are wrist pushups the exercise of choice for axial loading?

[Philip Papandrea]

Hi all,

Not sure what hurt my wrists six months ago but I think my left wrist was hurt around the ulnar bone due to trying to do wrist pushups on my knees too quickly and both my wrists developed pain over time from too much axial loading from trying to do frogstands,lsits and handstands during the WOD's. Obviousily I wasn't prepared correctly to handle it. Well I've laid off all exercises with my hands on the floor and have only done wrist pushups on the wall for six months and my wrists are finally feeling better. I can now hold a false grip hang again with no pain. The problem is my wrists are still weak when I do anything with hands on the floor,even reverse plank.

Are wrist pushups the ideal exercise to stregthen the wrist for axial loading? doing them on the wall I feel the pressure on my ulnar part of my wrist so im alittle afraid to move to knees with these since I can finally do false grip hangs again. Are there any other exercises to help with axial loading wrist strength other than slowly introducing the moves like lsits and reverse planks into my workout again? Any help would be appreciated. I want to do this right this time. thanks in advance

Phil

[Joshua Naterman]

This may go against the grain somewhat, but if you really want to take care of your wrist you need to use every tool available.

Thick grip farmer walks, thick grip wrist roller (make with PVC pipe), grippers, the wall wrist push ups, fingertip bear crawls, rice bucket, finger curls with dumbbells, finger and wrist extensor work with rubber bands, and so on.

The more you use the better things will work out. Just one set of each will be quite reasonable and you really won't even need much rest. Just sort of start working down the list, do what feels reasonable, and every month or so add a rep here or a few lbs there. You will be surprised at how much stronger you get just from DAILY or multi-daily wrist work.