reckonerReverse wrist curl
Sit with your forearm resting on your thigh and your palm down, and lift a dumbbell by bending your wrist back. It loads the muscles on the back of the forearm that extend the wrist1, the ones a wrist curl leaves out. Start light, because this is a small movement with no room to hide a weight that is too heavy.
Palm down, forearm braced, lift the wrist.
- Pattern
- Arm isolation
- Trains
- Forearms
- Kit
- Dumbbell
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 1 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Very low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Wrist, elbow
Muscles worked
How to do it
Support the whole forearm, palm down
Sit on a bench with a light dumbbell in one hand, palm down. Rest your forearm on your thigh, or along the bench, with your wrist past the edge and your hand hanging free2. Start with the lightest weight you have.
Lower the back of your hand
Let the weight pull your hand down until it hangs from the wrist. Keep your grip firm so the dumbbell cannot slide out of your hand.
Lift with the wrist alone
Raise the back of your hand as far as the wrist moves smoothly. The forearm stays on your thigh, the elbow stays put, and the hand lifts straight rather than tilting to one side.
Lower it slowly
Come down more slowly than you went up. A physical therapy source gives a slow count of four on the way down and two on the way up2.
End the set when control goes
Stop when the range gets shorter, the forearm lifts to help, or the lowering turns into a drop. Log the last rep you controlled. Do one forearm at a time or both together, whichever keeps the forearm supported.
What goes wrong
Bouncing out of the bottom
The hand drops and rebounds, and the rebound starts the lift. The bell moves, so it feels fine, but the muscle did less of the work. Lower with control and pause for a beat before you lift.
Letting the wrist flop when it tires
Late in a set the hand falls with no control and the lift shrinks to a flick. It is the set ending. When you cannot hold the top or lower smoothly, put the dumbbell down.
Using too much weight
The forearm rises off your thigh, the elbow swings, or the hand twists to one side to find a way up. Take weight off until the wrist does the lift alone and you can lower it for the full slow count.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 10 | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 11 | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 12 | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 13 | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 14 | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 14 | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
What does the reverse wrist curl work?
The muscles on the back of the forearm, which extend the wrist1. The wrist curl, palm up, works the muscles on the other side.
Does training the wrist extensors improve grip?
In one study, thirteen healthy adults held wrist extension against resistance for eight weeks, and both their wrist extension force and their grip strength rose3. That was a held contraction rather than a dumbbell curl, in a small group, so this page does not claim the reverse wrist curl does the same.
Why is the reverse wrist curl not in my plan?
Reckoner never puts it in a plan for you. You choose it when you want forearm work. It is also not offered to anyone who has told Reckoner that a wrist or an elbow is a problem.
What if my wrist or elbow hurts?
Do not train through it, and do not use this page to treat it. Pain at the wrist or the elbow is a job for a physical therapist or a doctor. Slow, loaded wrist extension does appear in treatment programs for tennis elbow, and reviews of that treatment describe it as one part of a program a clinician sets up4. Which exercise, how heavy and how often is their call, not Reckoner's.
Similar movements
Reckoner has no other movement in this swap group.
Sources
- Mitchell B, Whited L, StatPearls, 2023. Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Forearm Muscles the forearm holds an anterior flexor compartment and a posterior extensor compartment, whose muscles act on the wrist
- Merck & Co., Inc., MSD Manual Professional Edition, 2026. Resisted Wrist Extension With Weight forearm resting on a table palm down with the hand off the edge, lift the wrist and lower it slowly, with a four count down and a two count up, starting with the lightest resistance
- Shimose R, Matsunaga A, Muro M, European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2011. Effect of submaximal isometric wrist extension training on grip strength thirteen healthy adults trained isometric wrist extension for eight weeks, and maximal wrist extension force and grip force on the trained side both rose
- Cullinane FL, Boocock MG, Trevelyan FC, Clinical Rehabilitation, 2014. Is eccentric exercise an effective treatment for lateral epicondylitis? A systematic review a systematic review of twelve studies of tennis elbow, where the consistent findings supported eccentric exercise, slow lowering of a load, as one part of a treatment program run by a clinician