Forearms, something that should be basic to our survival has taken a back seat in today’s society. If you have come to this article on forearm workouts at home, it is because you, like us, are willing to improve the strength in your hands and arms, so that your grip is stronger and more durable.
Our forearms are key to hold anything, and as you have already noticed, the motorcycle is not the easiest beast to tame. But come on, that won’t be enough to make you give up, we take it for granted.
You will think about how complex it can be to train something so specific from our homes, in the midst of a difficult context.
But now that you know how important our forearms are, we are going to help you understand what routines, goals and exercises you can do from your own home, so that your forearms do not generate pain and your grip is the most solid and durable.
Bigger or stronger? Differentiate your forearm workouts at home according to your goals
There are different reasons that drive us to work specifically on the forearms.
It is important to be able to understand where your training is going to point,. If your idea is to know how to get bigger forearms at home or how to make them more resistant and what amount of repetitions you will handle in each case.
Endurance
What workouts help the forearm if you want endurance? This should be your goal if you want your forearms to last longer doing the same movement. For this, high repetitions are your thing and you will move in ranges that should exceed 12 continuous executions per set.
In the long run, this will prevent your muscles from getting tired easily and is one of the eight skills that you must master to reach the end of an intense race.
Hypertrophy
If we talk about forearm workouts at home and our idea is to increase the size of our forearms , this objective is the right one. But you should know that looking big doesn’t necessarily mean being really strong for the sport.
This is an aesthetic goal, and it goes very well with showing off your body. You must take into account that it would be incompatible with you if you practice sports such as motorcycle, off-road bike or calisthenics. That’s because the hypertrophy in forearms favors problems such as arm pump. In this type of objectives we aim at a range of between 6 and 12 repetitions.
Maximum strength
It is indirectly related to improving endurance, which is key to specific actions in many sports practices, including you know which one? Yes, you guessed it, the practice of mtb, enduro, and motocross, for example.
Rider, this kind of goal can propel you one step forward at critical moments of the race. Here you will work to have extremely strong forearms and most importantly, functional ones.
The idea is that you are able to apply maximum strength in the shortest time possible. A kind of bonus that you will have when things get difficult on the way.
Decrease injuries
If you already have an injury, before practicing forearm exercises at home, it is important that you get in the hands of a health professional to understand the complexity of the injury and be able to support it through an exercise program that complements your recovery in an active way.
Adapting parts of your training to reduce injuries will bring you a little closer to consistency and enjoyment of what you are most passionate about.
Easy forearm exercises at home
It is clear that in a training center we have different materials that will facilitate the work of the forearms.
But we are not here to make excuses or stop at obstacles and the bike will not care about the social distancing context we have been going through the next time you want to ride it.
The challenge will be the same but don’t worry, you can be prepared through different forearm exercises to do at home, which doesn’t require any special equipment.
Wrist push-ups
These are performed in front plank on the knees with the hand resting on the floor, and then holding all our weight only on the fingers.
Finger kneeling front plank
Hold the front plank position with knees on the ground and all the weight of your body in your straight fingers.
Finger front plank, a good forearm exercise at home
This is the last progression of the set. To execute it, maintain the front plank position removing your knees from the ground.
You will see how hard it is!
Chair grip
We work the isometric grip avoiding flexion, extension, abduction or adduction by grasping the legs of a chair and lifting it off the floor.
Forearm exercises without weights
Here we will practice some exercises to add to our forearm workouts at home that require very simple training equipment and no weights.
Suspensions
We hang from a bar and maintain the position for a certain time with a more or less comfortable grip.
Suspensions with towel
We hang a towel from a bar and maintain the position for a certain time. You need a bar and a towel.
Grip ring
Strengthening work when tightening a rubber ring.
Grip ball
You will compress a ball (e.g. tennis ball) and help both in releasing the hand and finger muscles and in strengthening the flexor muscles.
Powerball
Ball that will allow us to work the flexors and extenders of the forearm through rotation movements of the wrist. We will increase or decrease the intensity ourselves by increasing the rotation or speed.
Finger band (powerfingers)
Rubber bands to work the finger extensors.
Forearm exercises at home with weights
Farmer’s walk (with dumbbells)
Here we will move through space with one or two dumbbells. Our spine should remain straight and our knees should rise to the height of our waist.
In case you do it with only one dumbbell, and especially if you add a lot of weight, you must pay a lot of attention not to lose the balance of your body, sticking your elbows to your sides and keeping your core super active.
Here you have the two options:
Wrist curl with bar or dumbbells
Flexion and extension of the forearm by rotating a bar or dumbbell in our palm and fingers.
How to prevent forearm muscle spasms after workouts
There are a series of errors that are repeated when training, and one of the most frequent is the search for immediate results.
We usually have a constant need to achieve our goals overnight, and the truth is that this approach hardly helps us in any kind of training.
We know it is difficult to assimilate, but demanding twice or three times as much from your body is not going to bring you any closer to your goals. Patience must be your ally.
In fact, what usually happens when we want to reach a goal without respecting the necessary deadlines is the opposite. Our bodies respond with injuries or underperformance to what we call overtraining.
Another very common mistake is to pay little attention to post-training.
But let’s go over some points together that will help you have a clearer picture and prevent the pain in the forearms generated by the exercise routine.
Adaptation time
Progression is the basis for improvement in any new activity. You must start with high repetitions without load, so that both our muscles and our tendons and ligaments adapt to the new exercise.
Once you have established yourself in this rhythm and your body is ready, you will be able to reduce the repetitions and begin to set new objectives, with another level of demand and different types of training according to your goals.
Recovery
We always plan when we are going to work a certain muscle, but we don’t always give the same attention to when we are going to rest it.
This factor will help you in every way to avoid pain after training.
What elements do we use to help our body recover? Physical therapy, myofascial release and stretching will be great friends of our forearms.
Overtraining
We must be aware of how adapted we are to an exercise before we increase the loads.
In case you start If we have problems in the forearm, such as lack of strength, or frequent pain, we must think about recovery and change our preparation, no matter what the goal is in front of us.
Micronutrient recovery
Just as we need energy to perform an activity, we need energy to recover the structures damaged during this activity.
Always remember how important it is to have an adequate diet, because it is a fundamental complement to recover from the effort.
In our specialized training app we offer you an integral service, which includes nutrition, as one of the fundamental pillars to keep you fully on your machine.
Forearms workouts at home for riders: the keys that will make the difference
In the off-road world the difficulties to be faced are different from those of the rest of the sports.
The forearms are not trained the same for the motorcycle or off-road bike as for the rest of the sports. In fact, it is not the same to train the forearm for motocross, enduro or mtb either.
But there is a common enemy for all riders and that is the arm pump. If you are going to train your forearms at home, you should pay special attention to this point.
When you work only the strength of your forearms, your muscle fibers tend to increase in thickness, and lose elasticity. This generates congestion at the muscular level, and in the long run, pain in your forearms.
Part of the solution is to focus on resistance and be clear that common gym exercises, with heavy loads and weights, are not going to help you and will continue to fail in your grip on the bike.
Forearm pain is something you have to take seriously. There are no magic solutions that will put you in optimal condition overnight.
You must follow the guidelines given to you by your physical trainers and health professionals. This article will help you understand in depth the different causes of forearm pain, and how to work it.
Plan your training according to a schedule, your forearms will appreciate it
What time of the season are you in? That will depend on the load or the type of forearm exercise you need to do.
Rider, analyze your calendar, thinking about the most effective way to distribute your efforts and you will take your performance and enjoyment to the maximum level, avoiding painful injuries like arm pump.
You don’t have to wait until the pain becomes unbearable to decide to get off the bike and do something about it.
If your bike started making strange noises, would you wait until it broke down completely or would you try to fix it while the problem was perhaps not so serious?
I bet you would take it to be fixed as soon as possible in order to take care of it. It’s the same with your body, it’s your most powerful tool and you should give it the attention it deserves.
Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? You have to choose your workouts according to a competition or practice schedule and follow a very specific routine according to the sport you play and the ailments you may have. It sounds difficult, but it’s not.
Especially if you train with our app and our method, why will it be easier? Because everything we were analyzing in this article is already automated in the algorithm of our training app.
We will accompany you to train in a way that will avoid the arm pump and if you already have some ailment, it will help you to overcome it.
