If you want to increase strength on your big lifts like bench press, deadlifts, rows, etc you have to make sure you pay attention to your little muscles. You see, people often rush to their big lifts in an effort to increase their strength and gain muscle mass without ever building up the foundation needed to do so properly and safely. In this video, I show you a quick exercise that you can do to increase the strength of your wrists so you have much more stability and strength on all of your other barbell lifts.

For instance, in the case of the bench press, weak wrists are sure to short circuit your ability to lift a lot of weight. If your wrists are weak, you will likely not be able to establish the proper bar position over your chest throughout the movement. The tendency will be for the bar to bend backwards too much which will put your pecs at a mechanical disadvantage for pushing the most amount of weight as they are capable of.

The same mistake applies to deadlifts but in a different way. Everyone focuses on grip strength as a limiting factor for how much raw weight can be lifted in the deadlift. That is partially true, however the hands and wrist strength itself can also be incredibly important especially as the weights you attempt to lift continue to go up and up.

If you really want to increase your strength on all your lifts then you need to focus on building the proper foundation of strength throughout your kinetic chain. Remember, ever lift you perform requires a transfer of energy from one end of the chain to the other. If you are weak at any point along the chain, your strength will suffer and therefore so will the gains that you are trying achieve from the lift in the first place. Remember, you are only as strong as your weakest link.

When it comes to wrist and forearm strength, the wrists are very overlooked. The goal should be to be able to execute lifts requiring great strength without having your wrists be your limiting factor. The bar should be able to be maintained either in a neutral or slightly extended position without breaking that position throughout any point on the lift. Too often, the wrists are not able to be held in this “strong” position and the lift breaks down.

With the wrist and forearm exercise shown here, you’ll be able to quickly add stability and strength to your distal arms that will allow you to start gaining strength and lifting more weight pretty quickly. Applied over time to your workouts, you’ll be able to increase strength on all your big lifts and start seeing more mass gains, more quickly.

It’s principles like this that often go overlooked in most workout programs, not in ATHLEAN-X. If you want to start training like an athlete and build ripped athletic muscle in just 90 days, be sure to head to and get the program used by today’s top pro athletes in all major professional sports.

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