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How to Strengthen Your Wrists

Strengthening your wrists is important whether you’re into sports or not. Oftentimes, people disregard this part and focus on larger muscle groups that give better shape to the body. They overlook the fact that strengthening their wrists can help them avoid injuries when performing other exercises. Improving their grip also allows them to be more effective in playing sports. For people who are not into sports, wrist exercises help lower the chances of suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome.

Before we dive down into exercises on how to strengthen the wrists, we have to understand the body parts involved in the process.

  • Extensors

This connects the top of your hand to your forearm. You’ll feel it by extending your arm out front, palm facing down, then extending your fingers up.

  • Flexors

This can be found on the opposite side of the extensor. With arms extended and palms facing down, try pointing your fingers down. The muscles you feel contracting are the flexors.

This muscle group runs along the outside portion of your forearm to your little finger. You can feel it when you extend your arms and then try to move your wrists outward, away from each other.

  • Radial deviators

This refers to the muscle group running along the inside of your forearm to your thumb. You can identify it by extending your arms outward and then moving your thumbs inward, toward each other.

Now that you have an idea of the muscles that make up your wrists, it’s time we move on to the exercises that can improve their functions.

Exercises to Strengthen Your Wrists

Strengthening your wrist muscles is important if you want to avoid injuries during intense activities.

Workouts should be holistic and focus on overall strengthening instead of just concentrating on one muscle group. This is why after stressing the wrist muscles, it’s vital that you also perform an exercise that improves the counterpart muscles. This ensures that muscular balance in the joints is maintained.

Here are 5 simple exercises that can help improve the grip strength, stability, and control of your wrists.

  • Regular, Reverse, and Hammer Curl Variations

These 3 variations improve different areas of your wrists. We included all of them in this routine to make sure you develop a wrist that’s strong on all angles.

The regular curl improves dynamic flexor strength. Usually, people don’t have to strengthen this muscle area since it’s always used in daily activities. However, we still included this for a complete strengthening routine.

The most important parts of this exercise are the reverse and hammer curls. They improve the radial extensors and deviators and help restore balance on the muscle wrists.

Here are the individual exercises you have to do as part of this drill:

  • Regular curl
  • Get your dumbbells and hold it with your palms facing forward.
  • From your waist, curl the dumbbells toward your shoulder without losing control.
  • Lower it down without losing control and continue for 10 reps.
  • Hammer curl
  • Hold the dumbbells with your hands by your sides. Your palms should be facing your body in this position.
  • Curl the dumbbells toward your shoulder and keep your palms facing in.
  • Lower it down without losing control and continue for 10 reps.
  • Reverse curl
  • This is similar to the regular curl but this time, you hold the dumbbells with your palms facing backward.
  • Curl the dumbbells up toward your shoulder while maintaining control. Your palms should be facing the front now after this motion.
  • Lower it down without losing control and continue for 10 reps.
  • KD Bottoms-up Walk

This drill focuses on improving reactive wrist strength to prevent injuries. This will test your grip strength and your balance at the same time.

  • Get a kettlebell and grab it with one hand.
  • Bring it up with your arm until the equipment is in an upside down position.
  • Now that your arm is fully extended, start walking around.
  • You can vary your walking pattern, alternating between small and big steps or walking in a different pattern.
  • Continue in this position until the kettlebell falls.
  • Lift the kettlebell back up and repeat the entire process.
  • Lever Rotations

This exercise focuses on enhancing control, balance, and stability. The radius and the ulna are the ones responsible for this range of rotational movement.

  • Grab a bat or a club.
  • Raise your arm in front of you with your elbow facing outwards.
  • Do simple wrist rotations while holding the club.
  • Make sure you move slowly during rotations and avoid letting the momentum of the movement make it easy for you.

You can experiment on this drill by holding an equipment with different thicknesses. For example, you can use alternatingly the thick and narrow ends of the bat for this drill.

  • False Grip Hang and False Grip Rows

This requires you to hang on to something with your wrists. This will improve grip strength while your wrists remain flexed.

Maintaining the position of your wrists engage all your flexors in a shortened range. This stretches the extensors, helping it increase in length. Lengthening the extensor is important to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome.

To begin, practice the false grip first:

  • Create a strong fist
  • While maintaining the fist, flex your wrists and hold it for 30 seconds up to a minute.
  • Start over when you feel that you’re losing or weakening your grip.

Once you get used to this drill, move on to the next level by including gymnastic rings.

  • Setup the rings in a position when you can do an inverted row. You can do the row either with your legs straight or knees bent.
  • Grab the bottom of the rings using your wrist. You’ll be basically doing a false grip but this time, you’ll be adding the weight of your body to increase tension.
  • From this position, pull yourself up and do an inverted row. Maintain your grip to strengthen your wrist flexion.

After getting used to this drill, you can move further up by doing false grip chin-ups or muscle-ups. This drill contains some of the best methods on how to make your wrists stronger, so make sure you do them properly.

  • Full Wrist Extension Holds

This drill extends not only your wrists but also your fingers. It’s helpful to maintain balance because you’ll be stretching the counterpart of the muscles you used in the previous exercises.

  • Extend your whole arm out front while maintaining your wrist in a neutral position.
  • Slowly extend your fingers up by spreading them out with your palms facing the front.
  • Hold this position for at least 10 seconds and then increase it to 30 seconds until you get to a minute, depending on your capability.

Products to Support Your Wrists

Some people may encounter problems when strengthening their wrists due to their natural physique. They quickly get injured which prevent them from progressing further in their workout routines. The same goes for those who are just recovering from a wrist injury. They may also have trouble getting back to their usual activities which can be frustrating at times.

So is there any answer on how to make their wrists stronger? A good solution is to use wrist support and wrist wraps that help reinforce your wrist muscles as you recuperate from injury. Wrist wraps help compress wrist muscles to prevent injuries from occurring during intensive sports or gym activities.

We recommend using wrist wraps from Sneakydeez. They’re flexible that they don’t limit your wrist movements, yet they provide good compression to prevent muscle sores. They’re used by athletes, gymnasts, and pole dancers from all over the world for the quality and comfort they provide.

Aside from having playful designs, Sneakydeez wrist wraps are super affordable too. You can grab a pair for just $25. The wraps are available in small and medium sizes.

Click Here to See All Sneakydeez Wrist Support Wraps

Conclusion

Strengthening your wrists is as important as improving any muscle part in your body. It helps improve your muscle control and aids in avoiding wrist injuries.

The drills we’ve listed above is safe to perform for those who are recovering from a sprain and for those who just want to simply improve their grip strength and stability. If you’re having trouble improving your grip strength or are slowly recovering from an injury, we recommend the use of wrist wraps from Sneakydeez to help you get better.

 

Additional Sources:

https://www.prevention.com/fitness/workouts/g26113126/best-bodyweight-exercises/

https://www.wellandgood.com/good-sweat/wrist-and-forearm-exercises/

 

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