What to Do If Push-Ups Hurt Your Wrists
It’s hard to get stronger doing planks and push-ups if your wrists can’t comfortably support your weight. Here are a few strategies to help you get rid of tight wrists and ultimately improve their strength.
Redistribute the weight in your hands
You may be able to reduce the discomfort by slightly changing the way you use your hands. As yoga instructor Lilith points out in the video below, you should feel the weight in the front of your arms, towards your joints and fingers, not just your heels.
She also suggests checking the position of your hands under your shoulders: it is best to directly under them, and if you place your hands slightly in front of your shoulders, this will further reduce the pressure. Look in the mirror to make sure you are positioned correctly.
Use props or more radical position changes
If the subtle fixes above aren’t enough, the next step is to reposition your wrist. Anything that makes your wrist a straighter line than an L-shaped curve will help you do your floor exercise more comfortably. It includes:
- Leaning on fists, not palms
- Place a piece of foam rubber or a rolled towel under the heels of your hands.
- Using a near-ground bar or portable push-up handles.
- Using dumbbells with straight sides (such as the hexagonal dumbbells popular in many gyms) as makeshift push-up handles.
Changing positions can help relieve pain in the wrist and when doing other exercises. If your wrists get in the way of your traditional front squat grip , try an over-the-shoulder grip to stabilize your weight without using your wrists at all.
Striving for the future
If you are satisfied with the details and position changes, then read no further. But if you want to improve the flexibility of your wrists, you will have to work specifically on this.
The warmth makes the muscles and tendons stretch less painfully, so postpone heavy wrist exercises until midway through your workout at the gym. You can also gently work on wrist flexibility exercises, such as these:
While the video recommends doing this before doing push-ups, I tested this advice and found the opposite to be true: Sprained wrists for two minutes made them hurt more when it was time to do the actual exercise. While pre-workout stretching can be effective for some people (especially those who are very close to doing push-ups in comfort), I would recommend for those of us with problems that we flip the script. Do your workout as usual with struts or other modifications, then work on stretching as an investment for the future.
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