Recovering from a wrist injury - advice?

[Arnold Choi]

Hello,

 

I had a pretty hard slip due to a paragliding mishap during take-off and landed on my hands. As a result I injured my wrist pretty bad. Although x-rays couldn't show any broken bones, it was still put into a brace for two weeks to help it recover. It has now been almost seven weeks since the fall and my wrist still experience pain and mobility issues. Dips are nearly impossible. I can not longer bear my weight on my wrists if they are bend at 90. It took almost five weeks before I could even gain the mobility to move my wrist back 90 deg. The recovery feels like it is taking long and in the mean time I feel that I am losing a lot of the gains I made in hand-stands and Foundation One since I cannot do any exercises that require the use of my wrists.

 

Is there a way to speed up recovery? Exercises, stretches, etc? Or should I just keep resting my wrist until it is fully healed? I'm afraid that if I do this it may take another 2 months before I am able to even bear my full weight again and it feels like there must be a better way to recover than just do nothing.

 

And will this injury be a liability from future progress from now on?

[Blairbob]

Voodoo wrapping your wrists will help some. It helped me a few times for the initial few weeks after.

After that progress was slow. Spending time on my wrists helped.

At first it was just doing wrist flexion stretches while standing and placing my hands on a box as this was easier than on my knees on the floor. Eventually I progressed to that, then bear and crab holds and walks.

I think handstand holds and walking will help...in time taken progressively and gently. It's one of the reasons I did the HS challenge in January.

Other things that help are getting motion in there. Sandbucket drills, wrist circles with and without little weights (just unweighted can be enough like ankle circles [with bands]).

Forearm massage

Wrists wraps. Duh. This isn't so you can work around them but rather just to keep your wrists warm like voodoo wraps but not cutting off the circulation (voodoo wrapping will start getting pretty uncomfortable by 5 minutes if you wrap tight enough).


And yes your wrists will take some to come back possibly never being the same. Depends if you incurred any damage to the joint itself and what category of wrist sprain. Such is life.

[GoldenEagle]

If you have damaged a tendon or ligament. There is no way to increase your bodies recovery rate like there is for muscle. Tendons and ligaments have, if any at all, very little blood flow and require time to recover.

 

Your best bet is to continue doing wrist stretches and some basic wrist exercises, in addition to just letting your body take the time it needs to repair itself.

 

Yes, If you don't let your wrist fully heal your injury will get worse and will cause you to lose more of your progress than what you may lose now. Don't do stuff that causes even a little bit of pain.