How To Do The Dumbbell Wrist Curl Exercise

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We all need strong wrists. You can't carry heavy objects or lift weights when you have weak wrist muscles. Imagine carrying a heavy suitcase or bag of groceries if your muscles are weak. Your weight lifting progress would also suffer - the deadlift, farmer's walk and bench press are three exercises that depend on strong wrists. So, to get those muscles into shape I'm going to show you how to do the dumbbell wrist curl. It's a must do exercise for anyone who wants strong wrists.

How to do the Dumbbell Wrist Curl Exercise

Before we get started I want to point of some of the benefits of the wrist curl with dumbbells. This exercise is important because it:

• strengthens the forearm flexor muscles 
• strengthens the forearm extensor muscles
• improves wrist flexibility

You're going to start off with a warm up set, so grab a light weight dumbbell. Sit down and rest your forearm on your knee. Hold the dumbbell so that closed fist is pointing toward the ceiling (also referred to as the supinated position). Next, use your forearm muscles to flex your wrist. Curl your wrist as far upward as you can. Now use your wrist muscles to lower the weight to the starting position. That's one rep. Do this again until you have completed ten reps. Repeat the warm up set with the other wrist. After your warm up, it's now time to select a heavier weight. The objective of the dumbbell wrist curl (or dumbbell wrist flex) exercise is to develop strong wrists, you'll need a weight that is heavy enough for four to eight reps. Perform five sets of the exercise and then stop. Your wrists might feel a bit sore by the time you're finished with this exercise but it will be worth it. Each week increase the weight amount by five pounds while keeping the number of reps and sets consistent.

There are other ways to do the wrist curl exercise including pronated dumbbell wrist flex (palms facing down), and the barbell wrist curl. The barbell wrist flex has the advantage of training both wrists at the same time. The disadvantage of that particular exercise is that if one wrist is weaker than the other, the stronger arm will have to compensate. So if you want to look at the advantage of the wrist curl with dumbbells, each wrist must carry its own weight. In other words, they can develop at their own pace. The weaker wrist can be trained using more reps e.g. six reps on the less developed forearm as opposed to four reps for the stronger wrist. Once strength is equal on both sides, you can adjust the reps accordingly.

The dumbbell wrist curl exercise is a great way to develop forearm strength and flexibility. If you practice the exercise regularly, you should see results in a few weeks. Just keep at it and don't give up.

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