Today, I wanted to talk about forearms.
Whenever I think of forearms, the first character that comes to mind in Popeye.
So, when Popeye was created, studio executives recommended he eat spinach for his strength due to its vaunted health properties. Apparently, Popeye helped increase American consumption of spinach by a third!
Parents would tell their kids to eat their spinach so they could grow to be big and strong like Popeye.
I'm not going to tell you to eat your spinach so you can grow up to become a big and strong gymnast. But if you want to be able to perform sick gymnastics skills like handstands, planche, muscle-ups and forward rolls, you'll need to train your forearms.
The muscles of the forearms are used to:
Flex and extend the wrists.
Flex and extend the fingers.
Flex the elbow.
Pronate and supinate the wrist.
Your grip strength is also an essential function of your forearm muscles.
In gymnastics, you want a strong grip to hold onto gymnastics rings, pull-up bars, and parallel bars (parallettes).
When performing movements that require a false grip, you need to have the strength to flex your wrist and support your entire body weight.
Your forearms need to be strong!
But, you also want to extend your wrists for movements like handstands and planche. Not the mention the strength you need to balance your entire body weight on top of your wrists.
Strong and flexible forearm muscles are a must for gymnastics skill seekers.
When we first start training the handstand, we often overlook how weak our wrists are.
When you stop and think about it, how often do you place your entire body weight on your wrists? Dips might be the only movement.
And yet, a lot of gymnastics skill seekers start training for handstands without preparing their wrists. After just a few sessions, they end up with a wrist injury, which is never a good thing.
There's not a lot of muscle around the wrist joints. It's mainly connective tissue. When we injure connective tissue, it takes much longer to heel than when we injure a muscle. You might be unable to put any weight on your wrists (push-ups, pull-ups, ring rows, grip a barbell, etc..) for months.
The last thing you want is a wrist injury.
If you're new to handstand, planche or false grip training, I recommend you progress cautiously.
4 Tips to Prepare Your Wrists For Gymnastics Strength Training (GST):
1. Always, always, always do a good wrist warm-up before you start training handstands, planche or false grip exercises. Whenever I train handstands, I'll always spend 5minutes stretching and warming up my wrists.
2. Start building strength and flexibility with movements that don't place your entire bodyweight into your wrists. Spend time training movements like the Front Leaning Rest (FLR), Single Arm FLR, and false grip ring rows. Gradually build strength in your wrists as you work towards more advanced skills.
3. Aim to build strength and endurance over time. Holding a 60sec wall-facing handstand is a good starting point for those who want to learn the handstand. But, we don't aim to do this in week 1 of handstand training. We start slow and gradually build up something like this:
weeks1-2: 5 x [:20-:30sec holds]
weeks3-4: 4 x [:30-:40sec holds]
weeks5-6: 4 x [:40-50sec holds]
weeks7-8: 3 x [:50-:60sec holds]
Building strength in the connective tissue takes time, and we can't rush human biology. Slow and steady wins the race, and after 8week you'll have to build the strength and endurance to train more advanced handstand skills.
If you rush the process and get injured, in 8-weeks, you'll still be recovering and a long way away from doing more advanced handstand skills.
4. Do isolated wrist exercises. Wrist exercises are often underrated and overlooked. At the end of your session, it's worth adding in a few sets of supinated and pronated wrist curls.
Biceps curls are another great way to strengthen the forearms. Remember that the forearm muscles also flex the elbows. Zottman dumbbell curls are my favourites because they also train pronation and supination.
Other exercises that you might not have heard of are Radius and Ulna flexion (The radius and ulna are the forearm bones). The wrist joint is a modified ball and socket joint (also known as a condyloid synovial joint) that allows for flexion, extension, abduction, and adduction movements.
When we're balancing on our wrists, we want to have strength in every possible wrist movement. Radius and ulna flexion is essential for gymnastics movements performed on the parallettes (p-bars).
If you're new to gymnastics training, you should be including forearm work in every session. Yes, it's that important.
As your forearms get more robust and more flexible, you can start to dial it bake a little.
Even when you've reached a level where you are training handstands, planche or false grip exercises, it's essential to continue this work. I'd recommend including some direct wrist work in your warm-ups.
When you go to the gym to train squats, you don't start the session by putting your body weight on the bar. You'd do some warm-up sets first and then gradually build to your working weight for the day.
Why would you start your handstand session by stacking your entire body weight on your wrists without warming them up?
The last thing you want is a wrist injury keeping you on the sidelines for months.
The take-home point is if you want to grow up to be big and strong like Popeye, you better train your forearms. I'm willing to bet Popeye was a gymnastics skills seeker.