**3 Guys Train Forearms Everyday - Only 1 Was Worth It — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/three-guys-train-forearms-everyday-only-one-worth-it/

Jeremy Ethier tests three forearm training protocols over 30 days: daily dumbbell/cable training, a rice bowl routine, and his science-based plan, measuring grip and forearm growth.

## Key Takeaways

- Daily forearm training is extremely demanding and can cause significant soreness and joint discomfort, especially early on.
- Grip strength is a meaningful health and performance indicator that has been declining across the population.
- Lifting straps can mask grip weakness and may contribute to underdeveloped forearms if overused.
- Different protocols target different forearm muscle groups, so exercise selection and grip position matter.
- The final verdict on which protocol works best is deferred until the 30-day experiment concludes.

## What the video covers

- Jeremy Ethier notes that after 10+ years of training, his forearms remained underdeveloped, becoming his second smallest body part.
- He recruits two friends, Robin and Dennis, to test popular forearm protocols found online over 30 days.
- Each participant trains their left forearm while the right arm serves as a control, with measurements taken across lower, middle, and upper forearm.
- Baseline tests include a max hang (grip), crush grip, and pinch grip with three 10 lb plates, along with support grip measurements.
- Jeremy's measured baselines show a relatively strong support grip (around 115 seconds) but a weak crush grip and pinch grip.
- Dennis follows a popular rice-bowl training plan, which involves repeatedly lifting a bowl of rice with the wrist.
- Jeremy's routine targets the flexors, extensors, and brachioradialis using dumbbell and cable wrist curls, reverse grip curls, and hammer curl variations.
- Jeremy notes that relying on lifting straps has likely contributed to his underdeveloped forearms and grip.
- The video cites research linking weak grip strength to early mortality and reduced hiring odds, and notes grip strength has declined over the past two decades.
- Participants struggle with the daily training volume, with soreness and joint discomfort emerging early, and Dennis appears to be coping best.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Introduction and the 30-day forearm challenge
2. 00:58 Explaining the experiment and control arm setup
3. 02:00 Baseline grip strength tests
4. 06:00 Dennis's rice bowl training protocol
5. 09:30 Jeremy's science-based forearm routine and exercise breakdown
6. 17:00 Early progress, soreness, and struggles with daily training
7. 20:00 Strap dependence and comparing results
8. 30:00 Sponsor segment and closing

Answers

## Questions about this video

Why does Jeremy say his forearms became underdeveloped despite 10 years of training?

Jeremy explains that normal lifting did not sufficiently build his forearms, and his reliance on lifting straps likely left his grip underdeveloped. He says his forearms have become the second smallest part of his body.

What three grip tests are used to measure the participants' baselines?

The participants perform a dead hang for maximum duration, a crush grip test, and a pinch grip test holding three 10 lb plates. These tests measure different aspects of grip strength.

What is the rice bowl training approach Dennis follows?

Dennis follows a popular online rice training plan, which involves repeatedly lifting and manipulating a bowl of rice with the hand and wrist. Jeremy is curious whether this approach can improve forearm strength compared to his science-based routine.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

Over the next 30 days, I'm turning this forearm into a powerhouse. Because after over 10 years of training, I always assumed my forearms would get jacked from normal lifting. But they didn't.

00:11

Speaker A

And my forearms are now the second smallest part of my body. Even worse, people started noticing. And weak forearms don't just affect how you look.

00:18

Speaker A

And my forearms are now the second smallest part of my body. Even worse, people started noticing.

00:33

Speaker A

recruited two friends to test the most popular forearm protocols on the internet. So, by the end of the 30 days, we'll know which method and what exercises actually build the biggest, strongest forearms and wrists. But first, we need to get our baselines.

00:46

Speaker A

And weak forearms don't just affect how you look. They can hold you back in the gym, are linked to shorter life expectancies, and have even been shown to decrease your odds of being hired.

00:58

Speaker A

areas more than others. This is the smallest one I've ever measured. Shut up. And while for this experiment, size matters, what matters even more is who can last the longest.

01:10

Speaker A

So, I'm training my left forearm every single day using science-backed exercises, but I've also recruited two friends to test the most popular forearm protocols on the internet. So, by the end of the 30 days, we'll know which method and what exercises actually build the biggest, strongest forearms and wrists. But first, we need to get our baselines.

01:25

Speaker A

seconds being elite. No, man. This is so hard. Keep going. Keep going. And with Robin holding on for a max of 12 seconds, 12 seconds.

01:38

Speaker A

Because all of us are right-handed, we're going to be training our left arms for the experiment with our right arm serving as a control. We're taking measurements across our lower, middle, and upper forearms to see if our different training programs grow some areas more than others.

01:51

Speaker A

pretty good about my support grip, okay, 115. When it came to our next test, the results were a bit more humbling.

02:02

Speaker A

This is the smallest one I've ever measured. Shut up.

02:09

Speaker A

Think if you're trying to crush an apple with your bare hand. I felt your handshake. It's like a little girl.

02:17

Speaker A

And while for this experiment, size matters, what matters even more is who can last the longest.

02:27

Speaker A

To make Dennis feel better, multiple studies have found the average person's grip strength today is far weaker than it was even just 20 years ago. Which is problematic since grip strength is one of the best predictors of your overall

02:39

Speaker A

Does it count? What the...

02:48

Speaker A

Robin, don't pass out. Okay. 108.2. And for our final test, we're measuring finger and wrist strength by testing our pinch grip by attempted to hold three 10 lb plates between our fingers and thumb.

03:09

Speaker A

This simple test measures your support grip, which is essential for rock climbing, deadlifting, and even bringing in your groceries. And for this one hang test, most beginners should be able to hang for 10 to 20 seconds, with 90-plus seconds being elite.

03:16

Speaker A

What the This is so embarrassing. I'm a fitness guy. Saturate. Saturate. Sentry, centrate, zero.

03:31

Speaker A

No, man. This is so hard. Keep going. Keep going.

03:44

Speaker A

That was pretty good. 6 seconds. Now for our training. Right. Oh, okay. This is going to be yours.

03:51

Speaker A

And with Robin holding on for a max of 12 seconds... 12 seconds.

04:04

Speaker A

using my leftover rice. Yes, Dennis is trying the rice bowl approach that I've seen everywhere online with people documenting some pretty crazy results. Robin and Dennis will be trying to compete against my science-based gym routine that I've designed to maximize

04:19

Speaker A

It's not. It was my turn.

04:32

Speaker A

curls. I'm going to try these with dumbbells, but also some cable variations to see what works best. But if you lift weights, your flexors are already trained indirectly. So, you're probably lacking a bit more in the next area, the extensors. These muscles sit

04:45

Speaker A

And while I'm hanging, I should probably explain this is just the first of multiple tests we'll be using to assess our grip strength, which can actually be broken down into three different types.

04:51

Speaker A

Now, to train these, you just got to extend your wrist, which I'll be trying out with dumbbells, as well as this cable version. Last but not least is this big chunk of muscle that sits right around your elbow crease, which is, in

05:02

Speaker A

And while I am feeling pretty good about my support grip, okay, 115.

05:16

Speaker A

curls, but so do your biceps. So, to target this muscle more, you want to first rotate your arm into a neutral hammer grip. If you do just this during regular curls, you'll already feel the difference, but you can take it a step

05:28

Speaker A

When it came to our next test, the results were a bit more humbling.

05:41

Speaker A

harder and experience more growth. So, I'll be doing one exercise that applies that as well as reverse grip curls, which also seem to target this muscle well. I'm going to give all these exercises a shot, training each area of

05:52

Speaker A

Normal. 121.4. Normal.

06:05

Speaker A

findings. But by the time I had finished just my second workout on my new plan, I was already wondering if my forearms were even going to make it the full 30 days. My forearms have never been this sore before. Clearly, I don't train

06:16

Speaker A

I'm about to break this.

06:23

Speaker A

So, it's like hurting here and around the fingers. It's hurting a lot. First exercise, grab rice for two.

06:33

Speaker A

This second test measures our crush grip. Think if you're trying to crush an apple with your bare hand.

06:38

Speaker A

He'll be following a popular rice training plan that we found online. Now, I always thought training a muscle every single day just wouldn't allow it to recover and grow bigger and stronger.

06:47

Speaker A

I felt your handshake. It's like a little girl.

07:02

Speaker A

did five lighter sets for volume. Now, you would expect training like this every single day would burn most lifters out. But by the end of the study, the lifters made insane strength gains, adding an average of 40 lbs to their one

07:14

Speaker A

Oh, that was pretty high. 99.

07:26

Speaker A

daily training shouldn't be anything to worry about and if anything may end up getting me the fastest gains of my life.

07:32

Speaker A

I still cannot hit three digits.

07:41

Speaker A

Oh, that hurts. That's so uncomfortable. And when I checked in with Robin, he was having a similar struggle trying to hit 100 reps every day. In fact, the only person who wasn't struggling so far seemed to be Dennis.

07:54

Speaker A

That's as hard as he goes.

08:06

Speaker A

relying too much on lifting straps is a major reason why my forearms have become underdeveloped. Because ever since I found out about a study that showed lifting straps instantly increase people's deadlifts by around 40 lbs, I started adding straps not just to my

08:19

Speaker A

To make Dennis feel better, multiple studies have found the average person's grip strength today is far weaker than it was even just 20 years ago. Which is problematic, since grip strength is one of the best predictors of your overall strength and activity level, which explains why researchers found a strong correlation between weak grip and early death.

08:30

Speaker A

But because a common issue beginners have is their forearms and grip giving out before their other muscles like biceps and back. I'm curious if Dennis, even with his rice training, will experience some benefit in his exercises where he typically gets forearm cramps.

08:43

Speaker A

Robin, don't pass out.

08:56

Speaker A

curling strength compared to our right. And since Dennis and I are already tracking our workouts through our Built with Science Plus app, we'll be able to see if there are any other strength jumps that happen as a result of this

09:07

Speaker A

Okay. 108.2.

09:12

Speaker A

When I play piano, uh I'm not good with the left hand. I always play right hand more. I'm really excited also how this exercise will going to impact me playing with left hand.

09:28

Speaker A

And for our final test, we're measuring finger and wrist strength by attempting to hold three 10 lb plates between our fingers and thumb.

09:41

Speaker A

continuing to struggle with the daily workouts. Okay. So, one thing I've noticed about a lot of forearm exercises, specifically for this guy right here, the brachioraiialis, I found that dumbbells, it's really hard to get the form down without aggravating the

09:56

Speaker A

Wow.

10:02

Speaker A

There we go. Way better than dumbbells. With some exercise swaps, my joint pain was no longer an issue. And I'd even found some home friendly exercises I could swap in when I didn't have a dumbbell. But the craziest improvement

10:15

Speaker A

And after struggling in our first two tests, this time Dennis just couldn't get it up.

10:30

Speaker A

lifting. Even my wife seems shocked by my progress, asking me the one question every guy wants to hear. Why is it so big?

10:38

Speaker A

What the...

10:44

Speaker A

But it feels pretty like it feels bigger. Well, it looks like it. But it feels pretty jacked though, right?

10:51

Speaker A

This is so embarrassing. I'm a fitness guy.

11:03

Speaker A

weight and you have to do a farmer carry for at least 30 seconds. But since we're only training one arm, we're going to divide that weight in half and we're going to do that for 30 seconds.

11:13

Speaker A

Saturate. Saturate. Sentry, centrate, zero.

11:30

Speaker A

You pass. But if you fail, keep walking. Keep walking. Robin's down. Robin is down.

11:36

Speaker A

But then it was Robin who put both myself and Dennis to shame.

11:45

Speaker A

He has a low pass. You have two weeks to pass this. Okay. And while Dennis and I did manage to complete a farmer's carries, Dennis's forearm has gotten so strong that regular rice is no longer challenging.

11:58

Speaker A

No way. My foot will go, your foot.

12:06

Speaker A

Hopefully, when I do my workout, make it a little bit harder. We also got him a wooden spoon to make it more difficult.

12:12

Speaker A

That was pretty good. 6 seconds.

12:19

Speaker A

As for my own training, everything was going good until week three. I am frustrated. My lifts this week have been horrible. like my forearm strength has tanked. I'm a little worried because my forearms feel exhausted. I don't think

12:32

Speaker A

Now for our training.

12:38

Speaker A

Fingers crossed. Seeing my strength start to dip was definitely concerning. But when I look closer at the data on the daily bench press study we talked about earlier, some days the people got stronger, some days they got weaker, and

12:49

Speaker A

Right. Oh, okay. This is going to be yours.

13:03

Speaker A

get to the final tests. Every single day, I can see the progress. Basically, I'm able to comfortably do the exercise. Now, uh this exercise definitely helped me to basically learn this And after 30 days, Robin was getting stronger and stronger with his hand

13:26

Speaker A

You're going to be training your forearms just through gripping. There we go.

13:37

Speaker A

Even if I'm on vacation, my arms not going to be on vacation. As for me, I realized how much my arms benefit from direct forearm work. It took under 10 minutes a day and I could easily fit it in between sets. Plus, I

13:50

Speaker A

Robin will be sticking to 100 reps every single day with a hand gripper as his only training. Meanwhile, Dennis will also be training daily, but he'll be using my leftover rice.

14:03

Speaker A

exact workout I'm going to stick with after this. I'm going to show you all of that in a second. But first, let's see how my strength results compared to Dennis and Robert. And what they don't know is I've also prepared a bonus test.

14:15

Speaker A

Yes, Dennis is trying the rice bowl approach that I've seen everywhere online, with people documenting some pretty crazy results. Robin and Dennis will be trying to compete against my science-based gym routine that I've designed to maximize growth.

14:27

Speaker A

Oh my god. 13. 137.2. I can feel that, too. But for Dennis's rice training, show the camera. Show the camera. Okay, it doesn't count. It doesn't count.

14:41

Speaker A

But in order to design the best workout possible, we need to understand the three main areas that make up your forearm. Starting with the most beefy part of your forearms, the flexors.

14:49

Speaker A

What? Were you eating? I'm predicting that this is going to be the biggest strength increase for Robin because this is what he trained.

15:03

Speaker A

To train them, it's pretty simple: wrist curls. I'm going to try these with dumbbells, but also some cable variations to see what works best. But if you lift weights, your flexors are already trained indirectly. So, you're probably lacking a bit more in the next area, the extensors.

15:14

Speaker A

Yeah, but last time you were which meant round one is going to my science back gym plan. As for the dead hang 112.

15:27

Speaker A

These muscles sit on top of your forearm, creating some pretty crazy striations when you develop them, and may also help with elbow pain. Now, to train these, you just have to extend your wrist, which I'll be trying out with dumbbells, as well as this cable version.

15:38

Speaker A

Let's go, Robin. Easy way. What the? Wait, wait, wait, wait. What is 6 seconds?

15:46

Speaker A

Last but not least is this big chunk of muscle that sits right around your elbow crease, which is, in my opinion, the most noticeable impressive forearm muscle. It's called the brachioradialis. Now, unlike the two other muscle groups, this muscle doesn't cross over the wrist and won't be trained through wrist movements. It instead helps bend your elbows during curls, but so do your biceps.

15:57

Speaker A

Which means it's down to just Dennis. And even though Dennis claims his rice bucket was barely a full workout, his single arm dead hang was already well past his day one time of just 5 seconds.

16:10

Speaker A

So, to target this muscle more, you want to first rotate your arm into a neutral hammer grip. If you do just this during regular curls, you'll already feel the difference, but you can take it a step further. So, I've been paying close attention to some really cool bicep studies, and it seems like placing your arm on an incline bench or preacher curl puts your biceps at a disadvantage and forces your brachioradialis to work harder and experience more growth.

16:17

Speaker A

What I think also helped Dennis is the fact that his rice workouts mainly challenged his grip endurance, building up to longer and longer sets of stirring the rice, plus the fact that he was regularly lifting weights throughout this process. But what really surprised

16:30

Speaker A

So, I'll be doing one exercise that applies that, as well as reverse grip curls, which also seem to target this muscle well. I'm going to give all these exercises a shot, training each area of the forearm with three sets to failure every single day. And after 30 days of experimenting, I'm going to share what I think is the number one exercise for each area, plus give you a fully optimized forearm workout based on my findings.

16:44

Speaker A

fact lead to strength boost in other lifts as well. However, when we tested Robin, who doesn't lift any weights at all, his results hadn't changed. But when we got to the pinch test Oh, 20 seconds.

17:00

Speaker A

But by the time I had finished just my second workout on my new plan, I was already wondering if my forearms were even going to make it the full 30 days.

17:11

Speaker A

Six seconds. Yo, how'd you do that? 20 seconds. So, across the three tests we ran, it seems like each method of training did a better job at improving different areas of grip strength. However, when it came to our bonus test

17:30

Speaker A

My forearms have never been this sore before. Clearly, I don't train them. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this for 30 days.

17:39

Speaker A

God, look at it. It's so painful. Now, it won't be this painful if you're following the right workout plan using our Build with Science Plus app. With it, you're going to get a completely customized workout routine based on your

17:52

Speaker A

So, it's like hurting here and around the fingers. It's hurting a lot.

18:02

Speaker A

I had high hopes for you. Really? You can't hold it? You're not joking? It also guides you with your diet and lets you track your nutrition with a snap of a picture. You can try it for 2 weeks free over at billwithcience.com or

18:20

Speaker A

First exercise, grab rice for two.

18:31

Speaker A

Oh wow, look at this. You guys want some jab? But now let's talk about growth. So when we measured the average growth across all three measurement points, third place went to Dennis's rice training, leading to modest growth through his

18:46

Speaker A

And while Dennis doesn't have 100 reps to worry about like Robin, hey, no, no.

18:57

Speaker A

exactly the same. Robin, on the other hand, he had barely changed his upper forearm, but the highest growth around his middle and lower forearm. However, because of his training experience, he probably experienced the biggest newbie gains out of all of us.

19:10

Speaker A

He'll be following a popular rice training plan that we found online.

19:17

Speaker A

Yeah. Hopefully, these gains convince Robin to commit to something more than just gripping. But based on my data and my own 30-day experience, here are my picks for the top three forearm exercises. And I've even added all of

19:29

Speaker A

Now, I always thought training a muscle every single day just wouldn't allow it to recover and grow bigger and stronger. But some new research is making me rethink that, because in a recent study, strong, well-trained lifters bench pressed every single day for 34 consecutive days. They did one set where they tried to lift as much as possible for one rep, and then afterwards, they did five lighter sets for volume.

19:40

Speaker A

gripper is an easy, low barrier to entry way to get started and might even grow the lower forearm a little bit more. And here is the workout I'm personally going to be sticking with going forward, doing it twice a week on my leg days or rest

19:53

Speaker A

Now, you would expect training like this every single day would burn most lifters out. But by the end of the study, the lifters made insane strength gains, adding an average of 40 lbs to their one-rep max, which for well-trained lifters would normally take easily over a year to accomplish.

20:00

Speaker A

Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next

Topics: forearm training grip strength forearm workout rice bowl challenge wrist curls hammer curls 30 day challenge Jeremy Ethier fitness experiment lifting straps

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