When we talk about the forearm muscle, we often think about the impressive and popular Popeye forearm which stands out most from his body. This muscle has a major importance in your body. It will help you when you have to lift heavy things for eg moving a heavy table whereby the forearm is used as a support. If your forearm is weak, you'll have a tough time lifting heavy objects.

But the forearm muscle is often neglected. You'll rarely see people at the gym working on their forearms seriously. While it's true that some exercises like the bent over rows, pull ups, lat pull down, seated cable rows and barbell curls will work the forearms to a certain extent, they aren't suitable for the forearms specifically. If you focus on some forearm builder isolation exercise, you'll get a more complete forearm workout.

The secret to building big forearm muscle is to really strain the forearm muscle fibers. You won't grow your forearms by fueling it with spinach :).

The two most common exercises to build the forearm are the wrist curl palms up and the wrist curl palms down which target your forearm muscles entirely.

You can do wrist url either with barbell or dumbbell. If you use barbell, your arms are spaced out about 8 inches. If you opt for the dumbbell, you can do one arm at a time or both arms simultaneously, hence you will hold two dumbbells. It will be a bit like with a barbell but you'll isolate your forearm muscles left and right much more.

You can perform the wrist curls while sitting on a bench and placing your forearms on your legs or you can use the bench itself as support. Lifting heavy weights enough to allow you to perform in the 6-10 repeats is recommended to add mass in your forearms. Do 4-5 sets for each forearm. Train your forearms once or twice per week maximum. Allow 4 days rest if you train twice eg Forearms - Tuesday, Saturday.

If you eat right ie a high-protein diet and have adequate rest, your forearms will develop more muscles and will become thicker.

About the author

Jean Lam is the webmaster of Body Building Resource which provides articles on weight training, nutrition and fitness, body building book and DVDs.