Forearm Exercise Selection Guide
Stick to stable exercises with lots of ROM, that are limited by the target muscle group and that you can load properly. For forearms, this includes all manners of wrist curls. If your goal is forearm growth, you’re best off avoiding farmer’s walks and reverse grip curls. Read on to find out why.
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N.B. Throughout this post, I’ll refer to the forearm muscles collectively as the ”forearms”.
What do the forearms do?
The forearms have many functions; especially if you count the various joint actions that happen at the fingers. For our purposes, wrist flexion (like a wrist curl) works a meaningful proportion of the muscle of the forearms.
The forearm flexors are collectively the largest muscle group in the forearm, so if we are to train the forearms, that’s where our attention should go first. If you really want to, you can train the forearm extensors too, but you’ll hit some fairly steep diminishing returns – the forearm extensors just probably aren’t very big and don’t have the potential to be that large. From here on out, I’ll be referring to the wrist flexors when I use the word “forearms”.
DB Wrist Curls
If I had to select a single “ideal” forearm exercise, it would be the DB wrist curl. Specifically, I would use a bench – if you do them standing, you won’t be able to get a full stretch under any tension, making it a partial ROM exercise.
The reason I think DB wrist curls are slightly superior to their barbell and machine counterparts is because they are unilaterally loaded. Not only is this slightly better for avoiding side to side asymmetries, it is also slightly better in that some people (myself included) get some degree of wrist discomfort from going into deep wrist flexion in combination with the wrist fully supinated. Using dumbbells allows you a bit more freedom – for me, allowing my wrists to pronate slightly makes DB wrist curls much more comfortable.
BB/Ez-Bar/Smith Machine/Machine/Cable Wrist Curls
Again, I recommend using a bench to get a longer ROM. Using an ez-bar may a bit more comfortable for some people than using a regular barbell. Experiment with different variations to see which gives you the best Stimulus to Fatigue Ratio!
What NOT to do
Farmer’s Walks
I used to be that guy. Yeah, I used to be the guy walking between the row of ellipticals and the row of rowing machines to do my farmer’s walks. Simply put, Farmer’s Walks just aren’t a great forearm exercise. They train the forearms isometrically (i.e. at a constant muscle length), which we know likely isn’t ideal for muscle growth – and they’re not even training the forearms when they are fully lengthened. Then comes the issue of how fatiguing Farmer’s Walks are; they fatigue (and do not stimulate well) the traps, the glutes, the spinal extensors, the quads, the calves, etc. They can also be somewhat unstable. Finally, programming Farmer’s Walks is annoying. Do you program time? Distance? How do you gauge proximity to failure? They are also somewhat impractical to program. If you do them first in a session – if forearm growth is a priority – they bleed a ton of systemic fatigue into the rest of your session. If you do them last, that won’t be great for growing the forearms, since exercise order makes the exercises you do first more effective and the ones you do last less effective. To summarize, don’t do them if forearm growth is a goal.
Reverse Grip Curls
I’m not sure how common this is, but I have seen some people claim reverse grip curls are a great forearm exercise. There are several issues with this. First, as far as the forearms go, reverse grip curls train the extensors, not the flexors. As I previously mentioned, the forearm extensors are a relatively small muscle group, even when compared to the flexors. The second issue is that unless you purposely extend your wrists during each rep, it only trains the extensors isometrically. Moreover, the muscle length of the extensors is not a fully lengthened one.
That wraps up the forearms.
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