In an age of viral workouts and flashy gadgets, YouTuber Will Tennyson turned to an old-school martial arts method to answer a simple question: Do the internet’s most-watched forearm routines actually work, or are the ancient tricks still king?
Over seven days, he tested a series of viral methods targeting grip and forearm strength, tracking soreness, strength, pump, and visible muscle growth. What he found confirmed what martial artists have known for decades: the low-tech bucket still delivers high-level results.
Will Tennyson is a Canadian natural bodybuilding pro and experiment‑driven fitness creator who turns his own body into a science lab. With more than 4.6 million YouTube subscribers, he blends his training experience and humor into educationally entertaining “fitness experiments.”
From his 200‑day cut to a WNBF Pro Card to viral challenge videos, Tennyson is well known for stress‑testing trends and exposing gimmicks so gymgoers don’t have to. Along the way, he’s trained with a bevy of lifting legends like seven-time Olympia champion Phil Heath and World’s Strongest Man Mitchell Hooper, translating their insight into practical takeaways.
Tennyson admits in this most recent his forearm training had become generic and one-size-fits-all. He wanted a more serious, specialized approach, and he wanted proof.
“I’m not sure exactly what I just did, but it feels like it worked. It definitely feels like it worked,” he said after his first rice session.
His goal was simple: run the most viral forearm methods for a week and see which ones truly transformed his arms.
Here’s what Tennyson did, and what you could add to your training routine.
Rice Bucket Training
Inspired by monks and martial artists strengthening their hands in rice, Tennyson drove his hands into a bucket, twisting, circling, clawing, and digging every day.
“Within seconds, it started to burn, lighting up muscles I didn’t even know existed… I can’t make a fist, which is cool. That means it worked,” he said.
The result: a massive pump, deep fatigue, and rapidly improving forearm stamina.
Iron Fist Sand Training
Next came Iron Fist training: repeatedly striking and digging into a bucket of sand to toughen knuckles, fingers, wrists, and forearms. The pain was immediate—cuts, burning, and what he described as tiny “micro fractures”—but the payoff was huge.
By week’s end, he was punching through two wooden boards and damaging a third.
“Day one, I couldn’t even make a dent in the board. But today, that was like punching a rice cracker,” he said.
Grip Strength Trainers
Tennyson also cycled through grip trainers from 50 to 200 pounds, carrying them to the gym, the drive-thru, and even the grocery store. He progressed from struggling with a 125‑pound gripper to finally closing a 175‑pound model.
“It’s crazy how something so small can cause me so much damage,” he said.
Despite some drop-off on a formal grip test from fatigue, his practical strength and endurance skyrocketed, and his long-standing elbow tendonitis nearly vanished.
The Results and the Ranking
By the final day, his forearms had grown, his striking power had jumped, and his hands felt completely different in everyday tasks, from lifting to finally crushing an apple.
Based on his results, the methods rank roughly like this for forearm development:
1. Iron Fist Sand Training: Best for impact power, toughness, and confidence.
2. Rice Bucket Training: Best for deep muscular endurance, pump, and overall forearm development.
3. Grip Strength Trainers: Best for crush grip strength and daily carryover.
One Unexpected Benefit from Old-School Forearm Training
Despite some drop-off on a formal grip test from fatigue, his practical strength and endurance skyrocketed. All that high-frequency grip work delivered an unexpected bonus: it nearly erased his chronic elbow pain.
“One thing that I’m really noticing is that I have usually really bad elbow tendonitis, and it is almost completely gone,” he said, crediting the constant forearm and stabilizer work. For a lifter used to battling aching elbows, that pain reduction may have been the most surprising win of the entire experiment.
Tennyson’s experiment suggests that when it comes to building serious forearms, the old martial arts tricks still deserve a place at the top of the training hierarchy.
“I think this video proves something important. Sometimes the oldest training methods outlast the newest machines. These workouts are still talked about today for one simple reason. They work.”