A Cure for SFS (Skinny Forearm Syndrome)

Aidan Morgan
3 min readMay 6, 2019

When I started off my fitness journey, I weighed a mere 120 pounds whilst standing at 6 feet tall. In regards to my health, I was dangerously lanky, and in terms of my physical abilities, they were non-existent. When I finally started working out regularly, I started paying attention to how others lost & gained weight.

One thing I quickly noticed; some people seem to gain muscle & size with every rep & bite of food. And you bet I used to get jealous. At the time, it felt like I was working harder and still getting fewer results. This type of thinking eventually led to harmful drive-killing practices like negative self-talk & the doubting of my potential.

Comparing yourself to others in the gym or any area of fitness is one of the most self-defeating perspectives you can have.

However, there is one positive thing that came from the initial comparisons. It made me look at how I trained from a critical point of view. Was I only working hard? Or was I working hard and smart? They taught me that not everyone is the same & that if I wanted to fix my ‘problem areas,’ I had to train in the way that was optimized best for me.

Recommended Exercises:

Deadlifts: If you want big & strong forearms, utilize exercises that let you hold the most amount of weight. Exercises like the deadlift. It’s best to hold the bar with the knuckles on both your hands facing forwards but to extend past your limits you can switch to a reverse grip.

Pull Ups & Lat Pull Down: Not only are pull-ups the best back & full body exercise you can practice, but they have the potential to explode your forearms. For me, I feel the stress on my forearms after only 10 pull-ups.

If you can’t do pull-ups yet or want to do even more for your forearms, utilize your gym’s lat pulldown machine. This is where you can pack on the volume and test your grip strength, especially if you use fat grips.

Try this on the Lat Pulldown with some fat grips7 sets of 7 reps each. Each rep; hold at full contraction for 3 seconds, take 5 seconds to reach full extension, explode with power, repeat.

Hammer & Reverse Curls: A great way to add more dimension to your forearms is by targeting the brachialis. The…

Aidan Morgan

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