember to keep your elbows close to your body rather than flared out and to not use momentum or swinging arms to bring your chin over the bar. Furthermore, it is vital that when lowering yourself it be done slowly without any bounces or skips forward; to help stay on track while doing this count to three Mississippi as you lower yourself down.
Reverse Curls
When thinking of arm exercises, our thoughts often turn to building massive biceps and triceps. But this approach misses an integral component of arm development: forearms. One great exercise for forearm development is reverse curls with an EZ bar; these targeted exercises will target not only your biceps brachii but also activate both brachialis and brachioradialis muscles simultaneously for maximum activation of these vital forearm flexor muscles.
It may be easy to grasp this movement, but mastery takes practice. Instead of gripping the bar with thumbs wrapped around it as in standard curls, try grasping it with only your fingers as in standard curls; this will focus more on forearm flexors while lessening impactful bicep work. As you curl, strive to prevent elbows from shifting behind shoulders – an often-made mistake which reduces its effectiveness while placing unnecessary stress on wrists.
Once you become comfortable with this movement, you can gradually increase the weight and perform reps. Be mindful that using excessively heavy weights may put a great deal of strain on your wrists or cause pain as your forearms adjust to this new motion.
If you want to amplify your forearm training, consider trying the plate pinch, which targets forearm flexors through increased grip strength and an unconventional movement pattern. Or try hammer curls which work both biceps and forearm extensor muscles for a complete arm workout.
These forearm-focused movements are an invaluable addition to your gym routine, helping to strengthen and define your arms while decreasing injury risk by strengthening forearms and joints. Plus, you’ll get those coveted Popeye forearms! So next time you hit the gym don’t forget to incorporate these exercises – they will definitely pay off in spades!
