So, if you want to build a wider forums, whether you're talking about this direction here or this
direction here, the good news is I've got you covered today. Because there's a right way to
do it and maybe a much more right way to do it. The thing you have to do first for me, though,
is not make the mistake of blaming your lack of forearm size on something that you can't control.
If you look at the forearms themselves, you should notice one thing, that down here,
anywhere passed about this part of the forearm is mostly just tendons. The bellies of the muscle die
a lot higher up in the forearm. And therefore, if you're looking at your skinny wrist and saying,
there's no way I can build my forearms up, instead of blaming that blame your parents because there's
nothing you're going to be able to do about increasing your bone size. You're stuck there,
but you can do something here. And we want to start by talking about how we can get
more of this width here from top to bottom. Then we've got to look at the extensor side
of the forearm. And for me, there's going to be two muscles that you want to focus on. One
is actually something you're probably not even thinking about right now. And the other one is
this and this is the extensor carpi radialis And I'm sure if you're training your forearms,
you're doing a lot of that because you're probably doing a lot of reverse risk
curls with a dumbbell. That's great. However, when I pick up this dumbbell,
watch what actually happens because this is pretty interesting. Just by holding this dumbbell here,
the muscle that pops out the most or fills the most space in your forearm is actually this right
here. That's the brachioradialis and that is not a wrist extension muscle because it doesn't even
cross the wrist it ends over here on the radius. So, what we want to do is focus on flexion of the
elbow when we want to build up that muscle. Now, when I add the extension part here, you can
see that that muscle that you're trying to build this extensor carpi radialis lies right underneath
that muscle. However, it's not all that big of a muscle. So, if you're trying to build
bigger forearms and increase their width, you really have to focus on
building up this brachioradialis. So, a lot of us have probably used a reverse curl in the past to
do this and you'll grab a straight bar. And the nice thing about the straight bar is it's going
to full pronate your hand in order to grab it in this position here. And we know that there's
a synergy between the brachioradialis, the biceps and brachialis. And the more supinated we are, the
more the biceps is going to want to take over. So, if we can get into a fully pronated position,
then we can kind of favor more of the work being done by the brachioradialis, and therefore
help to build it. The problem is some of us can't get in this position because of our wrists. So,
you would grab an easy curl bar from this position here and we could see that we're less pronated.
So, we have a little bit of easement on the wrists themselves and you would perform it with this.
Now, here's the interesting thing, the range of motion on the exercise matters. Why? Once again,
because of that synergy overlap between the brachioradialis and the brachialis. If we look
at the skeleton here, we can see that as we break his arm, we can see that the brachialis is starts
up higher inserts just past the elbow joint. Whereas the brachioradialis starts lower and
starts all the way down here. Remember, it doesn't cross the wrist, so it has no impact on whether
you extend your wrist or you don't. But what this is is important because
if we want to favor more brachioradialis, then we want to decrease that range of motion. Why?
If I was going to try to pull this plate up, right, and I had a big, long lever like this,
this would be the brachioradialis. I don't get a lot of force capability to pull this up from here.
I'd be much better off coming real close to it, like the brachialis and easily pulling it up.
But once I get it into this position here and it's up enough, well, pulling from back here
is very easy to keep that force going. So, if we can abbreviate that range of motion,
we're going to have that same capability. Now, the way we do this is we just start the
bar at our waist, and we turn this into sort of a reverse drag curl. So, we start here at the waist,
which is already going to cut down some of that range of motion from that full extension.
Right? Making sure that the b brachioradialis is doing more of the work and all we do is lift it
straight up. Okay, getting all that elbow flexion and you can see the brachioradialis is doing a
lot of the work right there in the form. But now we mentioned that extensor carpi radialis,
that muscle that lives right beneath it. How do we work it? All we got to do is just end this with an
extension at the top. So down slow, up, extend, down to the waist, up, extend just like this.
So, you can see this will hammer both muscles at the same time and light them up in a way you
probably have never experienced before. That's part of the equation. If you want to go and focus
on really building this up, you have to also focus on how you can lift more weight. And we know that
when we're in more of a neutral position, like a hammer curl, we're going to have a better line of
pull for the brachioradialis and we're going to be able to overload it. So, of course, I don't
want to just do that lighter exercise. I do want to do heavier hammer curls. Just understand in
this position here, there's more work being done by the biceps and of course the brachialis because
we're getting away from full pronation. But you still want to have that one, two
combination. Now, what about the other side? This side here, to build this up, this width. Here's
where a lot of people make a big mistake. Again, they focus on all kinds of risk curls. Again,
doing it from this position this time. Good. But realize that there's a bigger chunk of these
muscles responsible for something different, and it's going to be the action of the fingers. So,
if you look here, this is what happens when I just isolate wrist flexion. You can see what happens to
these muscles in the forearm. But when I do this, you can see just how much more work is being done
in this area. So, if I'm not working on resisted flexion of the digits in the fingers
that I'm not really building these muscles up to the full capacity.
So how can we combine them once again in the same way you come right here, you do this exercise.
You grab a cable, or if you're at home, you use a band. I'll show you how to do that quickly.
But you put the cable in the distal part of your fingers just like that. And then I'm going to pull
down and get that clenching action that we're looking at before. Pull down and then pull into
wrist flexion. So, all the way up into the fingers down wrist flexion, just like this pull and down.
Probably one of the most intense contractions that you'll ever feel on this side of your forearm.
And one of the best ways to actually build this up and what's nice is you get a chance with the stack
to be able to just increase the weight as you're able to handle more.
Now, for those that are asking. But Jeff, didn't you say one time that letting it drift into the
distal fingers can overload that muscle to the point where it causes pain in the medial elbow?
You're not going to be able to do that there because the loads are way, way, way, way, way less
than what you would do that with when you're doing chin-ups or pullups or lap pull downs,
where when the bar drifts too far, it overloads this muscle that it can't handle it.
Ironically, as you start to strengthen that muscle with the exercises I just showed you,
you actually start to fortify yourself against that injury happening when you go back to those
other exercises. So again, I mentioned if you were going to do this at home, you're
just going to want to drop down. Same thing, a band hooked up to a pull up bar, come down here,
put it up into the distal fingers. Pull down just a bit, you're going to curl and then curl.
Make sure you work in the resistance through the hand all the way down into the forearm.
Guys, if you're looking for more workouts, we actually have a perfect forearm workout
that you can see here. If you're looking for full programs, guys, we always put the science
into everything we do you can find them at athleanx.com. If you like the video guys
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