Nowadays, few people pay enough attention to the development of fingers. For a bodybuilder, strong wrists and fingers may not be so important, but for strength athletes or wrestlers, they are a must.
Let's look at exercises and workouts that will allow you to effectively pump up your hands without complex and expensive equipment.
Grip strength also plays a key role in sports such as mountaineering, parkour, arm wrestling, and also improves health in general, in particular brain function.
Since ancient times, strong men have loved to demonstrate their strength by lifting barrels of nails and barrels of water.
Warm-up
Fingers, like other parts of the body, can be injured and need to be warmed up and prepared for training.
- Clench and unclench your fists for a few seconds
- Extend your arms in front of you. Try to spread your straightened fingers as far apart as possible. Then press your fingers as close as possible to each other. This exercise will bring you closer to gaining the ability to pick up the ball.
- Rotate your hands in your fists
Recommendations for performing exercises
These tips will help make your workouts as effective and safe as possible.
- Don’t get hung up on one exercise, try to master as many as possible, and it’s best to do a set of at least three exercises at a time.
- Do not use heavy dumbbells and barbells; light or medium weights are the best option.
- Do at least 6 reps of the barbell exercise.
- If you are serious about strengthening your wrist muscles, then perform exercises with high frequency - at least three times a week.
- Perform a wrist stretch: stretch your arm out in front of you, palm down. Bend your wrist so that your fingers point to the floor. We gently press on this hand with the second hand for 30 seconds. We change hands.
- Don’t rush to pump up and strengthen your hands as soon as possible; do everything gradually, without overstraining the muscles.
Many people don’t even realize how important the physical training of the hands is, so they often neglect this part of the body during training. Meanwhile, a strong grip helps a lot when working on the horizontal bar and allows you to increase results in exercises with barbells and dumbbells. Push-ups and pull-ups on the horizontal bar will also serve other important muscle groups: for example, they will strengthen your back and work your abs.
Finger Strength Exercises
Throwing a heavy object and catching it with your fingers
A sandbag, brick, or medicine ball are suitable for this.
Pushing your fingers off the wall
Stand facing the wall, “fall” on it, putting your hands forward and resting your fingers.
Push-ups on the fingers from the floor while standing or on your knees
Carpal expander
A regular tennis ball will do. Squeeze and unclench the expander until you feel tired. Do three sets with a 3-5 minute rest break.
Hanging on the bar
Hang until your fingers unclench. After a short rest, repeat the exercise.
Holding a load with a pinch grip
A disc for a barbell is suitable as a weight. To start, take a disk weighing 5 kg. Wrap your fingers around it and hold it until it falls out of your hand. As you get used to it, increase the weight of the disc.
To increase finger strength, try using only your index and thumb in this exercise, then your thumb and middle finger, then your ring finger, and finally your little finger.
Holding a load with a wide grip
Another simple training method is to simply hold a dumbbell at one end (free from the weights) and move your wrist back and forth, left and right. In this case, the elbows do not work.
If you are doing the exercise while sitting, you can rest your forearms on your knees. In this case, work in the medium to high rep range.
Isometric exercises
Also, isometric exercises are good for developing finger strength, an example of which you can see in this video:
How to combine exercises
There is no point in doing just one exercise. It is useless to pump up your brushes with just a rubber donut. Even the fist muscles require a comprehensive approach.
The list of exercises for training might look like this:
- Hanging on the horizontal bar.
- Wrist curls with a barbell.
- Expander.
You can change any element to the one you like best.
Now you know how to pump up your wrists using simple and understandable exercises. Train, achieve success, share your results!
How to pump up your wrists
Strong, powerful arms build wrist strength. While pumping up your hands, you can train your forearms with regular wrist curls. Try working with a thicker bar or dumbbells. This will take the exercise to a new level of difficulty. To build mass, do no more than 6-8 repetitions per set.
The option of bending the arms at the wrists is considered effective - with a plate, and not with a bar or dumbbells. Simply place your forearms on the bench as in a regular curl, but now you're working with a plate (palms up or down).
You hold the plate with a pinch grip, so this exercise has the double effect of working your thumbs and hands. Take a 10-kilogram pancake and you will understand how hard it is. Another way is to curl your arms with a weight plate while standing. D
You can hold the weight vertically (as in the hammer exercise), or horizontally (as in a normal curl). The point is to keep your wrists in the same position throughout the exercise. Perform 6-8 repetitions.
Warning: Working in low rep ranges with heavy weights and a thick bar may cause wrist pain.
What makes a strong brush
The strength of our grip is formed due to the total activity of the muscles of the hand and forearm. If you squeeze something in your hand, you will see which muscles tense at this time.
Take a glass in your hand and try to squeeze it slightly - note that not only the hand is tense, but also the muscles from the wrist to the elbow - forearm.
This means that in order to develop our hands, to strengthen them, we need to purposefully do exercises for all these muscles. Just squeezing a ring expander won't do it.
And the more comprehensive the approach to solving this issue, the better result you will get.
Let's imagine that you have a grip competition coming up. Let's train!
Stretching and finger flexibility exercises
Flexibility training helps not only increase the mobility of your fingers, but also relieve stress from your hands.
- Bend your right hand, grasp the thumb of your right hand with your left hand and pull towards the inside of your forearm. Then straighten your hand and pull your thumb in the opposite direction, towards the outside of your forearm. Repeat the exercise for your left thumb.
- Pull the little finger of your right hand toward the pad of your thumb, applying pressure from above with your left hand. Stretch your ring, middle and index fingers in sequence. Then stretch your fingers towards the back of your hand. Do the same for your left hand. Stop exercising if severe pain occurs. Develop finger flexibility gradually.
- Forearm stretch
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Exercises with an expander
When trying to figure out how to quickly pump up your hands, you should give preference to strengthening them with the help of an expander.
Such exercises can be done daily, of course, after a mandatory warm-up.
If they are performed correctly, the result will be noticeable in two to three weeks.
The basic rules for performing exercises with an expander are:
- doing a warm-up (8-10 gentle squeezes of the machine replace other ways to stretch your hands);
- basic repetitions (rigidity increases, the number of compressions is increased to 10-15, 3-4 approaches are performed with rest intervals of up to 4 minutes);
- completion of the workout (the heaviest weight is set, the unit is held alternately with two hands, then with one as many times as possible).
Exercises with weights
Before pumping up your muscles, you should make sure that the weight of the weights does not exceed five kilograms.
The minimum weight to start with is 2-3 kg.
Sports equipment is placed on the hand in a hanging position, after which it is secured with an adhesive rubber band.
Considering the fact that additional stress is placed on the muscles, pull-ups and rotational movements will give the maximum effect.
Hitch
After productive stress, careful relaxation is necessary to avoid arm pain the next day. To do this you will need to do the following:
- Extend your arms straight in front of you and pull the outside of your hands, fingers down. Then relax your right hand while continuing to hold your left. Grab the fingers of the tense hand with the other and apply force to stretch the muscles even more thoroughly. Repeat on the other side.
- Stretch your arms forward again. Try to move your hands to the side until you feel tension in all the adductor muscles.
- Place your palms together in front of your chest. As you inhale, point your fingers down to the characteristic tension or discomfort.
- Now place your palms together behind your back. As you inhale, press your palms against each other with force. After exhaling, relax.
- Place one bent arm behind your back from above, the other from below and try to clasp them in a lock. After 5-10 seconds, lean forward, while the elbow of your upper arm should be strictly parallel to your back. Swap your hands and repeat the previous steps again.
Train this area of the limbs every 7-10 days and over time, any weights or heavy bags will give in to you with ease. Regular practice and gradual progress in difficulty will produce consistent results.
Forearm training program
Friends, an important point. In this article I look at exactly how to train your forearms to make them BIGGER!!! I provide information on training in this particular area, i.e. if your main goal is to make your forearms BIGGER, then this article is for you.
I am not currently considering the kind of training that will allow you to win arm wrestling competitions.
The basic forearm exercises I discussed above will allow you to build more muscle and do more, and additional exercises will help you develop grip strength, for example.
So:
- We train forearms ON ARM (or biceps) DAY, at the very END of the workout.
- To train the biceps, we must include the exercise of lifting the barbell with a reverse grip (for the development of the brachialis and brachioradialis muscles).
- Then we move on to forearm curls.
- And only then to pronation (turning inward) of the hand.
The workout for the forearms will look like this.
For a beginner:
NO WAY! For beginners, there is no point in training their forearms at all. Just add a reverse grip barbell curl to your workout. It would be enough.
For advanced:
If you decide to train your forearms, then we train them, I repeat again, AFTER THE BICEPS.
- Reverse grip barbell curl : 3-5 sets x 8-15 reps.
- Forearm curls with barbell/dumbbells, sitting on a bench : 3-4 x 10-20 repetitions.
- Pronation (turning inward) of the hand with a one-sided dumbbell or strap : 3-4 x 10-20 repetitions.
I think this would be the ideal workout for your forearms. There are only two specialized exercises for the forearms (the brachialis is also trained with a reverse grip).
