Why is “neck” never included on a body part split? Because few people want to grow massive necks. Here’s a picture of Jeff King and his massive neck, enjoy:
Most of us guys want big arms though. What I’ve noticed is that when we think of “arm day,” we almost only think of biceps and triceps. The definition of an arm includes everything from the shoulder to the hand. Why do we rarely train shoulders and forearms on arm day?
Shoulders get worked on chest day by proxy with all the pressing and fly exercises, that’s why “chest and shoulders” are often paired. Shoulders require a ton of work alone, adding them into an already packed arm day can be a bit too much for some of us. I for one, do not train shoulders on “arm day.” Because pressing heavy things overhead has been the best thing for building my shoulders and that'll take too much energy away from other arm muscle groups during any particular workout.
How about forearms? I think people skip forearms not because they don’t want bigger more developed forearms; I think it’s because we hate wrist curls with dumbbells. When we think about working out the forearms, that’s what most of us think about. That exercise is painful, time-consuming, weird, and annoying to track.
That’s why arm wrestling is pretty cool; it’s highly technical wrist curling disguised as a combat sport. Just kidding arm wrestling is more than that, but anyone who has ever played around with legit arm wrestling knows the awesome forearm pump you can get from practicing.
Arm wrestling is a testament to the efficacy of working the forearms to grow them. Arm wrestlers don’t just spend time arm wrestling to build those forearms though. They grow them with special exercises. Are any of those special exercises wrist curls with dumbbells? Nope.
We don’t need wrist curls with dumbbells to grow forearms! There is a whole world of fun, new exercises to explore to build those meat hooks! Start by modifying some general bicep exercises. Toss on a pair of our Genie Grips on the last few sets of ez-curls or dumbbell hammer curls. Dumbbell hammer curls in particular with Genie Grips is an awesome second exercise in a superset!
Here’s a creative use of our R.G.T. as a single cable bicep curl with incline bench support, this will build your biceps and forearms together:
The best way to integrate forearm work into arm day is to toss in a few sets of these “harder to hold” bicep exercises at the end of your arm workout. Also, try drop setting from harder to hold variations to normal variations. There are a lot of cool tools, exercises, and techniques to build bigger forearms while saving tons of time and energy. We sell some of those tools, and we’ll show you more of those exercises and techniques in this blog in the future. You CAN grow your forearms if you work them, and that work doesn't have to suck! Let us know in the comments below what you think about training forearms on arm day. Also, do you hate dumbbell wrist curls too?!