What are the BEST FOREARM Exercises? (Science Explained)

are you looking to build some forearm size well let me put on my hat of plus five looks maxing and let's get into it here are the best form exercises to build size according to the science welcome back Dr Milo wolf here today PhD in sport Science with wolf coaching and real mewing enjoyer as you can tell I've been training my forearms for a few years I've also been researching how to lift and how to grow muscle for a few years Is So based on both my own personal experience and my knowledge as a sports

scientist here's what I think are the best form exercises before we actually go into those we need to understand what the forms actually do if we want to Target them the forms are actually pretty complicated ultimately they're responsible for moving your hands around so they get pretty complicated your hands are some of the coolest things ever you can do a lot of things with hands you hear me but as far as our own purposes go there's three muscle groups we need to be aware of the first one is the finger flexors as the name entails

these are responsible for flexing your fingers so going like this essentially second we have the wrist flexors which essentially just flex your wrist importantly these are going to be the meat and potatoes of our form training and that is because they're twice as big as the next muscle Group which is the wrist extensors the wrist extensors as you might expect do wrist extension however as I mentioned these are about half the size of the wrist flexors collectively so if you only train one forearm muscle it should be the wrist flexors as I mentioned earlier the

forearm is a really complicated set of muscles your hands do a lot of things but for our purposes really we can break down these three muscle groups I mentioned into two kind of exercise categories one will be wrist flexion exercises where you're also flexing the fingers and the other is wrist extension exercises with just these two categories of exercises will have effectively targeted a lot of the forearm musculature at once or at the very least all the musculature that is big enough for us to really care about aesthetically importantly some of your wrist flexor muscles

like the flexor digitorum superficialis and profundus are both wrist flexors and also finger flexors or if you want a more complicated science we for your day today metac corop falango flexors nailed it now one implication of this anatomy where the wrist flexors are often also finger flexors is that to maximize the stretch on the wrist flexors we also want to fully extend the fingers at the bottom of wrist curls to get a deeper stretch on some of the biggest forearm muscles namely the wrist flexors unfortunately as you might expect there aren't really many studies out

there directly looking at form hypertrophy so in fact that is a PhD project for anyone out there interested in looking at getting jacked but in the meantime we can rely on evidence-based principles to still inform our programming when training the forarms and on that note what do we look for in a good forarm exercise exercise well in the absence of any direct studies we look for the same things that we do in any good muscle growth exercise and here's what the criteria that make up a good exercise are editor pull up the optimal exercise [Music]

checklist please editor come on man I just asked you to pull up the checklist please don't don't do this to me bro please the first criteria of a good exercise is that it should Target one of the primary functions of the muscle we're trying to Target in this case that is either wrist flexion or wrist extension depending on what you're targeting the second Criterion for a good exercise is that the target muscle group should be the limiting factor or very close to it in something like a forers walk the chances of the forms being the

limiting factor are a little bit lower on account of the traps potentially giving out first or any other number of muscle groups additionally Farmers walks are also isometric holds which may not be ideal for hypertrophy next whatever exercise we do pick should be stretch friendly and there three components that go into this the first is that it should place the target muscle into that lengthened position that is likely beneficial for growth the second is that in that position there should be plenty of tension on the muscle and the final one is that the exercise would

ideally be lengthened partial friendly lengthen partials is essentially when you perform partial repetitions in the stretched aspect of a movement for example in a wrist curl that would be just the bottom half of the movement why is an exercise being length and partial friendly potentially important well we now have five studies in total comparing length and partials to a four range of motion with four finding better hypertrophy following lengthen partials as compared to a for range of motion we also have around eight studies comparing partials at different muscle lengths around five studies comparing asymmetric holds

at different muscle lengths a couple studies comparing seated calf raises to standing calf raises and broadly speaking this collection of studies does suggest that lengthened training usually leads to more hypertrophy compared to shortened training and so while I don't have a ton of direct evidence yet comparing length and partials to full range of motion if we can incorporate it it may just give us more growth next up whatever exercise we pick would ideally not be actually loaded that is to say there wouldn't be much load on the spine and that's where an exercise like the

forer's walk also kind of fails in comparison to like a wrist curl a forer's walk does absolutely train the forearms but it does also fatigue you overall with the loads being used being much larger than they would be in a wrist curl and there being a much greater degree of St ization involved all around and so a farmer's walk will in all likelihood be quite substantially more fatiguing compared to a wrist curl but for not much additional direct forarm stimulus there are a couple of bonus points that you may want to consider in your exercise

selection the first is if you're pressed for time pick exercises that are time efficient generally exercises involving dumbbells and stack loaded machines will be a lot more time efficient than barbells or plate loaded machines indeed dumbbells and stack loaded machines or even cables are essentially just Plug and Play you set up the weight and you get good and so these exercises can be a bit more time efficient all else being equal the second bonus factor is micro loadability or essentially what is the smallest increment you can adjust the load by relative to how much absolute

load you're using essentially if it's very micr loadable you can easily progress weight week to week and not be constrained to just adding reps week to week and this is where exercises like the dumbbell wrist curl may not be quite ideal in the sense that you're unlikely to be able to jump 5 lbs on each dumbbell each week you will have to resort to reps it's not a huge deal for hypertrophy as we have one study by Plotkin and colleagues showing similar hypertrophy whether we're progressing via load or VI reps but it is something to

consider all right based on all these criteria for determining what the best exercises and on the anatomy of the forearms what do I think are the best forearm exercises as I mentioned earlier I think it makes sense to break it down into two categories wrist flexors SL finger flexors and wrist extensors here's the best exercise for each C for the wrist flexors and finger flexors we have the dumbbell wrist curl or the barbell wrist curl and let me break down why that's the best pick for form hypertrophy in my opinion first up compared to something

like a forers walk this is Nona loaded with the fors essentially being the only moving part it is also overwhelmingly likely that the target muscle is going to be the limiting factor and going to be pushed sufficiently close to failure to maximize muscle growth the big differentiating factor between a bench wrist curl and a stack standing wrist curl is that the bench wrist curl actually gets you a deeper stretch under tension and so the bench wrist curl with dumbbells or with a barbell is likely a better option for muscle growth compared to the standing wrist

curl because it allows you to both extend the fingers fully and extend the wrist fully it targets some of the primary functions of the biggest muscles in the forearm why the dumbbell wrist curl over the barbell wrist curl well for a couple reasons one as I mentioned earlier it is likely a little bit more time efficient because essentially just plug and play you grab the dumbbells and get going and the second reason is that because of the freedom that dumbbells allow you you're not locked in to a high degree of superation that can be uncomfortable

in my limited experience for some people's risks ultimately give both of these a try and see which one you prefer but I do think that dumbbells on average are just a bit more flexible But ultimately dumbbells are no less injurious than Bells inherently it is just my personal experience and my coaching experience that people typically experience less pain with dumbbells when they do experience pain with a barbell variation so the barbell bench wrist curl is by no means a bad exercise and you can absolutely use it within your routine to really good effect and the

single best exercise for the wrist extensors which again are about a half the size of the wrist flexors so only really train these if you want to maximize the size of your forearms looks maxing the best exercise for those in my opinion is the dumbbell wrist extension on the bench for the same reasons as the dumbbell wrist curl being a good exercise for the wrist Flex this exercise allows you to get a full stretch it's time efficient by virtue of using dumbbells you're not locked into fullon pronation you have a bit more freedom and importantly

it also makes for a really easy super set with the dumbbell bench wrist curl you can essentially just grab another pair of dumbbells or even the same pair of dumbbells by going a little bit higher in reps on the wrist curls and a little bit lower in reps on the wrist extensions you'll typically find you're using pretty similar loads most people can risk curl more than they can risk extend equally if you want to use a barbell the barbell bench wrist extension is a great option again I wouldn't recommend the standing variation because you are

missing out on that loaded stretch there are two more things I would like to say to close out this video first are there other forarm exercises out there yes are there other muscle groups that we may not have trained with just these two exercises yes but I also think that at some point you are running into severely diminishing returns if you want to train your forearms you're likely of this the forearms aren't the biggest MUSC group on the body they do not make the biggest impact on your overal physique and so personally I wouldn't go

anywhere past doing wrist extensions at that point you're already targeting such a small portion of your musculature that your returns have diminished severely But ultimately you do you and the second thing I would like to say in closing is that if you enjoyed this video but want more depth on form training consider checking out the Strong by science article on the forums in the description below it's got a lot of information on the anatomy including smaller muscle groups that you may be interested in if you enjoyed this video please consider liking commenting subscribing leave a

comment down below letting me know if you enjoyed the video if there are any other muscle groups you would like to see me cover if you would like to get coaching by me check out the link above and with all that being said have a phenomenal day and I will see you guys my subscribers in that next one peace all right are the camera's off I'm going to go get back to my uh routine of meu now see see you later