Started by Sternford, October 1, 2009 · 24 Replies · 12,568 Views
I seem to have weak wrists, so I've been trying to do wrist push ups to work on that, but I found that I cannot even do them on the floor with bent legs. Well I was doing them standing up against the wall and it seemed okay, but today when I got to the "bottom" of the push up I got quite a pain in the base of my wrist. I'm not even very far from the wall or anything, what could this be?
EDIT: The pain is at the base of my wrist on the pinky side.
Seriously it takes time to develop strength in your wrists.
Time. They develop slowly.
Blairbob said:Seriously it takes time to develop strength in your wrists.Time. They develop slowly.
Is that an answer to my question or just a response like you only read the first sentence?
Ice, and Rest
Then work back into it slowly.
You need to use a different approach. What brain said is key, ice and give your wrists a few days off. You need to do the following things to help your wrists for a while before you try the wrist pushups. How do I know this? I have done these things, and as a result I was doing first knuckle and fingertip pushups in a full pushup position from the get-go, and within a month I was doing first knuckle pushups with locked arms. Dorsal pushups I'm weaker on, but I'm on the ground on my knees, straight body. Not too bad for a 220 lb guy. Keep in mind, I did most of this for a long time before I came here, so my wrist strength is pretty high. I can take any of the guys in the gym, including the bodybuilders and athletes, and with one wrist I can turn both of their hands over when they try to turn mine. That's old-school arm wrestling, it's all wrist strength. This is where it came from. The wrist pushups have enhanced it a lot, to the point where I don't really even have to try, but this is my background.
Ok, the goods:
One, wide handle holds. Get a piece of hollow pipe that's at least 2.5" wide. If you have tiny hands, 2" is ok, but 2.5-3" is generally what you'll need. The pipe only needs to be 6 inches long, and they sell foot long pieces at home depot. If they don't, get a union or t-junction or whatever. Ask them if you don't know what those are. Anyhow, hang weight off of them by running a rope through the middle of the pipe. Not tying it like a wrist roller, run the rope through the hollow pipe. You could also cut a 1 inch groove down the length of the handle and pop it onto a barbell or bucket handle. Even a dumbbell, if you cut it the right length. Anyhow, just do deadlifts or shrugs or just plain walk while holding the weight with the thick handle. This will trememdously strengthen everything in your fingers, hands, and wrists.
Two: all pulls should be done with fingers only. the bone between your second and third knuckles should be holding all the weight. No palms at all. That means you hold everything with fingers. Not fingertips, but the middle section of the finger. Rows, pullups, etc. Anything where you are pulling towards your body. That will build finger, hand and wrist strength differently from the thick handles. Obviously if you are doing false grip work you'll need to do that separate or split sets between false grip and fingers only.
Three: finger curls. hold a barbell or dumbbell as close to the tips of your fingers as you can and then curl your fingers towards your hands, pulling the barbell/dumbbell with them. This can also be done while hanging off of a pullup bar or the rings. As you get strong, slowly increase speed before increasing weight. Get to where you are explosively clamping your fingers into your hand before you up the weight. THen start over, build strength and then speed before you go up in weight.
There are other things you can do, but these three will give you very complete wrist strength and will prepare you for the rigors of the wrist pushups. You can also do wrist rollers. I don't personally use them, but they can be useful tools.
That was my full answer.
Get a bucket of rice
Get a dumbbell and hold it while moving it around in a circle.
Limit your volume on your wrists to something that is manageable. You have to figure this out through trial and error because we aren't there.
Oooh, blair brought up a really good one! With the bucket of rice or sand or whatever, you stick your hand in it and start writing the letters of the alphabet by using your wrist. You'll be encountering resistance in all directions. It's a really, really good rehab tool, and should probably be used as a warmup once you get used to it. It should help your pain recede as well. What I wrote will give you the best and fastest wrist strength development, but you need to rehab it first. Most of that is also fairly easily integrated here, since everything but the thick handle stuff can be done within the gymnasticbodies workouts.
He's also right about the volume on the wrist specific stuff. You need to control the volume, do it at the end of the workout, and possibly have separate workouts for your wrists. If you are serious about getting strong with the gymnastics, you're going to need to strengthen your weak areas, and you can't do everything in one workout. Good luck.
Slizzardman, how do you know so much about increasing muscle strength, joint strength and fitness in general. 
Why thank you peoples. I have heard people use the term rice bucket but I did not know what they were intending you to do with it. Now I know. I will try to get going with these things when I can, I have very limited resources right now.
EDIT
Incidentally, what are all your opinions on sledgehammer training? I was doing it a while ago and was getting better but had to give it up once college started again, as it was not my hammer.
I got my knowledge from a lot of people. I started working out at the YMCA when I was 7. Just bodyweight stuff and the rowing machine. THen when I was 9 I started using the machines, and a guy named Chris, who was a starter for the GA Bulldogs football team at the time, was volunteering for the summer. He taught me about good form, and how it was important to work your whole body, and that really you need to focus the most on the legs and core. Then I stopped working out when I was 13, but I always went out in the woods and climbed trees and ran around. I skated, bmx biked, rock climbed, etc. I learned a lot about hand and wrist strength from a guy named Lee. He was a professional mountain man. He and three friends actually set one of the routes up Denali, which I think is the highest mountain in North America. They were the first ones to do that particular route. I remember him doing sets of 25 fingertip pullups almost every day. Five fingers, two fingers, you name it. So he told me why it was important and how to start building up on that. Then when I was 17 I started fighting Muay Thai, and I learned more from my trainer, Manu Ntoh. http://www.manuntoh.com for details on him. He had 5 or 6 world title belts at the time. He was also a Judo and Vietnam Kung Fu champion as well, so he knew a lot about all kinds of traditional training methods. Then I had a bone spur taken out of my right knee, and took a year and a half off. I sort of kept working out, and started reading all kinds of books on fitness. I still read new books to this day. I experimented with different training methods on myself for a few months at a time, and I started making notes of what worked and what didn't, and what the similarities were between the things that worked, and what was similar about the things that didn't. So as I read, and learned, and met people, I gained more knowledge. Then I decided to be a Navy SEAL.
Well, I learned a lot about what not to do from my preparation. I got hurt a lot, and learned why my injuries happened and what to do to fix them and prevent new ones. I tore the fascia in my left wrist and couldn't do hardly ANYTHING on my hands. I learned to work with it, and then learned a lot about high frequency training, what the body can handle, and so on. Then I got hurt at BUDS, severe nerve damage in my left brachial plexus after a freak accident with a log. Left shoulder stopped working completely. This changed EVERYTHING. As I slowly recovered, I found that I couldn't work out like I used to. I simply couldn't handle high volume. So, I learned about high intensity methods and did things that directly stimulated neurological adaptation. Basically super high weight and only a few reps, for one set. There are other ways, but that was the only thing I could do with my shoulder. So, that method slowly helped me heal. I kept reading and learned more about training, and I was always a fighter at heart so I needed more than muscle in the gym. I needed speed, explosiveness, agility, strong joints, and endurance as well as brute strength. I also needed physical durability, the ability to take punishment. That is something that doesn't concern training here, so I never bring that up, but that also taught me a good bit about how bones and neurological systems can restructure. Once I was on the ship, I had limited resources. I bought a lot of books, read, got on the internet whenever I could and researched what was happening in exercise research. Ever since then I have been exposed to one thing after another, and now being here I am learning a lot about tendon restructuring and how long THAT takes. I've never done straight arm work before 
It's neat.
Also, I've always had a pretty good idea of how my body was developing, and a lot of training on my part was kind of instinctive. For example, on the ship I'd walk by the dumbbells out on the boat deck and I'd stop and do one quick bicep curl with a 60 lb dumbbell or something. At the time I was doing sets of 5-7 with the 80's, so that wasn't very much. I'd do a few things like that over the course of the day, and just run the rest of the way to make up the lost time. I got strong as hell from that, let me tell you. That's how I ended up curling 205 twice on the straight barbell. Most I've ever done, and I intend to get back to that. I wasn't really any bigger than I am now, so it shouldn't be an issue to get back to that in the next year or two.
Sternford said:Why thank you peoples. I have heard people use the term rice bucket but I did not know what they were intending you to do with it. Now I know. I will try to get going with these things when I can, I have very limited resources right now.EDIT
Incidentally, what are all your opinions on sledgehammer training? I was doing it a while ago and was getting better but had to give it up once college started again, as it was not my hammer.
In my experience sledgehammer training is horse crap. There are a ton of other things you can do to develop athletic ability that give faster and better results. Yes, slamming a hammer around will make you hard. But unless you want to get good at getting tired, or you intend to work all day with a sledge hammer, you're wasting time.
If you really want to punch hard, you want to do medicine ball rope circles(attach a rope to a medicine ball, or throw it in a bag and tie a rope to the bag, and swing it in circles overhead, minimal arm movement), and also medicine ball wall slams (slam that medicine ball into a tree or wall as hard as you can by holding the rope attached to it). You also want to do fast body twists with the hands and elbows held tight to the torso, sort of like an old man's "stick up your dukes" position. When I was fighting I used to knock the hell out of people without meaning to, because I just moved so fast that high speed + my size(185-190 at the time) = ouch. Another good drill is throwing bricks with a punch motion. All of those things, I guarantee you, will make you every bit as tired as the sledge training if you do them with the same intensity, but you'll actually get increased athletic abilities as well. I used to spar with the 160 guys because they were fast, and I got used to keeping up with them after all these exercises, so going toe to toe with 200 lb guys was kind of easy. I hit as hard as they did, at least, and I was WAY faster than anyone my size. It always surprised the hell out of people So yea, my personal view on the sledge is that while it, just like anything else that makes you tired, will improve aerobic conditioning, sledge training is one of the least effective means to do so. I never actually did it, and there have been a few times where people were talking shit about it so I went through their workout of "hit the sledge as hard as you can on the tire for 30 seconds, then do pushups, then do situps, then do pullups, and do 5 rounds of that" and I kept up with the best of them, and didn't seem to be as tired as them afterwards. I went ahead and did the rest of my workout, and they were done.
I got my knowledge from a lot of people. I started working out at the YMCA when I was 7. Just bodyweight stuff and the rowing machine. THen when I was 9 I started using the machines, and a guy named Chris, who was a starter for the GA Bulldogs football team at the time, was volunteering for the summer. He taught me about good form, and how it was important to work your whole body, and that really you need to focus the most on the legs and core. Then I stopped working out when I was 13, but I always went out in the woods and climbed trees and ran around. I skated, bmx biked, rock climbed, etc. I learned a lot about hand and wrist strength from a guy named Lee. He was a professional mountain man. He and three friends actually set one of the routes up Denali, which I think is the highest mountain in North America. They were the first ones to do that particular route. I remember him doing sets of 25 fingertip pullups almost every day. Five fingers, two fingers, you name it. So he told me why it was important and how to start building up on that. Then when I was 17 I started fighting Muay Thai, and I learned more from my trainer, Manu Ntoh. http://www.manuntoh.com for details on him. He had 5 or 6 world title belts at the time. He was also a Judo and Vietnam Kung Fu champion as well, so he knew a lot about all kinds of traditional training methods. Then I had a bone spur taken out of my right knee, and took a year and a half off. I sort of kept working out, and started reading all kinds of books on fitness. I still read new books to this day. I experimented with different training methods on myself for a few months at a time, and I started making notes of what worked and what didn't, and what the similarities were between the things that worked, and what was similar about the things that didn't. So as I read, and learned, and met people, I gained more knowledge. Then I decided to be a Navy SEAL.Well, I learned a lot about what not to do from my preparation. I got hurt a lot, and learned why my injuries happened and what to do to fix them and prevent new ones. I tore the fascia in my left wrist and couldn't do hardly ANYTHING on my hands. I learned to work with it, and then learned a lot about high frequency training, what the body can handle, and so on. Then I got hurt at BUDS, severe nerve damage in my left brachial plexus after a freak accident with a log. Left shoulder stopped working completely. This changed EVERYTHING. As I slowly recovered, I found that I couldn't work out like I used to. I simply couldn't handle high volume. So, I learned about high intensity methods and did things that directly stimulated neurological adaptation. Basically super high weight and only a few reps, for one set. There are other ways, but that was the only thing I could do with my shoulder. So, that method slowly helped me heal. I kept reading and learned more about training, and I was always a fighter at heart so I needed more than muscle in the gym. I needed speed, explosiveness, agility, strong joints, and endurance as well as brute strength. I also needed physical durability, the ability to take punishment. That is something that doesn't concern training here, so I never bring that up, but that also taught me a good bit about how bones and neurological systems can restructure. Once I was on the ship, I had limited resources. I bought a lot of books, read, got on the internet whenever I could and researched what was happening in exercise research. Ever since then I have been exposed to one thing after another, and now being here I am learning a lot about tendon restructuring and how long THAT takes. I've never done straight arm work before It's neat.
Also, I've always had a pretty good idea of how my body was developing, and a lot of training on my part was kind of instinctive. For example, on the ship I'd walk by the dumbbells out on the boat deck and I'd stop and do one quick bicep curl with a 60 lb dumbbell or something. At the time I was doing sets of 5-7 with the 80's, so that wasn't very much. I'd do a few things like that over the course of the day, and just run the rest of the way to make up the lost time. I got strong as hell from that, let me tell you. That's how I ended up curling 205 twice on the straight barbell. Most I've ever done, and I intend to get back to that. I wasn't really any bigger than I am now, so it shouldn't be an issue to get back to that in the next year or two.
From all your posts on rehab etc. I thought you were orthopedist or something...
Glad to have someone with such an experience with injuries on the team 
Keep posting and good luck with your training!
Thanks I've been tempted to go into sports science, but I'm having fun with psychology and intend to get my Ph.D. in counseling. I will, in the end, perhaps end up going that route, but I mostly just love to learn what can be done with the body! I'd really like to integrate the two where possible, for a lot of reasons.
slizzardman said:Sternford said:Why thank you peoples. I have heard people use the term rice bucket but I did not know what they were intending you to do with it. Now I know. I will try to get going with these things when I can, I have very limited resources right now.EDIT
Incidentally, what are all your opinions on sledgehammer training? I was doing it a while ago and was getting better but had to give it up once college started again, as it was not my hammer.
In my experience sledgehammer training is horse crap. There are a ton of other things you can do to develop athletic ability that give faster and better results. Yes, slamming a hammer around will make you hard. But unless you want to get good at getting tired, or you intend to work all day with a sledge hammer, you're wasting time.
If you really want to punch hard, you want to do medicine ball rope circles(attach a rope to a medicine ball, or throw it in a bag and tie a rope to the bag, and swing it in circles overhead, minimal arm movement), and also medicine ball wall slams (slam that medicine ball into a tree or wall as hard as you can by holding the rope attached to it). You also want to do fast body twists with the hands and elbows held tight to the torso, sort of like an old man's "stick up your dukes" position. When I was fighting I used to knock the hell out of people without meaning to, because I just moved so fast that high speed + my size(185-190 at the time) = ouch. Another good drill is throwing bricks with a punch motion. All of those things, I guarantee you, will make you every bit as tired as the sledge training if you do them with the same intensity, but you'll actually get increased athletic abilities as well. I used to spar with the 160 guys because they were fast, and I got used to keeping up with them after all these exercises, so going toe to toe with 200 lb guys was kind of easy. I hit as hard as they did, at least, and I was WAY faster than anyone my size. It always surprised the hell out of people
Oh, I didn't mean swinging, I meant levering and twisting, as that's more wrist oriented.
Levering and twisting isn't bad. Sorry for the misinterpretation I think it is a better test of where you are at than a strength builder, but I could be wrong... that's more of my personal opinion. I do stuff like that sometimes, it's definitely not worthless I have found that I build more by using resistance bands and the other things that I do, but that could just be a difference in myself and how I develop as compared to other people. If you like the results you got, I'd suggest getting a stick of the appropriate size and strapping(or duct taping) a dumbbell to it, or some socks full of sand(or rocks or dirt), for weight. Or spend 20 bucks on a hammer, but you can make the same thing for free so why not?!
slizzardman said:Levering and twisting isn't bad. Sorry for the misinterpretation
Haha, free is always better!
A long broom also works to a certain point.
Good point!
That's the good thing about it, it's pretty much infinitely adjustable
In baseball we merely used the bat or eventually put weights on the bat. I came across similar other things in other martial arts regarding staff or sword work for strengthening wrists ( using just the staff, wooden sword, live sword, or a bar of metal[iron?]).
Up and down, side to side and circles.
You should try this ancient skill!
LOL! I love kung fu movies. Awesome post!
I have a question about the rice bucket that will probably sound stupid to some people, but I guess it's better to ask then go about not knowing:
What are you supposed to do with the bucket when you aren't using it? Cover it and put it in the fridge or something? I don't really know anything about rice as I don't like it much myself.
Not in the fridge, just somewhere out of the way. In the fridge the cold will cause condensation in the rice container and that water will start seeping in to the rice and over time could help it start rotting or something. Could get gross Just keep it dry and out of the way, or use it as a stool
Finally something to use my plastic wrap for