This paper presents two ways for the minimization of joint reaction forces due to inertia forces (dynamic joint reaction forces) in a two degrees of freedom (2-DOF) planar serial manipulator. The first way is based on the optimal selection of the angular rotations laws of the manipulator links and the second one is by attaching counterweights to the manipulator links. The influence of the payload carrying by the manipulator on the dynamic joint reaction forces is also considered. The expressions for the joint reaction forces are obtained in a symbolic form by means of the Lagrange equations of motion. The inertial properties of the manipulator links are represented by dynamical equivalent systems of two point masses. The weighted sum of the root mean squares of the magnitudes of the dynamic joint reactions is used as an objective function.