Do you have weak wrists? If your wrists get tired, stiff, or sore after doing exercises on your hands and knees or yoga, then you need to read on! Whether you want to strengthen weak wrists for yoga, improve your workout performance, or learn some new wrist stretches and exercises to reduce pain or discomfort, this post will show you the most effective ways to strengthen your weak wrists quickly.
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Against all odds, you put out your workout clothes, made time in your busy schedule to go to the gym, and got yourself motivated for an awesome workout. Then halfway through your planks, pushups, or down dogs, your hands start aching. Your wrists start twinging. And you can’t make it through the whole workout – when you know the rest of your body could have if your darn wrists could have just sucked it up!
Prefer to watch How to Strengthen Weak Wrists?
As a society, we don’t do much to keep our wrists strong. In fact, all the time spent at the computer (or smartphone, or tablet), plus time spent doing repetitive movements at work adds up to a lot of wrist WEAKENING activity.
You’re probably pretty good at fine motor control activities – whether you do crafts, write, or use technology. All those activities require the little muscles of your hands to coordinate beautifully. Unfortunately, none of the activities we do on a daily basis require the big muscles of our forearms and hands to work very hard. And it’s the bigger muscles that cross the forearm and hands that are responsible for keeping your wrist joints strong.
This makes working out a pain in the wrist. If you spend most of your time doing fine-motor skills, then try to hit the gym for a fun workout or relaxing yoga session, you might find that your wrists simply can’t keep up with your workout. And that’s got to be one of the most frustrating things, especially when consistently working out is already tough.
So let’s talk about some quick tricks that will get your weak wrists stronger and toughened up in no time!
Placement for Weak Wrists
Without nerding out on you too much, your wrists are home to quite a few bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves and other connective tissues. That’s a lot to try to squeeze into that small space! And if you aren’t careful in how you’re positioning your hands, that can turn into a huge amount of force and pressure placed onto one of the smaller joints of the body. Naturally, this can result in pinched nerves, tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and plenty of other painful injuries.
So, when you’re asking your hands and wrists to support any amount of your bodyweight, pay attention to how you’re placing them so they can support that load safely and effectively.
Correct Hand & Wrist Placement
- Fingers spread wide
- Pointer fingers point straight ahead so they are parallel to each other
- Wrist creases should form a straight line and be parallel to the wall in front of you
Here’s the wrong hand placement. See how the wrist crease is rotated?
Pressure for Weak Wrists
Getting positioning correct is great, but you also have to get the pressure right so you don’t put too much force onto the wrong spot, or you’ll still be risking pain or injury.
Your hands and wrists should work together and bear the load fairly evenly. You want to avoid letting your wrist collapse into the mat and bear all the weight.
Follow these tips to engage all your hand and forearm muscles to properly support your wrists:
- Press your pointer finger, little finger, and thumb mounds firmly into the mat (Yellow Circles)
- Your fingertips should all press gently into the mat, along with your middle and ring finger mounds (Green Circles)
- Keep your wrist in contact with the mat, but don’t collapse your weight into it (Light Blue Oval)
- Imagine that the palm of your hand is a suction cup and is lifting upward (Dark Blue Circle)
Simply getting your placement and pressure correct will help strengthen your wrists over time. But there are a few stretches and exercises you can do that will help relieve tightness, soreness, and discomfort while strengthening those weak wrists faster!
Tip: If you’re struggling with putting too much pressure on your wrist, place a rolled up towel under your wrists to help you shift some weight onto the finger mounds until you get stronger.
Stretches & Exercises for Weak Wrists
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Note: If you are very hypermobile, or diagnosed with a hypermobility disorder, avoid doing the passive stretches. When you are hypermobile, your body needs to learn to be strong in its largest range of motion – so stick with the active stretches and strength exercises. You’ll get the relief you want from the active stretch and treat the problem at its source with the strength exercises so you won’t feel the need to stretch anymore!
Warm Up: Wrist Circles – both directions
Wrist Flexion: Active Stretch
Keep fingers straight.
Fold your palm toward your forearm.
Wrist Flexion: Passive Stretch
Keeping your fingers straight, gently pull your hand toward your forearm until you feel a stretch in your forearm.
Wrist Flexion: Strength
Support your arm on a table, your leg or with your other hand. Hold a weight or just use your hand.
Curl your fingers to slowly close your fist and curl your palm toward your forearm until you feel your muscles squeeze.
Wrist Extension: Active Stretch
Keep fingers straight.
Fold your hand back, bringing the back of your hand toward your forearm.
Wrist Extension: Passive Stretch
Keeping fingers straight, gently pull the back of your hand toward your forearm until you feel a stretch in your forearm.
Wrist Extension: Strength
Support your arm on a table, your leg or with your other hand. Hold a weight or just use your hand.
Curl your fingers to slowly close your fist and curl the back of your hand toward your forearm until you feel your muscles squeeze.
Lateral Wrist Movement / Radial Deviation: Active Stretch
Keeping fingers straight, bend your wrist laterally to the right.
Keeping fingers straight, bend your wrist laterally the the left.
Lateral Wrist: Strength
Holding a weight, a hammer, or just use your hand to laterally bend your hand to the right then return to start.
Holding a weight, a hammer, or just use your hand to laterally bend your hand to the left then return to start.
Ball Squeeze
Squeeze a ball or gently squeeze your closed fist. See how well you can control the squeeze. Then see how long you can hold.
There are LOADS of other stretches and exercises you can do to take your wrist strength to the next level. But get your Placement and Pressure dialed in and do these super simple stretches and exercises each day (or before and after your workouts), and you should have much happier wrists in no time!
Usman
i think you have EDS – ehlers danlos syndrome where you have weak/loose joints
Jess
I do! If you have a look at my other content, you’ll see I talk about it a fair amount. You can listen to my story here: http://studyinfitness.com/1-my-health-journey/
Jack Evans
This was eye-opening! I have struggled with wrist and hand joint pain for years now and I’m going to a hand therapist in a couple of weeks, but I decided to look for stretches to help. I’d been doing passive stretches only, all this time! The active stretches and strength exercises feel like they’re really working muscles that don’t get much work. The hand placement and pressure instructions are so clear and seem so obvious now that I’ve tried it, but I’d never considered it before. Thank you, SO much!
Jess
You are SO welcome! I hope you get relief both from this post and from going to a hand therapist! Hand and wrist pain are the WORST! Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts.