While the muscles of the bicep gets most of the attention when it’s time for the gun show, without it’s little bro the Brachioradialis Muscle… it wouldn’t be much of anything!  The forearms are a much smaller muscle, but one could argue that they’re far more important.

Brachialis and Brachioradialis Muscle

To keep things simple, we’ll refer to the Brachialis or Biceps Brachii as Biceps and Brachioradialis as the Forearm. I haven’t met many guys or girls who wanted to train forearms for the goal of making them bigger and more “defined” as you would the biceps.  Generally speaking most people are interested in a forearms workout because they’re experiencing Brachioradialis muscle pain or discomfort.  Athletes that rely heavily on grip and forearm strength might be looking for a more sport specific workout to avoid rowing hand blisters or hand muscle pain.

The Best Forearm Exercises to increase Grip Strength

Your “grip strength” is a result of over 35 individual muscles working in unison.  It’s not just the muscles of the hand or the Brachioradialis muscle that’s responsible for that tight squeeze!  Here are a few things you can do to increase your grip strength.

1. Increase the diameter of the bar you’re training with.  This old school trick still works!  Take your gym towel and wrap it around the bar a few times to increase the thickness.  This will make it more challenging to grip the weight and call the muscles of the forearm into action.

2. Don’t use weight lifting straps.  It’s true that lifting straps are an advantage when it comes to pulling exercises and lifting heavy weights like with deadlifts, however what makes straps useful is detrimental to training forearms. Using straps transfers some of the load from your grip to your wrist, thus allowing you to lift heavier weight than you normally would without straps or hooks.  If you’re trying to increase grip strength, then go without straps for awhile.

To help ease hand fatigue and help keep those weights from slipping out of your hands, try a pair of GymPaws Grip Pads for weight lifting!  They’re made from 100% genuine leather so they’ll definitely be durable, plus they have 4 finger loops to keep them in place.

3. Include pull ups into your workout!  Not only are pull ups one of the best overall upper body exercises you can do, they’re awesome for increasing grip and forearm strength and working that Brachioradialis muscle!  Here’s a great video that demonstrates one was you can start training with pull ups (as well as shows GymPaws grip pads in action.)

Any personal trainer will tell you that the key to successful training of any muscle group is proper form.  This just doesn’t involve the mechanics of one specific exercise, but it requires a basic understanding of Kineseology, or how all your different muscle groups work together.

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