THE BEST BARBELL-ONLY FOREARM WORKOUT

If you’re a minimalist, then you’v e got to love when you can do your normal workout and get a whole new muscle-building stimulus out of it with almost no extra effort. In fact, one way to get great forearms is to do the same curling exercises you ty pically would but with a towel around the bar to increase the recruitment of forearm muscles. This workout makes minor tweaks to a basic arm routine to render it twice as effective.

HOW IT WORKS 

Using a towel makes curls, which normally hit just the biceps, incorporate more of the forearm. To take it a step further, we’re prescribing reverse curls later in the workout to target the brachioradialis (the long forearm muscle that points to your thumb) and brachialis (a cylinder ofmuscle between your biceps and triceps), but your biceps will still get hit hard
at the same time. You don’t mind that, do you?

DIRECTIONS 

Complete all the prescribed sets for one exercise before moving on to the next.  

1 TOWEL CURL

SETS: 3 REPS: 12–15, 10–12, 6–8 REST: 60 SEC.

Loop a thick towel around the bar so that it doesn’t let your hands close all the way when you grasp it. Hold the bar with an overhand, shoulder-width grip, in front of your thighs. Without allowing your upper arms to move forward, curl the bar. Add weight each set so you must reduce your reps.  

2 REVERSE CURL

SETS: 3 REPS: 12 REST: 60 SEC.

Grasp the bar overhand at whatever width is comfortable. Keeping your upper arms against your sides, curl the bar.  

3 REVERSE CURL 21

SETS: 2 REPS: 7 (EACH POSITION) REST: 60 SEC.

Curl the bar halfway up and hold for one second. Lower it back and repeat for six more reps. Then curl the bar to the mid point and, beginning there, curl it all the way up for seven reps, using the mid point as the “bottom” of each rep. Finally, perform seven full-range reps.