A Simple Three-Step System for Bigger Forearms
Dr. Jim Stoppani fixes your lack of forearm size and thickness with a proven approach on arm day.
If we were to loosely apply the 80-20 rule (aka the Pareto Principle) to forearm training, it would go something like this:
- 80% of people in the gym don’t train forearms aside from the stimulation the relatively small muscle group gets from exercises for the back and biceps and other heavy barbell lifts.
- Of those 20% who do train forearms with isolation exercises, 80% of them are doing it half-assed and/or flat-out ineffectively.
If you’re someone who naturally has big, thick forearms and can get away with not doing wrist curls and reverse wrist curls and no one will notice, good for you. If that’s not you (and chances are it isn’t), it’s time to start putting more focus on your forearms with a routine that will actually deliver results.
Why? Because it’s a shame to put all those hours into building respectable biceps and triceps only to have the lower half of your arms looking puny in a T-shirt. And yes, people notice.
Bigger Forearms in 3 Steps
In the below video, Dr. Jim Stoppani breaks down a very basic yet effective template for building thicker wrist flexor and extensor muscles. His guidelines have to do with when to train forearms and what exercises to train them with. Here’s what he recommends:
- Train forearms in the same workout as biceps. Hit the biceps, and then go directly into forearms. If you’re doing back and/or triceps in the workout as well, do those prior to biceps.
- Do segway exercises. After working your biceps with supinated (palms facing up or forward) barbell, dumbbell, cable, and/or machine curls, do either hammer curls or reverse curls. These two exercises are considered “transitional” moves, as they hit both the biceps brachii and the forearms, as well as the brachialis muscle. With either of these exercises, you’re finishing off your biceps while also preparing your forearms for the isolated work to come – the perfect segway.
- Do both wrist curls and reverse wrist curls. For maximum development, you’ll need to train both sides of the forearms. The palm side of the forearms are trained with standard wrist curls (wrist flexion), while the opposite side is worked with reverse wrist curls (wrist extension). Do at least two sets of each exercise, and feel free to superset them to save time. Dr. Stoppani recommends doing reverse wrist curls first, since that’s the weaker of the two movements.
That’s the basic gist of building bigger forearms. For more specific instructions, watch Dr. Stoppani’s YouTube video above.
And for a complete arm-building training routine for the biceps, triceps, and forearms, nothing beats Dr. Stoppani’s Six Weeks to Sick Arms program on JimStoppani.com.
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