Having strong wrists is important in bodybuilding, and even more important in sports such as rugby, football, boxing, basketball, etc. Having strong wrists will help you to stay injury free, and give you a strong grip and overall lower arm strength.
/As you might imagine, the motion of the wrist is very limited. The wrist can move side-to-side slightly, or up and down. Don’t confuse the twisting wrist motion for wrist movement – that comes from your elbow and the biceps, the wrist really isn’t involved there.
So, what we’ve got left to work with is the up and down motion. We need to overload the muscles to what they are used to, which will make the wrists and forearms bigger and stronger.
You ought to know though, that the wrist near the hand won’t ever be much bigger than it is now. This is mostly bone and ligaments, with very little muscle, but you can make you forearms bigger and ‘wrist’ far stronger.
Ok, the exercises I advocate are simple: Wrist curls, and reverse wrist curls. (What else?)
These exercises can be performed with a barbell with two hands or a dumbbell one arm at a time.
The execution couldn’t be simpler. Either with a barbell or dumbbell, place your hands with an underhand grip, forearm pointing straight forward from the elbow, wrists hanging off of the edge of a bench or your knees, forearms in a steady position firmly in place, with the bar in your hand. Now, starting at the bottommost position, curl your wrist up as far as you can, and then lower slowly. Notice the feeling you get in you forearm and wrist? It’s working!
The reverse forearm curl is the exact same thing, only with an overhand grip. You are much weaker in this position as different, less-powerful muscles are worked. Make sure you always do reverse forearm curls first, because if you do it the other way around you’ll notice your grip is so weak when it comes to reverse curls, you can barely lift anything because your grip will be shot.
Do wrist curls two times a week with 72 hours rest in between. Be aware though, that just by lifting heavy weights you are forcing yourself to grip consistently heavy weights, so you are already working your forearms and wrist for added strength.