In my opinion, forearms and hands are some of the most underrated muscles in the body. While forearm, grip strength training, and hand strengthening exercises won’t necessarily add mass or build impressive looking muscles, these types of workouts can help develop functional strength. Overall forearm strength is a necessity for several types of lifts. Anyone with weak forearms may be limited in their ability to perform lifts. Also, when you begin performing forearm exercises, you may be astonished at how much better you can execute other lifts. Possessing enhanced grip and hand strength can be helpful for things such as hauling luggage and playing all sorts of sports.

You really will add strength to your other lifts if you build up your forearms. As an illustration, it is difficult to perform deadlifts and pull ups if you are unable to hold onto the bar itself. Broadly stated, the forearms tend to get a sufficient amount of work just through exercises involving pulling. However, it can be beneficial to add additional forearm training exercises to your routine.

In doing forearm exercises, I generally work in the 10 rep range. This is one area of strength training that I think benefits from a slight endurance approach. Forearm exercises will help to increase your overall functional strength as a means of improving lifts and other related training exercises, however you should also give some focus to strength training of your hands and your overall ability to grip.

It is possible to have both strong forearms and weak hands, but it has been proven that when you have strong hands you will ultimately also have strong forearms. This is why grip strength training is so important, as it will increase strength in both the hands and the forearms.

To properly train your hands, you should try to include training for each specific grip type. For example, holding a heavy object like one or two weight plates between your fingers and thumb will help increase what is known as your “pinch” strength. You can build supporting grip strength by grasping significantly heavy things, including dumbbells, or by hanging from a chin up bar. If you wrap rubber bands tightly around your fingers and work to open and close your hand against the tension that is created, you will be training what is known as your “extensor” muscles.

Hand grippers really work to help increase your “crushing grip” strength. Unfortunately, the ones sold in most stores are really cheap and built for very high reps. In truth, squeezing a tennis ball would get you the same type of workout as these cheap grips. Make sure you go out of your way to find Heavy Grips or Captains of Crush in order to get a truly beneficial strength training workout for your hands. These grippers can be extremely challenging and are built for serious strengthening training, giving up to 350+ pounds of torque resistance every time you close the grippers. You don’t need me to show you a full routine, just be sure to include a combination of standard squeezes with inverted squeezes and add in negative training exercises that require you to squeeze onto the heavy duty gripper for as long as you are able. The hands heal very quickly so you can perform a routine upwards of 4-5 times per week if you’d like. However, I typically perform these exercises three days a week.

The fitness tips outlined above will definitely work to improve your hand strengthening, forearm and grip strength training just by adding them into your regular routine a couple times a week. When you improve your hand strength you will see the results in improve functional strength and your ability to effortlessly complete various pulling exercises. If you train effectively, you might even be able to do some of the amazing things that Bruce Lee was able to accomplish. For starters, just focus on getting strong enough to carry a 60lb suitcase through the airport without wheeling it along.

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