Dumbbell workouts can offer you impressive benefits for many muscles but what are some forearm exercises you can do with dumbbells?
Dumbbells are handles with weights attached to them, they are one of the most popular types of gym equipment, and for a good reason. Dumbells can play a role in many exercises for a wide variety of muscles.
When they hear the words arm muscles, most people think about huge biceps and massive triceps. While these make up a big part of the arm muscle mass you don’t want to forget about your forearm muscles.
While you definitely train your forearm muscles with heavy lifts like deadlifts and exercises on the pull-up bar, you can also do specific exercises with dumbbells to train this part of your arm. Dumbbells are ideal for this since they are a compact weight that allows a lot of wrist mobility.
Keep in mind that even though there are upsides, your injury risk is generally also higher when you do exercises with more weight/resistance. Espcially if you have a history of wrist issues you may want to talk to your primary care provider before starting a new workout routine.
1. Wrist curls
To do one palm-up wrist curl repetition take the following steps:
- Stand up straight with your arms hanging beside you. Each hand holds a dumbbell with a supinated grip which means with your hand palms facing forward in starting position.
- Bring your lower arms upward until they are in a horizontal position.
- Slowly tilt your hands downward as far as you comfortably can. Keep your lower arms and the rest of your body in the same position during the rest of the exercise.
- Tilt your hands upward as far as you comfortably can in a controlled motion.
If you notice that you use the rest of your arm or body to move the weight up and down you can sit down somewhere and place your lower arm on your upper leg. That way it becomes a lot easier to make the exercise focus on your lower arms.
By changing the rotation of your lower arm when doing wrist curls you engage different parts. The palm-up version engages the lower arm muscles at the side of your hand palms. The palm-down version the opposite lower arm muscles.
2. Reverse curls
At first most bicep curls may look more or less the same. However, by making small changes in grip and upward motion you change on what arm muscles you focus. To do a reverse curl take the following steps:
- Stand up straight with your arms hanging beside you. Each hand holds a dumbbell with a pronated grip which means with your hand palms facing backward in starting position.
- Slowly fold your arms at the elbows as far as you can. Keep your upper arms in the same position throughout the exercise.
- Lower the dumbbells back into starting position in a controlled motion.
By doing this exercise with a reverse grip you focus more on your brachioradialis, a forearm muscle and less on your biceps brachii, the muscle most people think of when hearing the word bicep.
3. Front & back wrist lifts
To do a front & back wrist lift take the following steps:
- Stand up straight with your arms hanging beside you. Each hand holds a dumbbell with a neutral grip which means with your hand palms facing each other.
- Lift the front of the dumbbells upward as far as you safely can.
- Return to starting position.
- Lift the back of the dumbbells upward as far as you safely can.
- Return to starting position.
You can also do this exercise only with the front lift or only with the back lift.
4. Zottman curl
To do a Zottman curl take the following steps:
- Stand up straight with your arms hanging beside you. Each hand holds a dumbbell with your hand palms facing forward in starting position.
- Slowly fold your arms at the elbows as far as you can. Keep your upper arms and the rest of your body in the same position throughout the exercise.
- At the top of the movement twist your hands 180 degrees inward so that your hand palms face forward.
- Lower the dumbbells until your arms are stretched in a controlled motion.
- If you want to do another repetition twist the dumbbells back into starting position.
The Zottman curl is basically a combination of the regular bicep curl on the way up and a reverse curl on the way down. Similar to reverse curls the Zottman curl exercise engages your brachioradialis forearm muscles on the way down.
One potential benefit of the Zottman curl is that you are able to train your brachioradialis with weights too heavy for a regular reverse curl since you use your bicep brachii muscles for the upward motion.
5. 180 degree dumbbell rotations
To do a 180 degree dumbbell rotation take the following steps:
- Stand up straight with your arms hanging beside you. Each hand holds a dumbbell with your hand palms facing forward in starting position.
- Twist your wrists 180 degrees, half a circle, inward until your hand palms face backward.
- Twist your wrists back to starting position.
These forearm dumbbell exercises do not look the most impressive but if you give them a try you will see that they can definitely give your forearms a hard time.
6. Farmer’s walk
The farmer’s walk is a strength training exercise where you simply pick up two dumbbells from the ground and walk a certain distance or time. Make sure you keep your posture upright and your palms facing your body.
This movement engages a wide variety of muscles like your forearm muscles, trapezius muscles, calves, quadriceps, core, glutes, and hamstrings.
More specifically, this compound movement will mostly help you train muscle endurance in your forearm grip muscles and to some extent in your trapezius muscles.
You can also make this more of an isolation exercise but just standing in place while holding heavy dumbbells. This will not look that impressive but will help you train muscle endurance in your forearm grip muscles.
