What are YOUR best exercises for growing Popeye FOREARMS?

[N_I_C_K]

Heavy deadlifts, heavy rows, heavy chins, heavy hammer curls.

Never use straps on anything. Ever. If double-overhand gets too tough during the set use mixed grip. Switch your mixed grip a few times when that gets too tired. Use hook grip when your mixed grip is too tired. Use chalk if you have too. No gloves either.

Farmer's walk with a combined weight of your max deadlift (so half your max deadlift in each hand).

Use a thick (axel) bar for deadlifts, cleans, presses, curls. Hell, use it for everything. For dumbells start using fatgripz or wrap then with a towel. Fat bars are a great way to build size and strength in the forearms. Thick bar reverse curls are awesome.

Hand grippers - CoC, AtomGripz, Heavy Grips...anything. They're pretty good for forearm size just don't over-do them.

Block weights are good, any sort of pinch grip lift is good too. Doing regular lifts with a vertical bar is fun also. The wrist roller is a hell of a workout.

After all that, then you can think about fiddly stuff like wrist curls.

Listen to this man!

 

[Digitalash]

agreed on genetics, never really isolate forearms and they look damn near as big as my upper arm lol

any heavy back work will put the size on though, maybe do some isolation for the top part of the forearm if it starts to lag

 

[ConJnr21]

how do you include them in a workout? seperate or on the end of a bicep workout or something?

 

[leeisva]

A pull up is by far and away the best excercise for building for-arms and toning them.
Not chins... but i guess they couldnt hurt...
Let me clarify:
To do a pull-up, you face forward and grab the bar with your palms facing away from you. Chin-ups require you to reverse your grip so that your palms are toward you and you can see your fingers.
The average trainer will find it easier to do a narrow grip chin-up than any other style or grip. Chin-ups are easier because they place the majority of resistance on your bicep muscles. This is similar to a curl in weight lifting, which allows you to use the large bicep muscles to complete the motion. A pull-up puts more stress on the forearms and lat muscles. Think of this as similar to a reverse curl in weight lifting which forces you to use more grip and forearm strength to complete the motion. The hardest excercise is a wide grip pull-up, which puts the most pressure possible on your lats and forearms.

 

[FUZO]

For me hammer curls and reverse curls and I constantly use a hand grip all day and aqueeze it.

 

[jtterrible]

yay I never knew I had genetics on my side.. calves and forearms have always just blew up no matter what I did.. Best forearm work I know is standing rows.. something about that grip just makes my forearms blow up massively

 

[CaptainNapalm]

Good question but I've come to realize, just from personal experience, that forearm development (similar to calf development) is very much genetic. Some 5 years ago I made room for some fancy forearm exercises in my workout. I trained them for a few months straight and other than getting a nice pump every workout I really didn't see them develop that much, if at all. I have slightly bigger forearms now than I did when I use to train them alone so I don't even bother with them anymore, I devote more energy to other lifts instead which train forearms indirectly in some way or another.

 

[leeisva]

yeah my forearms come natty too, and my calves are... yeah, i have literal muscle on top of muscle, ill have to post a pic soon.

I leg pressed 1000 lbs the other day, i weigh 160ish... i thought is was cool

 

[suprfast]

The only thing I didn't see was Hang Cleans. My forearms feel like they want to explode by the end of my 5x5 hang cleans.