This is a topic that I have been see-sawing back and forth with in mind for quite some time now. My question is…Should you train forearms directly for growth? This leaves me a bit confused because on one side of the arguement forearms come into play in about every exercise. You also use a fair amount of grip strength with chins, deads, hanging leg raises, etc. This gets into another “forearm” question of mine, Are they a combination of fast and slow twitch muscle fiber, or predominately fast twitch. Given that they are mostly composed of fast twitch, training them directly would be the logical conclusion IMO. Unfortunately I have long arms which makes it difficult for me to add significant size to them. Thanks in advance for the any discussions.
The forearms are mostly a slow twitch muscle group. For a guy with long arms and naturally small wrists your forearms probably won’t grow much unless you do train them directly. Although your grip gets worked when you train other bodyparts really the gripping muscles and the flexion and extension muscles are all different muscles. So therefore by directly training forearms you’ll hit some muscles that wouldn’t otherwise be hit. I recommened you do wrist curls and reverse wrist curls 2-3 days/week. It doesn’t take a lot of sets but it does take some consistency. Experiment with different grips, positions, and rep ranges. I have found that a really high rep range 50+ works best for me on forearms.