I have an incentive to build up my forearm strength. I love Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and a huge part of success in this sport is the ability to grip strongly and for extended periods of time. For whatever reason, I find difficulty in gaining mass in my forearm muscles, but have no issue with increasing the functional strength in this muscle group by using my homemade forearm contraption. My friends and I refer to the forearm machine as the “Marky Mark” machine on account of the huge forearms that Mark Wahlberg seems to have in a lot of his pictures…why are looking at a bunch of Mark Wahlberg pictures…I don’t know. Call it inspiration.
The contraption is effectively the same as the forearm rollers that you’ll sometimes find in your gym (i.e., the handles/pole with the cord hanging from the middle that you twist back to pull a weight up, or twist forward to allow the weight down.) However, the beauty of making your own, is that they are markedly cheaper, and you are able to craft them to whatever diameter you want. We have found that using smaller sized dowel rods (roughly the size of hockey sticks — or by actually using cut down hockey sticks) or extra-large dowel-rods (ex: 3.5 inch diameter PVC pipes) we have found the greatest strength gains. Instead of expensive black cording, we simply use nylon string that you can find in any hardware stores. For weights we either use gallon jugs of water or old weights that we have lying around, and we simply tie them to the end of the string. This way we can incorporate and effective and cheap forearm workout into our day without having to spend time at the gym.
We have enabled our readers the opportunity to purchase a pre-made version of our various forearm machines from our store, but we will also teach anyone how to make one — just email us at contact@functionalstrengthlab.com.
BD