Bigger forearms are both aesthetically pleasing and provide great strength for daily tasks and many types of sports. Your forearm muscles are responsible for a lot of daily grasping and grappling work.
While it’s common to build up your lower arms using weights, sometimes you don’t have equipment readily available to you. If you’re looking for how to get bigger forearms at home, you’ve come to the right place.
How to Get Bigger Forearms at Home
Whether you’re working out at home for convenience or because you don’t have access to a gym, that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice having an effective workout.
When it comes to building strong muscles in your forearms, there are exercises that can easily be done at home without standard gym equipment. Here are three ways for how to get bigger forearms at home.
Knuckle Push Ups
Rather than doing standard push ups, incorporate knuckle push-ups into your routine. The reason you don’t want to stick with the classic push up is because it does not actively train your forearms. Instead, it uses the forearm muscle mostly for keeping you balanced and stable.
With knuckle push ups, your wrists are in a vulnerable position, and your forearms are working to protect them from giving out.
The overall concept is simple. Place yourself in the normal pushup position, and rather than being on your hands, reposition so you are balancing on your knuckles. From there, execute the normal push up move.
To make this move effective as possible, place your weight on only the first two knuckles of each hand. As you go through the push up movement, if you roll back and use all four knuckles of each hand, re-do the movement.
Alleviate Pain
As mentioned above, your wrists are in a state of vulnerability while executing this move. If you have weak wrists, be cautious about doing this move to avoid injury.
Additionally, your knuckles can quickly get in pain if you do this exercise on wooden or concrete flooring. Try this out on a soft surface first, such as carpet or grass. This helps to alleviate some stress on your knuckles until they are used to the movement.
Depending on the size of forearms you are aiming for, you will want to include other workouts in your routine along with this one. Doing this exercise alone will not result in massive forearms.
Chair Raises
If you’re at home and don’t have access to weights, grab the nearest chair instead. Using the chair in a creative way, you can actually build massive forearms right in your living room. Also known as “chair ups,” this exercise utilizes your grip and forearm muscles as you’re lying on the ground to raise up the chair.
How it Works
Start by placing the chair so it’s facing towards you. Then, lie on your stomach on the ground with your arms extended towards the chair legs. From here, grip onto the chair legs and lift the chair using your forearm muscles.
The key to this move (and all variations of it shared below) is to keep your elbows on the ground throughout the exercise. This will keep the focus on your forearms. While this sounds simple, your lower arms will be burning by the time you’re done with these reps!
Here are a couple different variations of this move you can try:
- Static hold: With the chair legs hovering above the ground, hold the chair up without moving it.
- Twist the chair: Move your wrists from left to right to pivot the chair so it moves side to side.
- Rock the chair: Slowly bring the chair up towards you and then away from you. As it goes away from you, don’t let it touch the ground.
Increase the Difficulty
The best part about this exercise? If it becomes to easy, there are three simple things you can do to make it more challenging:
- Use only your fingers: Rather than gripping the chair with your entire hand, use only your fingers to hold and lift it. This will instantly increase the difficulty of the move.
- Add more weight: Place heavy books on the seat of the chair to add more weight to this exercise. Just make sure the books won’t slide off the chair as you lift and lower it!
- Find a heavier chair: If you have other chairs in your house, swap out your current one with a heavier model.
Door Pull Ups
When determining the best way to get bigger forearms, aim for exercises where you are pulling or lifting rather than pushing. Pulling-based exercises target your forearm muscles more, giving you more visible results. Along with strengthening your lower arms, pull ups help to develop your biceps and back muscles.
If you don’t have a pull up bar at home, a door is a great alternative for doing pull ups on. Before doing this exercise, ensure that the door is strong enough to hold your weight as you hang from it.
Additionally, open the door and place a wedge between the door and the floor so the door doesn’t move as you perform the exercise.
Once the door is properly in position, place your hands arm-width apart on the top of the door. Grip the door firmly, and pull yourself up like you would in a standard bar pull up. To make this more challenging and to place more emphasis on your lower arms, grip the door with only your fingertips.
Conclusion
As you can see, building up massive forearms does not take much equipment. Add these three exercises into your home workout routine to increase the strength in your lower arms!